A test pilot finds himself face to face with an alien in a crashed space-ship. An alien that asks him to put on a special ring. Suddenly he finds himself on the otherside of the universe, talking (and fighting) some odd looking aliens and wearing a strange suit.

It turns out that an ancient evil is devouring and destroying planets and that this brigade of Green Lanterns, are basically the intergalactic police.

Returning to Earth, our hero doesn't know quite what to make of it and thinks that he's not up to the challenge. Meanwhile, a scientist gets infected by the ancient evil, becoming more and more warped and mutated.

Soon enough, the evil force (basically a giant black cloud which looks rather reminiscent of the baddie in Fantastic Four 2) comes to the Earth and he is the only one who can stop it.

The problem with this film wasn't so much the concept, but how it was done. It starts by introducing the aliens on their home planet and revealed everything at once.

Most comic book films start from our Earthy point of view, with one or more characters finding out about the 'bigger alien universe' at the same time we do. I think this is where this film suffers most badly.

The other issue is that none of the characters react in quite the way you might expect, not one of them questions that the existence of aliens is a massive deal, its almost as if they've all seen this before.

Probably the worst, and most laughable thing about this film is the mutation of the poor scientist. All these things combined meant that I simply couldn't take it seriously.

Not one I'd recommened, which is a shame because as a concept it had potential - just bad directing and editing I guess.

see also:
Transformers, Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Star Wars: The Clone Wars

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photo © Waner Brothers Pictu.