Re-reading The Sinestro Corps War for my other blog (right here, if you’re interested) has gotten me looking at the Green Lantern Corps. While
I’m not the biggest fan of Hal and his friends, they’re cool in my book. So,
for the next few days, I’ll be talking about what I call “The Yay, the Okay, and the Nay”
of Green Lantern in other media. First up are the two Green Lantern DCAU
movies: First Flight and Emerald Knights.
Back in 2009, the WB released Green Lantern: First Flight
direct-to-DVD. I think I either rented it or saw it on Cartoon Network. It features
Christopher Meloni (Det. Stabler from Law and Order: SVU) as Hal Jordan, Victor
Garber as Sinestro, Trica Helfer as Boodikka, and Michael Madsen as Kilawog. Green
Lantern: Emerald Knights was released in 2011 and even though Emerald Knights
uses the same designs from First Flight, it’s not a sequel which is kinda
confusing. Even though I’ve had it in my Blu-ray collection for a bit, I just
saw it this weekend. It features Nathan Fillion as Hal Jordan, Jason Issacs as
Sinestro, Arnold Vosloo as Abin Sur, Kelly Hu as Laira, Henry Rollins as Kilawog,
and Michael Jackson (… not that one) as Ganthet.
Green Lantern: First Flight
First Flight is pretty much Hal Jordan’s origin. We see him
get summoned to Abin Sur’s body and given the ring. We then spend pretty much
all our time in space with the Corps. He’s distrusted a bit since humans don’t have
good reputation. Hal gets put with Sinestro, the best of the Lanterns, and they
go on the hunt for Kanjor Ro. Ro knows the location of yellow energy that can
take down the GL Corps and the Guardians. What everyone doesn’t know is that
Sinestro is in league with the villain and he sets a plan in motion to get the
yellow energy for himself. Hal and the Corps then have to deal with Sinestro and his new weapon.
It's cool to see Sinestro's Corp suit in animation. Also, did Hal just "Spirit Bomb" Sin?
I thought this movie was fine for the most part. It’s definitely
not up there with the best of the DCAU movies, but it’s not bad one either. First
off, the voice-acting is pretty good all-around. Meloni sounds good as Hal
Jordan and Madsen made a pretty good Kilawog. Garber was especially cool as Sinestro. In
fact, Sinestro in general makes this movie good since we see him get rough
here. While the story has its issues, it was fine for the most part. I’ll get
to the problems in a minute.
Either Hal's going green or he's the new member of Sailor Moon.
The animation is fine for the most part. It’s partly influenced
by anime and I could tell that by Hal’s first transformation into a GL. The character
designs for the Corps and the various aliens were good for the most part. The action
scenes were fine and flowed well at times. The one thing I remember about this
movie was that one of Ro’s henchmen gets sucked out of a small hole into space.
There’s no blood, but it’s pretty gross. They should probably include that with the rating.
This is how those Thursday meetings feel like. I'm the blue dude to the left.
While I liked it, it does have some issues. Mainly, this
thing has got its foot on the pedal. We get a lot of stuff throw at us in
70-ish minutes. I know that Warner Premier was constrained with time limits,
but this felt weird because things felt missing. We barely got anything out of
Hal character-wise and backstory-wise. He was just here to be a cool, dull mofo
and that’s it. In fact, I think we got to know Sinestro more than Hal here. While
I did like the animation, there were times where it did slip up a bit especially
when it came to the fight scenes. Other than those things and small nitpicks,
this was fine in the end.
Green Lantern: Emerald Knights
Emerald Knights is a bit of an anthology story. The main
story is that Krona, a former Oan, is returning from another universe to
threaten Oa and the Green Lantern Corps. As everyone tries to prepare, a new
recruit named Arisia is having doubts and questions. Hal Jordan, Sinestro (as I
said, it’s not a sequel), Kilawog, and others tell Arisia stories about some past
adventures and some other Lanterns. We get a story about the first Green Lanterns,
a story about Kilawog’s drill sargent, a
story about Laira, one about Mogo (a planet GL), and one about Abin Sur.
This story with Abin Sur and Sinestro was the best of the bunch.
This movie is also in the fine category for me. While it
does do a couple of things better thatn First Flight, it has some issues. I’ll
get to the good stuff first, though. While the main story was… eh, the tales of
the Corps members ranged from fine to pretty good. The stories about Mogo and
Abin Sur were really good. The Mogo story was actually pretty comedic and was based
on a story written by Alan Moore. Sur’s story was done by Geoff Johns and you could
really tell. In fact, other GL writers like Peter J. Tomasi and Alan Burnett
did some of the stories.
I think this fight is right up there with Batman's thrashing of Red Hood in Under the Red Hood.
The animation here is better especially with the action.. The action flowed
here better than it did in First Flight. Case in point, while Laira’s story was
fine, it had some of the best action I’ve seen in these movies. The voice-acting
was also pretty good here. Fillion did it good as Hal Jordan and Issacs was
good as Sinestro. There was one voice that really stuck out (and not in a good
way), but I’ll get to that “poozer” down below.
And for our main story, we have... this. Well, it's better than seeing them fight a talking, brown space cloud.
Like with the pevious movie, it does have some issues. The
main story was pretty empty. I know the main draw for the movie were the tales,
but that main part could have been much better. I kinda wish it was like
Batman: Gotham Knight, another DCAU movie that pulled the different stories stunt. While
most of the tales were good, some of them dragged a little. It was mostly when
the story revolved around some of the lesser known GL members. You had a couple
of points where the animation didn’t look as good. Finally, what the heck was up
with Kilawog’s voice??? He sounded horrible! Other than these things, this was another fine one.
……………………………………………………
In the end, these are two fine movies. They’re not great,
but they aren’t bad either. I can’t say which one is better since they both had
succeeded and failed in different
places. I will say tha they are both better than the live-action movie at
least. Yes, that movie is also on the docket for this week. I’ll need a few
prayers to make it through that one. At least I’ll have something good to watch
afterwards. Until then, Peace, God Bless, be careful out there. Also, those
Guardians have some strong chins! You could break diamond with those things!
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