It’s not easy being green. Not if you’re a newbie trying to join an intergalactic police force devoted to stopping interplanetary outrages. Not if you’re a veteran superhero trying to ignore the inference that your time is up. An interregnum looms. As does an intergenerational, odd-couple buddy tale with rings, lamps and mayhem played out across inner space, aka the American Midwest.
Superhero-based entertainments, as we’ve come to know them, are comedies. There can be tragedy. There can be grief. There has to be action. But if the movie were a person, he’d be vaguely amused. And why not? For all the cult-like posture of the Marvel/DC worlds, this is silly stuff, if no sillier than any other of its ilk. He might have an alternate version of himself materialize if he needs help. It’s fun. But it shouldn’t be, as the gods of superhero cinema seem to imply, a religious experience. Mr. Chandler certainly gets it, making Hal a wisecracking, long-suffering delinquent who’s as charming as he is insubordinate—not an original type, perhaps, but the actor makes his character the magnetic force of the whole series. John is clichéd in a different way, the former Marine sharpshooter who has worked all his life to be a Lantern and is not nearly as damaged as he ought to be.
The Green Lantern, whose ring is powered by an emerald lamp, “manifests” whatever he needs. (A very current concept, considering how long the GL has been around.) He might conjure up a protective bubble, let’s say, to shield a town from hostile aliens.
