Green Lantern

Directed by: Martin Campbell
Written by: Greg Berlanti, Michael Green, Marc Guggenheim & Michael Goldenberg
Full credits at IMDb

There's a UN parallel here, but only so this very conservative movie can bash that peacekeeper's lily liver. The US Army parallels are much more conspicuous. After all, it's called the Green Lantern Corps, which evokes the Marines, and that each member is a handpicked elite made me think of special forces—Green Berets, for an earlier era, or a Seal Team for the present. Look at who the good guys are in this movie: defense contractors, fighter-plane pilots, even a government scientist (Angela Basset), who in any other movie would be sinisterly conspiratorial, and the senior senator from Louisiana (Tim Robbins), who in any other movie would be conniving and corrupt. And who's the only earth-bound villain? An academic (Peter Sarsgaard)! ...The movie admonishes the cowardice of "assessing the situation" regarding the impending war; was [it] written while Obama was weighing his options in Afghanistan? And when [hero Hal] Jordan finally accepts his lot as a Lantern, he gives a stirring speech to the UN-like elders in which he highlights the threat to Earth—specifically, to America—as being not just "fear" but the fear to fight. We have to bring the fight to them, "to destroy evil wherever it may hide"—particularly in Iraq, maybe? Jordan sounded a lot like Colin Powell ca. 2003 there.

Keep reading my conversation with Benjamin Sutton at The L Magazine


Watch the trailer: