Green Lantern: First Flight (2009)

Excellent, smart action film.

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

PlotA dying Alien gives Hal Jordan (Christopher Meloni) a powerful ring. A short time later the alien's friends visit Hal and ask about their friend. They introduce themselves to Hal and tell them that they need him to come with them back to the home world of their base of operations. When they get to this home world it is make known by the leaders of the league that they don't believe Hal would be a good fit, but Sinestro (Victor Garber), a respected member for the group, vouches for Hal and tells the leaders that he will evaluate him on his next mission. It is soon shown that Sinestro cannot be trusted and is working against the leadership of the league. Now it is a question if it is too late to stop him before the League of the Green Lanterns is wiped out for good.Character DevelopmentThere is a little growth shown in the protagonist and other characters, but Hal becomes a Green Lantern quite easily and without much soul searching or wonder. I have seen more excitement on a kid that just got the training wheels taken off his bike. And with Sinestro it was plainly obvious that this was the bad guy. The only way they could made it any clearer would be to have this antagonist wear a danger sign around his neck, but even if this was the case the other characters were so dim they still would not have notice anything out of order.ActingLevel good acting. Mostly impressive voice work. There could have been some great moments if the writing lead way to that type of acting.OverviewI think this movie suffered from not enough deceit dialogs and story. The talking only seemed to take you from place to place in a perfunctory manner. I did not sense and depth or beauty in it. Then the drama was just too one side with the Hal and Sinestro. How is it possible with all those immortal guardians that not one can see pass Sinestro's lies and be unaware of his hatred? The writer could have played with both sides and had done some juggling instead of giving the keys the kingdom to the antagonist, but no they give Sinestro an inside man and decided to help instead of throwing in a monkey wrench to foul up Sinestro's works, which would have make things more interesting.

Test pilot Hal Jordan is in a simulator when he suddenly finds himself transported into the desert where he meets a dying alien, is presented with a green ring that gives him great power. It is not very long before others come with the same power and he learns that he is not unique but that the "ring" has chosen him to join an elite intergalactic police force (the Green Lantern Corps). He joins with the leader of the group to be trained but he finds that his natural style doesn't sit well beside the more cruel and fear-based method of police favoured by Sinestro.Coming to the Green Lantern as a completely casual viewer with no knowledge of him I will say that this film didn't come over as quite abrupt to me because I was introduced into the creation of this character in about the first 30 seconds of the film! I guess this is a necessary evil since, unlike the forthcoming Hollywood film, many people picking up this animated film will already be at very least familiar with the character so backstory and development of the character might annoy them – and they are in the majority here so fair enough. That said, once it gets past this and the Green Lantern Corps are introduced, I did sort of forget that my initial feelings were that I had been thrown in at the deep end, because the plot became pretty simple, the characters pretty obvious and the action pretty engaging by virtue of keeping lots happening.Although I came to it thinking it would be a kid's affair, it is actually pretty strong in terms of action and plot; OK it is still comic book material but I did like it and in a way not knowing the story actually helped me because I didn't already know what was happening. The motives of Sinestro were hardly a surprise (Hello? His name sounds like "sinister") but I was still reasonably engaged by it all. The animation worked well because it allowed me to accept all these little trolls and rings that make things of all shapes (Baseball bats! Fans!) because it was fantasy – I'd be interested to see how they pull this off in live action because I'm not sure if the story will be the same but the trailer looks so-so at best. The voice work is solid enough – reasonably big names but I wasn't really ever thinking "oh, who is that it's on the tip of my tongue", although Meloni, Garber, Madsen, Smith and others all do pretty good jobs.I'm sure I'll see the live-action blockbuster at some point, but for this animated film I did rather enjoy it. It has a solid plot and although some of the powers of the Lanterns were daft, the animation and the pace of it all made it work pretty well. Solid little comic-book animation.

Hal Jordan, a pilot find himself in possession of a ring that allows him to create things with the power of his imagination and so he starts his training as part of the 'Green Lantern Corps'..But the 'Guardians of the Universe' doubt that a human can carry out the job while Hal's 'mentor', Sinestro has his own plans.I've always felt that 'Green Lantern' was a a little 'Green' to be a superhero...Someone who lacks the edge or great powers that make him stick out above all the others.This movie is satisfactory as any other, animation movie unlike 'Wonder Woman' which is in a league of it's own. The voice actors all provide a good performance, while the animation is amazingly spell-binding, but what brings this film down is the plot...We've seen it, time and time again...As a comic book fan, I knew Sinestro's destiny...But what makes this a cut above the rest is the 'Drug' reference with that crystal ball thing that seems to drain it's user...A good superhero movie, but nothing spectacular.

I haven't read the GL comics for several years, mostly since they switched Hal Jordan for the new guy(s). However, most of the characters are familiar in this movie and I don't feel I missed a thing (except a giant boxing glove!) It was nice to see GL up on the "big" screen for a change -- this could certainly be done live-action nowadays. However, it seems like a pilot for a TV series (like Clone Wars was).I thought I saw a few references to old sci-fi icons in this one -- Cooch looked like that cucumber alien from It Conquered the World, and I think the spaceship the GLs ferried Hal Jordan to Oa the first time resembled the Phantom Cruiser from Space Ghost.I would have liked to see more of the actual weakness of the green ring to yellow, perhaps having it fizzle out somehow when it contacted that color. However, it seemed to have no weakness at all, even to the point of being able to damage the Yellow Lantern (albeit cleverly). Even if it was explained it was only affecting the black parts, it would have made sense.