Lanterna Verde: Attenti al mio potere

The superhero movie Green Lantern: Beware My Power (2022) features John Stewart, a former Marine dealing with PTSD, and takes viewers on an exciting cosmic adventure. John is portrayed by Aldis Hodge as he struggles to reconcile his background with the enormous power that the Green Lantern ring has placed upon him. Hodge gives the role depth and gravitas. Another highlight is the animation, which features imaginative and well-executed action scenes that demonstrate the virtually endless possibilities of the Green Lantern's constructions. Compared to other DC animated films, Beware My Power has a more somber tone as it examines the psychological effects of combat trauma and the weight of having unfathomable power.

If you're not caught up on my lore, I have an unhealthy Green Lantern fixation on these characters. There'll be spoilers but I don't think anyone cares anymore.

What better way to start the movie than by killing off the entire corps, every guardian, and blowing up their planet. I remember seeing people on twitter complain so much how one of the guys in charge of this movie admitted he's only read a single John Stewart comic but I can't even blame him since everyone decided his personality consists of being a veteran and nothing else after the Justice League cartoons. John's a character defined by loss and they featured this in the worst way possible by emphasizing his military background; while the death of his wife and the destruction of Xanshi were events he couldn't stop, he willfully joined the military in a country people didn't even want him in. His architect background's not even mentioned even though it's a reason he was personally chosen by the guardians and no one else just like in the movie, in trying to fulfill the master builder prophecy and make a mortal guardian.

Instead they gave him Kyle Rayner's origin, added in Green Arrow for fan service (Hard-Traveling Heroes is a very good comic with Hal and Ollie), and kept emphasizing Hal was the greatest almost as a way to soften fan reaction when he gets killed at the end (and overpowered too for some reason by someone who had the ring for a few days). I guarantee you that stupid Rann-Thanagar war plot was only included so they could awkwardly tease him and Hawkgirl at the end despite them having no chemistry for the sake of the JL cartoons again. Adam Strange was altered a lot for the plot and every character to do with him became a plot device that got killed off when they fulfilled their purpose. They specified Adam's wife was dead but that his daughter was only missing but then they killed him off so the poor girl isn't getting found.

Parallax being included at all was always going to be controversial but I mostly hate how Sinestro became a mustache-twirling villain again. The 2000s comics were basically dedicated to fleshing out these two and now it's further cemented in people's minds that they're two-dimensional. What was the point of including Sinestro Corps members if they aren't using rings at all and why did they have to kill all of them?

It's a okay watch but the more I think about it the less it gets characters right. If you're into cookie-cutter superhero movies, you're probably in the right spot.

What worked was the animation...top notch as usual or better than usual. What didn't work was the story. Sure it started slow with a different angle to the origin story kept me interested till first half of the movie. Unfortunately some middle aged kid suddenly took over the story and messed up the remaining half especially the end. The end was pathetic and unwarranted. Guess another half way down the drain. This lantern is definitely out of juice. Watch it only for the animation.

And enough with origin stories give us something better.

Especially when it comes to how humans talk, act and feel in real life.

This a soulless, stupid, illogical piece of trash. Character depth is non-existent and their behavior is unnatural/irrational. Everything they do feels robotic.

It is a huge disservice to the Green Lantern John Stewart who was a pretty cool addition in the Justice League (Unlimited) series. Here he is just a wooden, shallow puppet. The others are bad, too. They also take a huge dump on Hal Jordan... and the Guardians... and pretty much everyone else. Including the viewers.

It feels like it was designed by a machine that has been fed a certain amount of data so it can select the common points and make something out of it that resembles an actual film.

It forgets to actually be a John Stewart origin story and undermines the attempts to explore it's morality but Green Lantern: Beware My Power is still a solid sci-fi adventure that benefits from a strong voice cast, a fast pace and pretty strong animation.

Aldis Hodge is a great John Stewart thanks to the gravitas he brings to the role and he's able to use his talent and presence to make some questionable dialogue work just about. The rest of the voice cast is good with Nolan North being a natural standout.

The animation is once again becoming hemogonized but this style is still way more vibrant and detailed than the previous iteration. The music by Kevin Riepl is really good, adding some ominous sci-fi sounds the typically heroic proceedings.