Green Lantern: Emerald Knights

After loving the sublime Batman: Under the Red Hood earlier in the year, I decided to give another DC straight-to-DVD animated film a watch and I'm glad I did.

The plot is told as pretty much a frame story of episodic flashbacks of the Green Lantern's past. All I found interesting and easily accessible for a newbie, like myself. There were a few giggles at some of the silliness in the GL universe but that's inherent in the conceit itself, anyway.

The voice acting was mostly strong, the animation had some spectacularly awe-inspiring scenes, the score too was good and it importantly had heart to back up all the spectacle.

Overall, possibly the best superhero film this year in terms of consistency and I like this brave team that's sort of like an intergalactic police force-7/10.

Emerald Knights has a story it does, but it makes up a small percentage of the film as most of it is short tales being regaled to the newest member of the Lantern Corps.

Some are good, some are meh, but the whole thing felt very incomplete due to this.

With fantastic voice talent including Nathan Fillion, Henry Rollins & Kelly Hu the effort/budget clearly went into this but alike the original Green Lantern offering I simply don't get the appeal.

Weird aliens, bizzare powers and lore that keeps shifting.

What bugs me about all these animated movies is that they aren't connected and have no consistency. Characters who died are back, events that happened never took place etc etc and that's very evident here. They really need to make an animated universe and stick with it.

Emerald Knights isn't terrible, I'm just not the demographic.

The Good:

Opening sequence was brutal

Kelly Hu & Henry Rollins

The Bad:

Contradicts the lore in places

Spread rather thin

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

The guardians are smurfs

The six Green Lantern stories in a single animation film. Kilowog and Mogo are the coolest. Thanks to HBO Asia for giving us this.

I'm a MASSIVE Green Lantern fan. This is a small release that will introduce a lot of the mythology to newcomers before the release of the main live action film. It's really a series of individual stories being told. This means that each one varies in quality. Most are a lot of fun, especially "Mogo Doesn't Socialize". The most distracting thing about this film is that it uses the same character designs from First Flight, but has new voices and a new continuity. This can be overlooked fairly quickly. What's harder to overlook is some of the disappointing vocal work. Fillion, a fan favorite, isn't given enough to do and Jason Isaacs puts in next to zero effort. Rollins is also not gruff enough as Killowog. Vosloo and Rowdy Roddy Piper do excellent stuff. It's a great introduction to such a vast universe, and will preview what a Green Lantern franchise is capable of.

In the midst of preparing the Green Lantern Corps in the face of threats from hiding enemies, Hal Jordan tells the story of the Green Lantern members against a new recruit, Arisia.

This film is not part of the sequel to the film Green Lantern: First Flight. This film does take character designs from previous films, ranging from the designs of Sinestro, Hal Jordan, Kilowog, Tomar, Abin Sur, Guardians to Arisia itself. Overall, this film does have a much better visual appearance than the previous film. Green Lantern: Emerald Knights presents more stories from Green Lantern Coprs members, such as Kilowog, Laira, Mogo and Abin Sur rather than discussing resistance to Krona, the antagonist in this film. Krona itself became a warmer and sweetener of stories only. Without action-packed resistance and not too much trouble. Also resisted with quick and precise strength. There wasn't much to see Hal Jordan's action in action or anything else. The stories told did not have any influence on the main conflict, namely against Krona. This film tries to give an introduction to other iconic characters who often appear in Green Lantern stories. Not only from the four characters, but the story of the beginning of the first ceirta existence of the Green Lantern Corps itself. Naturally, this film is not a sequel and looks different from the previous film.