Green Lantern and Big Monkies

The most recent genre movie that I've seen lately was Green Lantern. I'm not that much into alien flicks and I've never followed the Green Lantern comic, but I did want to see the movie. I enjoyed it very much, but not as much as Thor or X-Men. I do think that the film had a mildly interesting plot and the lead actors did great jobs as Hal Jordan/Green Lantern (Ryan Reynolds), Carol Ferris (Blake Lively), and the evil Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard). I was pleasantly surprised at how well Reynolds played Hal Jordan since I had previously seen him in several sub par comedies such as Waiting. Reynolds has finally been allowed to shine, pun intended, in Green Lantern. Okay, it was a bad pun, but I could not turn it down.

***Spoiler Alert***
Skip to Rise of the Planet of the Apes if you don't want to know that much about the movie.


My main gripe about this film was that Hector Hammond dies much to early in the film, making the main villain of the story this big monster thing that is entirely uninteresting compared to the Hammond character. Hammond was an unappreciated scientist and son of a powerful politician, who was always jealous of Hal Jordan. Hector gets his power from another alien source which is the opposite of Green Lantern's power. Green Lantern wields, surprisingly, a green ring which captures the power of will. Green Lantern can use it to materialize things out of nothing, and gives himself all kinds of interesting power through the force of will. Hammond, on the other hand, gets his power from yellow energy which is fear. I think yellow is a pretty color, but apparently the creators of Green Lantern did not think so. Anyway, Hammond becomes an evil super villain with a big alien brain and psychic abilities through the power of fear. However, he plays second fiddle in this film to a huge alien entity that can swallow whole galaxies. I would have loved the see the Hammond character fleshed out more in this film, and the other big scary thing left for a sequel.

Green Lantern also introduces some really interesting ideas about good and evil, which the comics creators apparently equated with will and fear. It's true that one can't accomplish anything if one is afraid, so I thought this was a great message. The film glosses over this intriguing philosophical idea, that actually serves as the premise for the main characters, to avoid being preachy or boring. It seemed a little lazy to me, but maybe it was a good decision.


***Rise of the Planet of the Apes***
So, I have also now seen the trailer for Rise of the Planet of the Apes several times. Really? This film is a prequel to a remake, how creative. Why make this film, why? Apparently, somebody really, really believes in this project to the point of death, or somebody that wants this film made has an uncle that's a producer in Hollywood. In case you are wondering, this is not a prequel to the Charlton Heston film, it's a prequel to the Tim Burton remake from 2001. I don't see the point of this film, and I thought a remake was a silly idea in the first place. Although the original was based on a novel, it was a loose interpretation that was set on a post nuclear earth controlled by apes. You did not find out this was the case until the very end of the film, when the hero (played by Heston) finds the remains of the statue of liberty on a beach, and then he drops to his knees and screams "my God, they blew it up!" This was a powerful image in the cold war, and remains so today. The remake held some interesting moments here and here, but that's it. Planet of the Apes is the ultimate period piece, and is a film filled with popular sixties subtext such as the struggle against gender and racial inequality, and the alleged irrelevance of organized religion to the modern world. The film ultimately gets it's legs from cold war paranoia about nuclear war. To be culturally relevant in a similar way, the remake should have the apes be corrupt bank executives who cause a financial meltdown. Anyway, Rise of the Planet of the Apes will feature James Franco (Pineapple Express, Spiderman) as a scientist, and the plot will revolve around genetically enhanced lab monkeys who escape and take over the world. That would be scary if it didn't cause me to ponder if genetically enhanced apes could run the country better than the past two presidents have.