Green Lantern: Emerald Knights

Green Lantern Emerald Knights is a soft reboot to Green Lantern First Flight. It uses the same art style as First Flight but the events in the two films are not connected in any way. In this one, Hal Jordan is already a well established Green Lantern, while First Flight has him starting out as a Green Lantern. With the plot lines with Sinestro in both films, no way this one is exactly a sequel per say. This one does have way more exposition, of which is why I prefer this one. It does really does a good job at developing the universe, way more so than First Flight. If you want any recommendations for Green Lantern films, this is the one I would recommend the most.

Green Lantern: Emerald Knights, by Christopher Berkeley, Lauren Montgomery, Jay Oliva, was a complete disaster! I don't know if a curse was put on the Green Lantern, but almost every movie starring him has been an abomination.

Unlike other Warner Brothers animated movies which offer us a complex and thrilling plot, Emerald Knights examined back story, after back story, after back story for almost every character which not only bored me to death, but it exasperated all the time that could of been used to focus on the main plot. I understand some people don't know the back story of the Green Lanterns, but character development should not consume more than half of the movie especially when the back stories were thematically unoriginal and one dimensionally monotonous. Furthermore, having so many origin stories was incredibly distracting to the flow of the movie. As a TV show this concept would have been much more successful; however, such a theme is completely irresponsible in a movie due to the time restraints of a film.

If you examine every DC animated film, you'll notice that maybe 10- 15 minutes is given for a super heroes origins, than it focuses on the main idea which will drive the bus the rest of the way. An excellent example of this structure would be the animated movie Wonder Woman.

As much as I like Green Lantern's character, Emerald Knights was incredibly mundane and ultimately scattered. For this reason, I give it a 3.

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.

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

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