Green Lantern: Emerald Knights

After loving the sublime Batman: Under the Red Hood earlier in the year, I decided to give another DC straight-to-DVD animated film a watch and I'm glad I did.

The plot is told as pretty much a frame story of episodic flashbacks of the Green Lantern's past. All I found interesting and easily accessible for a newbie, like myself. There were a few giggles at some of the silliness in the GL universe but that's inherent in the conceit itself, anyway.

The voice acting was mostly strong, the animation had some spectacularly awe-inspiring scenes, the score too was good and it importantly had heart to back up all the spectacle.

Overall, possibly the best superhero film this year in terms of consistency and I like this brave team that's sort of like an intergalactic police force-7/10.

In the midst of preparing the Green Lantern Corps in the face of threats from hiding enemies, Hal Jordan tells the story of the Green Lantern members against a new recruit, Arisia.

This film is not part of the sequel to the film Green Lantern: First Flight. This film does take character designs from previous films, ranging from the designs of Sinestro, Hal Jordan, Kilowog, Tomar, Abin Sur, Guardians to Arisia itself. Overall, this film does have a much better visual appearance than the previous film. Green Lantern: Emerald Knights presents more stories from Green Lantern Coprs members, such as Kilowog, Laira, Mogo and Abin Sur rather than discussing resistance to Krona, the antagonist in this film. Krona itself became a warmer and sweetener of stories only. Without action-packed resistance and not too much trouble. Also resisted with quick and precise strength. There wasn't much to see Hal Jordan's action in action or anything else. The stories told did not have any influence on the main conflict, namely against Krona. This film tries to give an introduction to other iconic characters who often appear in Green Lantern stories. Not only from the four characters, but the story of the beginning of the first ceirta existence of the Green Lantern Corps itself. Naturally, this film is not a sequel and looks different from the previous film.

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.

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