The 9 Most Scathing Critical Responses to Green Lantern

Blackest night is right, Hal Jordan! At least judging from the critical consensus about Green Lantern, which is currently rocking a 22 percent rating over at Rotten Tomatoes -- better known as a worse percentage than previous summer punching bags The Hangover Part II and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Ouch. Pledge allegiance to a lantern, and click ahead to read the 9 most scathing reviews of Green Lantern.

9. "Word on the street about this new superhero picture, yet another comic book adaptation, has been pretty lousy. And by 'the street,' I mean Twitter. And by 'pretty lousy,' I mean people are calling it 'Battlefield Earth bad.' Ouch. As it happens, Green Lantern is not Battlefield Earth bad. It simply doesn't take itself quite so seriously as to reach those lows. What Green Lantern ought to have gone for is some level of Flash Gordon bad. " -- Glenn Kenny, MSN

8. "Only a committee that's constructing the next Star Wars would start a fantasy flick with a backstory that begins 'millions of years ago,' when faceless forces of good (aka 'will,' aka the color green) confront the faceless forces of evil (aka 'fear,' aka the color yellow). A fat ration of the special effects budget is torched before we puny humans have the faintest idea what's at stake." -- Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

7. "What is the deal with green superheroes? The Hulk movies don't work, though they've tried and tried again. The Green Hornet was a self-indulgent mess. And now comes The Green Lantern, a mind-numbing, misguided pandemonium that ranks as the biggest comic book misfire since Batman & Robin battled Poison Ivy. Who was green." -- Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune

6. "I could easily fill pages running down the plot obstacles that Lantern director Martin Campbell soullessly cycles through; identifying all the characters introduced by the film's four screenwriters, only to be easily disposed of; and 'explaining' the complete hodgepodge of psychological cause-and-effects, from the pervasive daddy issues and complete absence of mothers, to the arbitrary, less-than-convincing confidence issues that Hal is able to surmount as soon as it becomes clear that Carol really wants to kiss him. But the movie never bothers to suggest that any of that really matters: Campbell's ADD style privileges spectacle over story--so much so that the film never rewards the viewer for even trying to keep track of what is going on." -- Karina Longworth, LA Weekly

5. "Even though Hal's the only human the corps has ever had, he's also the only one who can stop a dastardly force in the universe known as the Parallax, to the dismay of the corps' suspicious leader, Sinestro (Mark Strong). He's right, this doesn't make any sense -- but then again, the Parallax looks like a giant, evil piece of calamari, and that doesn't make much sense, either." -- Christy Lemire, AP

4. "[Y]ou can't make anything that's simply fun and lo-fi these days, especially in 3-D: Everything has to be big and overloaded, and Green Lantern is no exception. Shot by Dion Beebe -- a gifted cinematographer -- the movie suffers from that familiar cataract-veil murkiness of 3-D. The whole thing looks as if it were shot through a lens coated with a thin layer of mud." -- Stephanie Zacharek, Movieline

3. "It's shocking how little $150 million buys you in Hollywood these days." -- Manohla Dargis, New York Times

2. "Peter Sarsgaard (born in 1971) and Tim Robbins (1958) collect paychecks for chewing scenery as an amusingly unlikely son and father. Robbins is a fatuous US senator who arranges for his son, a balding biology professor, to conduct an autopsy on the dead E.T. -- with truly unfortunate results for both of them. Fellow Oscar nominee Angela Bassett also avoids the unemployment line in some of these scenes." -- Lou Lumenick, New York Post

1. "As summer garbage goes, Green Lantern can't go fast enough. Even in the brainless world of cinematic comic books gone bad, it's as bad as it gets--a dumb, pointless, ugly, moronic and incomprehensible jumble of botched effects, technical blunders, and cluttered chaos. Oh yes. It is also -- did I forget to mention? -- boring. [...] The dialogue consists mostly of lectures about brain-eating bacteria, and the locations are identified as stuff like 'The Edge of the Milky Way Galaxy.' It took four writers who shall remain nameless to think up lines like 'We must harness the power of our enemies and fight fear with fear!' Or this favorite exchange: 'Why are you glowing?' 'Why is your skin green?' 'What in the hell is with that mask?' At the screening I attended, the critics were laughing so loud I missed a few bon mots, but you get the picture. The director is Martin Campbell, who doesn't." -- Rex Reed, New York Observer