Green Lantern: First Flight

Green Lantern is a little bit more than a month away, so I felt it would be good to give myself a refresher of Hal Jordan's origin story (as it is understood today) and how it was explained in the animated film, Green Lantern: First Flight.

First Flight is a movie that greatly contracts Hal Jordan's personal life in favor of showing his relationship with his fellow Green Lanterns as they uncover a plot by evil forces to steal the Yellow Element from Oa and use it as a counter to the Green Lantern Corps. Unlike most depictions of Hal Jordan, he never gets close to Kilowog or Tomar-Re until near the end, and Thaal Sinestro is almost always seen as someone who despite being a Green Lantern, probably should not hold such power. Usually, Hal Jordan is depicted as being trained by the noble Sinestro, who despite being very harsh in training, is a pretty good guy who believes in protecting the universe as a Green Lantern... at least until he gains the power of the Yellow Element and becomes the universe's first Yellow Lantern.

The film itself is pretty basic and unfortunately places no focus on Hal Jordan's personal life, in exchange for displaying how he gets along with his fellow Green Lanterns. The acting is also far from stellar, but definitely much better than the acting in some of the other DC Animated Original Movies; Superman: Doomsday and Wonder Woman come to mind as comparisons. Christopher Meloni is horribly miscast as Hal Jordan as are the other Green Lanterns with the exception of Sinestro.

Really in the end, nothing special can be said of the film, exept that the animation does 3 things in particular that Green Lantern will be following. While in the Green Lantern outfit, Hal Jordan's irises go white while his pupils remain, creating the illusion that his mask gives him totally white eyes. The outfit itself also has texture for the first time; usually it just looks like a spandex outfit. First Flight makes the outfit look more like body armor, yet form-fitting. The last thing is that Hal Jordan's nose is given actual definition while facing front, instead of the domino mask getting a triangular shape.

When you see the two side by side, the live action mask actually appears to be more true to the source material than previously thought.

Final Score: 2 many supporting cast members missing out of 5


Green Lantern: First Flight is a big green mess. The DC Animated Originals are touted because they're self-contained stories that are between 75-80 minutes long, yet feel longer because of the strength of their storytelling. GL feels longer because it's just so damn boring. Hal Jordan's personality received an update after Crisis on Infinite Earths for the sole reason that he was so damn boring and lacked personality and we only see glimpses of Jordan's new personality during this movie. Justice League: The New Frontier treated Hal Jordan much better than this and the only other Green Lantern ever shown was Abin Sur, proof that you don't need to involve the Green Lantern Corps. in every aspect of Hal Jordan's origin story to create a good story.

Indeed, the upcoming Green Lantern does feature the Corps. early in the film and throughout, but they are as much supporting characters as Hal Jordan's friends and his on-again/off-again love interest, Carol Ferris.

Green Lantern will be released in theaters June 17 and will be going up against X-Men: First Class, Super 8, and Cars 2 as the major films released in June. After the mess that was X-Men: The Last Stand and the confusing EXTREME SHAKY CAM of Cloverfield, I don't think people will turn out in droves to see X-Men or Super 8. Cars is a Pixar film, but even so, the original Cars was not as well received as Pixar's other films. I'm not predicting GL to be a big box office smash, I think the only guarantees of that for this summer areThe Hangover Part II and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.