Green Lantern: First Flight Review

Green Lantern's a character that's pretty important to me, so I felt jazzed up upon hearing that an animated DVD was being released. So far, both the latest generation of Marvel and DC have been pretty mixed to say the least, ranging from decent to pretty bad in some cases - but I was hoping that the strength of GL's mythos could help elevate the material.

After all this is freaking Green Lantern how the hell could they screw this up? Well, pretty easily by the looks of things.

A lot of this movie feels like the spark notes for Green Lantern - we pretty much skip any sort of buildup to Hal Jordan recieving the ring from Abin-Sur, that scene is literally the very opening of the movie and before you can say, "Brightest Day," a whole mess of GL's show up to check the new Earthman out.

Now, I've got no problem with skipping the origin sequence because honestly these animated films aren't long enough as is and better to spend time on the actual plot than dealing with formalities.

But the movie never comes together. We jump from scene to scene until finally ending up at a battle royale and not even that managed to rouse me outside of a few fleeting moments.

Hal gets dragged up to Oa and they're about to kick him out because humans are disgusting apes or some such. See, the thing is the aliens seen throughout this cartoon seem to be pretty much human in behavior and attitudes - they commit crimes, get addicted to drugs, lie cheat and steal etc. So why in the hell are the Guardians so disgusted with humans when they seem to be no worse than anyone else and on top of that why would they even have such a strong opinion of humans? In the context of this universe, we'd pretty much be a little backwater, too insignficant and primitive to be of concern to anybody. This is just the first in a series of increasingly ridiculousness in which the Guardians seem to pick on Hal Jordan for one reason or another.

Basically, what it comes down to is that the creators wanted Hal to come off as a renegade, something of an outsider. Fine, sure - but I mean it really doesn't seem credible anymore when they're chastising him for being reckless and its his first day - he's recieved no formal training of any sort. What assholes.

And speaking of assholes, I completely hated the way Kilowog was written save for one scene near the end. A huge dissapointment from one of my favorite Green Lanterns.

I could go one for a dozen more paragraphs nitpicking every little thing but I think I'll focus on two more topics: Hal Jordan and Sinestro.

Now see here, this is what I mean by sparknotes - we meet Sinestro and we get that he's this "Law and Order" type of guy, but any subtlety or buildup to his inevitable betrayal of the Corps is undercut by the fact that A. he's a homicidal asshole out of the gate and B. He's already planning to betray the Corps when Hal meets him.

Sinestro's supposed to be the Anakin Skywalker of the GL Corps, the shining knight turned bad - but we end up with something a lot more direct and simple. Sinestro is bad - end of story.

Hal Jordan... I'll say this much, he comes off bland. He's supposed to be a renegade but he never really inspires feelings of rightous rebellion. The Guardians are so stupid that its impossible to see where he might be crossing the line or even the merits of listening to authority. That's not being a renegade to me, that's freaking common sense.

Other than fighting evil and having a bit of an attitude problem when it comes to moronic dicks, there's not much else to say about Hal.

Oh and Tricia Helfer is wasted as Boodikka.