Green Lantern, opening this weekend, is the latest comic-book-superhero movie to invade multiplexes, though not the last. The film, which stars Ryan Reynolds as the power-ring-wielding superhero, is getting panned by most critics, rejected as "a strangely lifeless spectacle" and a "deadly disappointment." Is it time Hollywood stopped trying to milk random superhero franchises, and got back to the business of making good movies? (Watch the film's trailer.)
Yes. Not every comic book should be a movie: Green Lantern is "mind-numbing, misguided pandemonium," and "ranks as the biggest comic book misfire since Batman & Robin battled Poison Ivy," says Colin Covert in the Star Tribune. As the "self-indulgent" The Green Hornet painfully illustrated, not every superhero should go Hollywood. And the Green Lantern, with his "far-fetched" gimmick — he has the power to conjure anything he imagines — is yet another character who works on the comic book page, but not at the multiplex.
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