Love interest Carol Ferris (Blake Lively) is a patchwork of Lois and Pepper - an exasperated ex who will come back to Hal when he becomes more heroic but is mainly here to be imperilled in the climax and poke fun at the skintight CGI outfit. Like the movies’ Peter Parker or Tony Stark - and unlike the comics’ straighter-arrow Hal Jordan - Reynolds does panicky comedy schtick to delay hard-to-sell oath-reciting heroism. Former Deadpool Ryan Reynolds plays a cocky slacker foul-up with dead daddy issues (yawn!), whose recruitment into the Green Lantern Corps prompts his own sidekick (Taika Waititi) to wonder whether “on their planet, ‘responsible’ means ‘asshole’”. Elements carried over from the comic differentiate this outing from standard a-man-can-fly super-heroics since Hal Jordan’s adventures run to stretches of spacefaring action and awe-inspiring sci-fi/comic book/’70s concept album imagery (in 3D), though the Earthbound sections rather slavishly try to follow the Marvel method. This take on Green Lantern - daredevil test pilot-turned-space cop - is based on the 1959 science-fiction reboot of a formerly magic character, but draws most on the recent reworking of the Lantern mythos material by writer Geoff Johns (who even gets a buy-his-books ad in the end credits). Green Lantern is the first of DC’s second-tier stars - a status not to be ashamed of, since being on the rung below pop culture icons Bats and Supes still means looking down on Johnny-come-latelys like Spider-Man and Wolverine - to benefit from the major summer movie mounting which has made hits of Iron Man and Thor and established an ongoing Marvel film universe. Longtime DC fans have got used to slap-in-the-face disappointments like Swamp Thing, Steel, Catwoman, Constantine and Jonah Hex. Tentpole superheroes Batman and Superman remain the world’s finest heroes, but hog all the action. Though seemingly every Marvel character short of Howard The Duck and the Disco Dazzler is either a big-screen franchise or in fast-track development, DC Comics has lagged behind its longtime rival.
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