Green Lantern: First Flight

Green Lantern is part of a group of superheroes in comics that I'm only familiar with on the periphery, either from seeing some parts of Justice League or hearing here and there about his powers, the ring, the whole fleet of Green Lanterns, the color codes and space battles, etc. It's safe to say then than, for the novice crowd, First Flight is an ideal choice to watch. It has all of the fast pace and (mostly) terrific animation that one's come to expect from the Warner brothers animation with collaboration from DC Comics. This comes now after a few other new animated straight-to-video movies: Superman Doomsday, Justice League New Frontier and Wonder Woman (the last one not yet seen by me). And it's safe to say that Green Lantern can claim its rank with those other examples, nestled most likely in quality and entertainment between Superman and Justice League.

It basically plops us into his origin story, or at least a solid re-telling of it. We get the story of Hal Jordan, who was a test pilot until he came across a dying alien with a green ring on his finger which he entrusted to Jordan. From then on, he's the Green Lantern, but not the only one: he's met on Earth by Sinestro, a red-skinned arrogant jerk, and a few other alien Green Lantern folk, who take him along into space to meet with the council that guides the Lanterns in their adventures. In this case, they have to find the "Yellow element", which is like a yellow machine that is the one weakness of the Green Lanterns: this color is the one thing that can block their power, and in the wrong hands it can wrought devastation on the whole universe. And, meanwhile, Sinestro maneuvers behind the scenes...

Oh, it's not exactly the 'easiest' sort of story and world, so to speak, to enter into on a first viewing with only limited experience to Jordan and the Lantern corp. But once one is acclimated to everything, the animators and filmmakers take it from there and make it a rollicking science fiction action story, with touches of the space opera (sometimes blatantly, like with the rip-off of the Cantina scene from Star Wars when Hal and Sinestro go to interrogate someone). While some of the supporting characters are quite stock-like (i.e. Madsen's honorable pig character), and the usage of CGI, especially during the back-story exposition on the Yellow Element, is sub-par, it's mostly compelling thanks to Jordan being a heroic hero and Sinestro being a complex enough villain in the story. In fact, Sinestro was what made this far better than I initially expected, as a character who is on the side of good, but has his very questionable methods - and then crosses that line where he can never go back from.

I imagine that for the die-hard fans of Lantern from the comics, who perhaps aside from the die-hard fans of WB/DC animation, this might not be anything too new storywise, but the best thing about it is it doesn't need to be. This is the first time we've seen any kind of direct-to-video, or just perhaps any, actual feature film version of the Lantern story (until the Martin Campbell film comes out anyway), and as an origin story it does what it needs to. It sets up its universe (again, so to speak), delivers us interesting characters (more or less), and is jam-packed with intense action and some very particular and amazing scenes of animation. Another Bruce Timm produced effort worth watching, if not an immediate must-see unless one is itching to learn more about one of DC's most popular characters (after, you know, Batman and Superman and maybe Wonder Woman too).

Let me just say right up front that I've never read a single comic book in my entire life (I just couldn't get into them as a kid), so that's why I'm very thankful for the existence of film adaptations based upon these superheroes' backstories and mythos. The first time I'd ever heard of the Green Lantern character was in 2011, back when the whole fiasco of Ryan Reynolds' critical and commercial failure was released onto the big-screen (only a couple of years after this animated film originally came out). Say whatever you want about it by all means (personally, I didn't think it was as awful as everyone makes it out to be), but that financial bomb helped expose many people (such as myself) to the fictional world and expansive lore of the Green Lanterns (so in a way, I suppose not all box-office flops are completely worthless).

Under the surface of things, Green Lantern: First Flight (2009) is really a more in-depth character study about Thaal Sinestro - a tired and bitterly broken-down veteran member of The Corps who finally goes rogue when his faith in the Guardians' justice system has been pushed to its limits and ultimately, his own rigid beliefs in achieving total peace and order in the universe are skewed far beyond repair. It's refreshing to have a superhero film that takes the time to properly establish its antagonist's motivations, even if the character himself is a bit underdeveloped in certain areas (I still say Thanos in Marvel's Avengers: Infinity War is the number one best supervillain out there, which was all thanks to The Russo Brothers meticulously fleshing him out to the point where you could then start to understand the reasoning for his extremist attitude). That being said, even thought it feels a lot more small-scale than it actually is, the film still manages to provide the same amount of action spectacle as any MCU movie would.

