- Directed by: Lauren Montgomery
- Written by: Alan Burnett
- Starring: Christopher Meloni, Victor Garber, Michael Madsen
While we no longer have any of the DCAU series on our television screens anymore, we DO have the availability of the DCU Animated Original Movies series, which are direct-to-video animated films that tell various stories culled from the DC Comics library. "Green Lantern: First Flight" is the third-and-a-half film I've seen from this line (I saw "Justice League: The New Frontier", "Batman: Gotham Knight" and the last half of "Under the Red Hood", but not the full film), and I have to say that if this is the standard that the Original Movies line has set then I'm plenty happy with it.
"Green Lantern: First Flight" tells the story of Hal Jordan's (Christopher Meloni) first mission as a Green Lantern. After receiving the Lantern ring from dying alien Abin Sur (Richard McGonagle), Jordan is swept up by the Guardians, the orchestrators of the Green Lantern Corps., and is set to begin training under fellow Lantern Sinestro (Victor Garber). Sinestro and Jordan set out to find Abin Sur's killer, and uncover a scheme involving double-crossing, murder, and betrayal.
While the film tells a good story, the main problem with it is that it is simply too short. This is certainly not the fault of writer Alan Burnett, who wrote many great episodes of "Batman: TAS". Since pretty much all of the DC Animated Movies have to stay under 80 minutes (I assume for budgetary reasons), the writer's are often forced to speed things up in order to get to the point. Unfortunately, "First Flight" suffers as a result.
Jordan's origin story is finished within the opening credits, it goes by way too fast. I don't necessarily have a problem with that, after all, they covered his origin fairly thoroughly in "The New Frontier". What bothered me was the way it was portrayed. Jordan doesn't question the situation at all, here is this dying, bright red alien in front of him in a weird suit, offering him a ring. Jordan simply says "All right", and puts it on. I would have made Jordan more inquisitive, and I would have made Sur's death more meaningful. For example, instead of just saying, "All right," Jordan could have said, "Who are you?" or "What...?" and Sur could have cut in with, "Please, you will understand, I don't have much time," or something along those lines. That way the origin could have more impact and we could have sped through to the opening credits on time.
It also doesn't help that once the credits are over, we're put smack dab into the middle of Jordan flying through the night sky, fully clad in his Green Lantern getup and seeming fairly comfortable with it. It doesn't flow well from the opening credits. It leaves us to assume that he's just suddenly gotten used to his powers, and while we can guess that he experimented with the ring a few times and grew comfortable with his newfound status, the fact that we don't at least see it makes it seem a little unconvincing and rushed. I would think that someone who didn't know Lantern's origin story would be taken off-guard. The least they could have done was put a "Several weeks later..." title on the bottom of the screen. Or, better yet, we could have seen a montage of Jordan learning to use the ring over the opening credits. Just something to better prepare us for the story.
One other thing that suffers due to the short run-time is the characters. They get almost no development, which I understand since this film focuses on Jordan, but since his fellow Lantern's play a pretty important role in the film it would have been nice to get a little more on them. A prime example of this is the fact that all of the other Lantern's immediately hate Jordan for seemingly no reason. We are told that they have a distrust for humans and that they were all close to Abin Sur and resent him taking his place, but that seems like shaky motivation, and since we aren't given sufficient reason as to what made Sur so great, it's not very believable. But as I said, this is due to the short run time and is probably not the fault of the writer.
The best thing about the film is the first half of the story, as we see Sinestro and Jordan search for Abin Sur's killer. It takes the form of a pseudo-mystery story as they scour nightclubs and interrogate criminals. It's exotic and interesting, we get to see lots of different kinds of aliens, and it reinforces the idea that the Green Lantern Corps. are basically Space Police, which is a fun concept that I wish we could have seen more of.
The second half of the story, about Sinestro's betrayal of the Guardians, is less interesting because as soon as we get to this point it quickly devolves into a by-the-numbers superhero film, with Sinestro playing a fairly generic villain and having a generic climactic fight scene with Green Lantern (this climax, by the way, uses a really, really cheap deus ex machina that almost killed the film for me). This is disappointing, because Sinestro clearly has potential for development, the problem with this is that, as I said, the filmmakers obviously wanted to quickly get to the meat of the story, and consequently Sinestro just becomes a fairly uninteresting, mustache-twirling baddie.
However, the film certainly isn't bad, and it's pace doesn't completely destroy the film. In fact, since the film moves so quickly, it's fairly entertaining and exciting. The film is at it's best when it plays the part of a high-flying science-fiction story, where we get to catch a look at all of the various aliens that populate the Green Lantern universe (and the Corps. itself). The voice acting is also pretty good, Christopher Meloni stands out as a very snarky Green Lantern, and Victor Garber is incredibly intense and slightly creepy as Sinestro. Michael Madsen also isn't bad as Kilowog, the giant, pig-like alien of the Green Lantern Corps.
One of the other things that surprised me about the film was it's tone. It's pretty dark and violent for a PG-13 animated movie. Not only do we see some aliens doing drugs in a bar, we also meet an alien prostitute, and on top of that a few characters get killed in pretty violent ways. One in particular actually gets gored by a bed of spikes, and when the character dies they slide off with some nice squelchy sound effects. Two other characters get their necks snapped, and another gets his hand broken after Kilowog steps on it. There's also some curse words tossed around.
I'm really happy that they're going this route with the Animated Films, because now that they're not tethered by being on children's television they have a lot more creative freedom, and this film shows that they're using that to their advantage. Besides, any animation that is willing to push the envelope gets kudos from me. Too often animation is considered a kid's medium, so it's encouraging to see that some filmmakers are willing to work past that stigma.
The animation is also above-average for a direct-to-video film. However, there is some god-awful CGI in parts, and at times the characters move a little bit choppily. The general style is also a bit too "anime" and angular, but otherwise it's nice. In particular the animation is very elaborate and well-rendered during the fight scenes, which are exciting and well-choreographed.
Overall, "First Flight" is a well-rendered, fun superhero film that unfortunately suffers from a short run time and a by-the-numbers plot. If you like superhero films then I'd pick it up, but if not then this film isn't really going to make you look at the genre any differently.
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