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Campbell Paints Shallow Portrait in “Green Lantern”

When adapting a comic book character for the first time on the big screen, writers and directors often struggle with effectively recreating the hero’s world. This is because condensing a collection of written works into a movie is a difficult task. The filmmakers usually need to take liberties with converting them, to maintain a reasonable running time.

Given the constraints, they must balance effectively explaining the character’s back story and compelling viewers with an adventure in the present. Only the best super hero adaptations give equal attention to both though, while the rest falter, by focusing more on one aspect than the other.

Martin Campbell’s “Green Lantern” is a primary example of a film which falls into the latter category, since it spends more time trying to hook you on the current events, than getting you invested in its protagonist, Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds).

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Evan Crean: Hello! My name is Evan Crean. By day I work for a marketing agency, but by night, I’m a film critic based in Boston, MA. Since 2009, I have written hundreds of movie reviews and celebrity interviews for Starpulse.com. I have also contributed pieces to NewEnglandFilm.com and to The Independent, as a writer and editor. I maintain an active Letterboxd account too. In addition to publishing short form work, I am a co-author of the book Your ’80s Movie Guide to Better Living, which is available on CreateSpace and Amazon. The book is the first in a series of lighthearted self-help books for film fans, which distills advice from ’80s movies on how to tackle many of life’s challenges. On top of writing, I co-host and edit the weekly film podcast Spoilerpiece Theatre with two other Boston film critics. I’m a founding member and the current treasurer for the Boston Online Film Critics Association as well. This site, Reel Recon.com, is a one-stop-shop where you can find links to all of my past and present work. Have any questions or comments after checking it out? Please feel free to email me (Evan Crean) at: ecrean AT reelrecon DOT COM .
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