Hal Jordan still retains his archetypal character traits (from what I've heard about the actual comics, that is) of having a cocky and brash personality, while also maintaining the likeable and heroic qualities of his otherworldly superhero persona as a smooth-talking, and sometimes smart-mouthed, inexperienced rookie cop on his first terrifying assignment. And by the way, no offence to Christopher Meloni's voice acting, but I actually think I prefer Nathan Fillion voicing the eponymous character (his vocal performance in Emerald Knights just fits the role a lot more).

For a direct-to-DVD animated movie, I thought the action sequences were very well choreographed by the talented team of animation artists. The fight scenes in traditional hand-drawn animation tends to look awkward, in a stiff and jerky kind of way (a little rough around the edges, is all I'm saying), and although that's usually the case for most of them, I'm happy to say the animators were experienced enough at knowing how to pull it off in a way that made the lengthy battles appear to have fluent and swift movements when it came to the characters' actions (I mean after all, this is the same team who also worked on the animated Wonder Woman film). The only other good 2D cartoons, which are primarily action-oriented, that I know of are the original Ben 10 series and the 2003 revitalisation of TMNT.

To sum things up; not even a $200 million big-scale "blockbuster" could compare to this action-packed, yet somehow humble, cartoon feature. This was everything that the expensive live-action movie should've been in order to impress casual audiences worldwide and start a whole new ongoing film franchise (but sadly, that never came to pass).

What did you expect from this? Animation that is decent, but nothing spectacular, lots of pretty colors and funny faces, everyday guy with large manly jaw becoming galactic marshal rookie, rookie fighting evil, rookie defeating evil. I knew what was going to happen, who was the bad guy and how good will prevail from the first 10 minutes, yet it still was fun :) Sneaky sobs!

Bottom line: it's a cartoon for kids. Nobody sings, thank you very much, but there isn't much humour in it either. A simple plot which explains the birth of the Green Lantern superhero. To their defense, I doubt they could have squeezed much in it anyway, as the plot was packed with action from beginning to start.

i thought this was a very well done animated movie.it's the origin story of how Hal Jordan became a Green Lantern.i have no idea how close it is to the original comic book origin.but i do knew,i loved the story.i thought it flowed very well,with a good mixture of action and drama.i thought the voice acting was terrific.plus,they seemed to have a good script to work with.i found the dialogue to be really good,as well.none of the usual cheese we tend to see in many animated or even live action movies.i think this particular animated film is as good as any of the recent spate of releases by both Marvel and DC,and it's certainly as entertaining.for me,Green Lantern:First Flight is an 8/10

A very solid effort from the writers and animators at DC. The origin of GL, Hal Jordan, is solidly told, if a little quickly and predictably. We have the dying alien, Abin Suhr, giving his ring to someone worthy, ace pilot Hal, a decent guy doing a hard job and trying to have fun with it.

And fun he has! Hal takes to the ring like a duckling takes to water, and soon he is flying high with the other Green Lanterns, getting into trouble on alien worlds, and saving the day.

The pluses of the movie are many. The animation is smooth, and green never looked so good. The voices are excellent. Christopher Meloni excels as Hal, and Victor Garber is suavely evil as Sinestro. All the other voice roles are handled well; in fact, there are no slackers in the bunch.

The music is also excellent, providing drama when necessary, being playful and light at others. As always, the alien worlds were depicted imaginatively. Watching this movie might have been somewhat predictable, but it was a fun ride all the way.

Its only drawback was that Hal took to his power ring too quickly. No practice, no failures in forming constructs...nada. A little exposition might have made the screenplay work better, but all the same, it was enjoyable, and the ending fight between Hal and Sinestro was superbly staged. A worthy addition to any fan's animated collection.