Marval Movie

I imagine there will be a lot of these piling up but I wanted to talk about it anyway, the Green Lantern movie. Im sure everyone knows about the live action movie with the rather unlikable Ryan Reynolds but I want to talk about a different movie, the 2009 animated film Green Lantern First Flight.

I admit I haven't seen the Green Lantern live action movie at the time I'm writing this review but I have a strong hunch that this one is better. This movie was directed by the fairly new but very talented Lauren Montgomery, who previously directed Wonder Woman, and written by the veteran Alan Burnet, the plot is a origin story where we are introduced to Hal Jordan played by Christopher Meloni, who delivers a very smart mouthed but likeable performance. The movie begins with the veteran Green Lantern Abin Sur crash landing to earth and dying, in his last moments he instructed his ring to find a worthy successor to it's power and the ring found Hal Jordan testing out a flight simulate that is lifted up and brought to the ring (wouldn't it be easier to send the ring to him) and so Jordan becomes a Green Lantern and with all this happening to him in the course of a minute Jordan responds the way anybody would "what the hell".

It isn't long before Hal ends up meeting other Green Lanterns that come to officially recruit him into the Green Lantern Corps, this is where we are first introduced to Kilowog (played by Michael Madsen) a rough tough alien who you can tell has experience under his belt, and Sinestro (played by Victor Garper) who has the right level of charisma and modesty and looks more like a mature elf. They take Hal to the guardians of the universe, short little blue men (go figure) they have their doubts about letting a human join the Corps but Sinestro says he'll take him on as an apprentice.

The rest of the movie contains a very skilfully woven plot about the yellow element, a energy source like the Green Lanterns but colored yellow and yellow is the one color that green is venerable to, does that mean blondes can't join the corps? We see Hal and Sinestro track down a squid like pirate and later we see him and other members of the corps chase smugglers through an intergalactic space station.

When I watched the episodes of Justice League were the Green Lantern Corps appeared, they just looked like alien heads glued onto regular human bodies, in this movie it is not the case we see a wide range of bizarre alien creatures with all kinds of different bodies, there are the humanoids but that's to be expected.

Between these scenes we see Hal use the ring and in it there is the right level of humor with the way Hal uses the ring and serious action, Hal ends up fighting bug creatures and he imagines a fly swat and a giant shoe (I'd probably do the same thing) Lauren Montgomery has been praised by Bruce Timm for being very talented, for my money she delivers everything I ask from these kinds of movies, strong narrative and properly handled emotional scenes, but the greatest aspect of her work that sticks out the most to me is the action sequences, this girl knows how to direct action, a property like Green Lantern gives you a lot of freedom to do whatever you what in action scenes and Lauren really makes the most of it.

Eventually the big reveal that Sinestro is the bad guy happens and he takes the yellow element and uses it against the Corp (alongside his yellow death-star) many Lanterns die with ease by Sinestros new power, but Hal keeps trying to charge his ring and then gets supper charged by the main Green Lantern battery and him and Sinestro have a fight that in all rights is over the top (Hal pulls two moons together to crush the yellow death-star) but I love it.

And so the day is won, evil has been subdued and the Green Lanterns speak their new oath. It's a shame that so many people are allergic to animation because I could recommend this movie to allot of people, I wasn't the biggest Green Lantern fan before this movie but now I get excited about the franchise, this movie did not do so well when it was first released, I consider that a crime, but with the live action Green Lantern movie coming out its back on the shelves and getting a second wind. This movie has memorable likeable characters and plot that both teenagers and adults can find sophisticated and the right level of maturity for this kind of material, if I had my way the live action movie would be shoved aside and have this movie played on the big screen so that people can enjoy it's greatness.

Rating: 3 1/2 stars out of 4