So, I have had a bit a time recently to watch some films that I should seen, but somehow missed. One of the films on that list was The Green Lantern. I know, I know, I had heard that it wasn’t very good, but I had to find out for myself why. I thought the first half hour of the film was actually pretty good. I thought that they handled his origin pretty well, then the movie took a turn for the terrible, they attempted to introduce the villain. Technically, the movie had two villains, one who was in the majority of the film, the other who is supposed to be far scarier and much more of a threat, so he’s in the movie for about 8 minutes. Now, what struck me as odd about that was the fact that Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer tried to employ the same tactic using the Silver Surfer and Galactus, and we all know what a waste of time that film was, but I digress. So the film gives us one villain, who I will call “bighead” because I forgot his name, and that was pretty much his identifying characteristic.  Bighead runs around the entire movie being butthurt that Daddy doesn’t love him, and he didn’t get the girl. Then he gains superpowers which involve him using telepathy to move things around (I know, original, right?) So he fights the Green Lantern, messes up and is immediately eaten by the more powerful second villain, leaving the audience and myself with the question “What the hell was his purpose in the movie?” He didn’t really do anything besides kill his own father, and attempt to slightly harm the Green Lantern. So was he there to slightly annoy Ryan Reynolds or what? After Bighead’s “unfortunate” death, the Green Lantern proceeds to fight, and then trick this ultimate villain (Parallax) into flying into the sun. Even though four or five other Green Lanterns who had probably been training all of their lives posed no threat to him whatsoever. Directors should know by this point that if you have a superhero, you need to have a villain that actually poses a threat to the hero. Its why the Joker and Bane are effective; because what they do actually matters, they pose a threat to Batman and Gotham’s way of life.

So there you have it. Green Lantern actually could have been a decent film, but those charged with making forgot a very simple rule of superhero films: the villain has to be as compelling or more compelling than the hero; Bighead and Parallax epically failed in this.