Green: The No Fun Color!

I wasn’t able to watch the Green Lantern movie until the Tuesday after its initial opening weekend. By then I was aware of the negative reviews, but I was still determined to watch a movie based on my favorite childhood super-hero. Yet something surprising happened to me during the movie --

I began to enjoy it!

Good movie critics explain their reasoning behind why they may like or dislike a movie. Most of the negative reasons are valid (honest!), but they left out one thing I got of Green Lantern: fun!

There was extensive negative press during the filming of Green Lantern and I can’t help but think that the negativity flowed into the reviews. I remember having such low expectations for the first X-Men movie eleven years ago that I was stunned when the movie exceeded them. Now I wonder if expectations are too high.

I was especially surprised at the criticism of the story itself. If critics can embrace the epic (Green Lantern defending Earth against the Fear-Mongering Parallax), why couldn’t they embrace the cornball (The very funny subversion of the super-hero secret identity)? And no one should have problems with the theme of overcoming fear (even the fear of showing fear).

Nobody sets out to make a bad movie. Sometimes it just turns out that way, but I don’t see it in Green Lantern. And they are making a sequel whether you want to see it or not. Then maybe more people can ignore the bad press and see how fun the movie can be on its own terms!