Lower Decks

While strong cases could be made for Spider-Man and Robin, Green Lantern has got to be considered my first real favorite superhero. It started, obtusely enough, with an action figure, from the Super Powers line some twenty years ago. Those were some of the toys that came with tiny little promo comics (the original He-Man releases did as well), but I don’t remember the one that came with Hal Jordan, just Green Lantern himself. Some years later, I was trying desperately to represent an entire comic book collection with only barely a handful of Green Lantern comics, including one old back issue and two reprint editions, one of which was ‘Showcase #22,’ Jordan’s debut, during a special activities class in middle school while every other classmate had boxes full of ‘Punisher’ and other favored, violent comics of the day. Green Lantern wasn’t cool back then. Well, the joke’s finally in my favor. Marc Guggenheim and Ryan Reynolds are working on a live action film, which has long been a dream of mine, ‘Blackest Night’ is DC’s big summer event of 2009, and hey, there’s this animated film, too, just to make sure the stragglers are aware that all the cool kids are wearing emerald (or, the color of their preferred corps, right?) these days. I haven’t the faintest clue how Guggenheim and Reynolds are going to represent Hal on the big screen (hopefully really faithfully and really fantastically), but in moving 2D, he looks quite good.

When I finally got to read Green Lantern comics a bit, ah, more extensively, the letters pages were filled with readers comparing ring mythos to Star Wars, a scale that completely eclipsed anything else being printed. I think you’d have to explore Jack Kirby’s Fourth World to even begin to approach a vision of similar complexity, ambition, and laser-focused scope. While he was the second character to bear the name Green Lantern in a DC comic, Hal Jordan revolutionized the way superheroes could be envisioned. He became, in an instant, a recognizable figure on Earth, a singular costumed adventurer at home with his brethren of similarly colorful figures in the Justice League, and just another of hundreds of other Green Lanterns in space, all in almost the exact same garb. Hawkman was technically from the planet Thanagar, where there was a police force who approximated the same look, but Carter Hall was human through and through, and the origin that mattered had nothing to do with Thanagarians, and no story that seems to count for much (having just been killed off in ‘Blackest Night #1,’ you can guess how important Hawkman actually is to readers, anyway) explores that connection.

But Hal Jordan’s story is as much about the Green Lantern Corps as his life on Earth. Famously, Hal was a mere test pilot before receiving the ring of the dying Abin Sur. His most recent animated appearance, in ‘Justice League: New Frontier,’ plays this up well enough, while the alternate Green Lantern, John Stewart, became most familiar to cartoon fans during the ‘Justice League’ and ‘Justice League Unlimited’ series, which helped establish the basics of the concept’s appeal in such episodes as the “In Blackest Night” two-parter (no relation to this summer’s event, but rather a reworking of John’s great ‘Cosmic Odyssey’ failure), which featured various famous members of the Corps as well as the Guardians, creators of the Green Lanterns.

Hal’s origin as Green Lantern has been retold many times over the years, from ‘Emerald Dawn’ to Geoff Johns’ recent “Secret Origin,” so it’s no surprise that ‘First Flight’ chooses to retell it again. For fans, it’s famous and familiar enough to sustain a film, and the great part is that it includes a built-in complex adversary, so one doesn’t need to be created or grafted on to provide drama. Hal’s nemesis is Sinestro, once the greatest of the Green Lanterns, whose pride was his downfall. In the comics, the rivalry has been driven to such epic proportions that it can easily be considered the source of ‘Blackest Night,’ which Johns has weaved together by picking up the threads left by past creators, first when he defined the Yellow Impurity that once signified the sole weakness of the power ring all Green Lanterns wield while bringing Hal back from the brink of the villain he had become as Parallax, and then when he had Sinestro build an entire corps of his own around the yellow power ring he’d had for years (the fans will know that the third human to hold the Green Lantern ring, Guy Gardner, had that ring for an extended period, a fact that hasn’t really been exploited).

This is somewhat relevant to the review because when he defects, Sinestro in ‘First Flight’ assumes the Sinestro Corps-era yellow costume rather than the slightly more familiar blue and black outfit he more traditionally wore in that period. This is one of several changes the film makes. Others include a cosmetic change to doomed Green Lantern Abin Sur’s face (adding protruding chin nubs; the same is done to Kanjor Ro, a fact that kind of obscures a fan’s explanation that the animators wanted to avoid any confusion between pink-skin aliens Sur and Sinestro…and Ro, to differentiate species) and a near-successful attack on the Central Power Battery on Oa (home of the Guardians and the Corps) at the climax of the film, which is a story point few villains in the comics seem to have ever considered, and the defection of another Green Lantern (one who was actually central to another of Johns’ recent evolutions in Lantern lore).

Another of the interesting choices the film makes is another modification of Green Lantern lore, in representing the source of the rings (whether green or yellow) not so much as a force of will, per say, or a representation of the emotional spectrum (fear, for example, under Sinestro’s rules, the opposite of what he once supposedly represented, as Johns has emphasized), but as a physical element, a crystal that resides in the heart of the Central Power Battery, green and yellow. It’s also worth noting that, technically, the film doesn’t even include the power batteries each member of the Corps has to recharge their rings, which come in the green lantern shape that gives name to the whole deal.

Even as a fan very much beholden to how things have been done in the comics, though, I’m not really bothered by the ways ‘First Flight’ deviates from established elements. Why complain when, hey, Green Lantern is finally getting his due respect? Clocking in at about an hour and a quarter, there’s just about time to tell the essential story, Hal’s rise and Sinestro’s fall, and the scope of it (the final fight between the two can be described as similar to the cinematic duel between Voldemort and Dumbledore in ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’), without getting too much into Hal’s life as a pilot, or relationship with Carol Ferris (which itself could carry a second film; fans will know that Ferris eventually becomes a Star Sapphire, which has become one of the corps in Johns’ sandbox).

The two-disc version of the DVD comes with a load of bonus material, including some ‘Justice League’ episodes (including “In Blackest Night” if you get it at Target, and another that has a cameo from Hal) and a ‘Duck Dodgers’ entry featuring the Green Lantern Corps (and a cameo from Hal), which helps establish the animated historical context and comic book lineage for those just starting out.

The vocal cast in the film is impeccable. ‘Law & Order: SVU’ star Christopher Meloni voices Hal in a way that doesn’t make you think of a cop show, perfect as the star of an animated film, while Victor Garber infuses Sinestro will all the confidence and presumption fans of ‘Alias’ have long associated with the accomplished actor. Michael Madsen is an unusual but perfect choice to bring Kilowog, one of the most notable members of the Corps, to life, while Tricia Helfer serves a dual purpose as Boodikka.

At once its own vision and a perfect representation of comic book lore, ‘Green Lantern: First Flight’ is exactly the kind of movie DC was looking for when it launched these animated films a few years back, capitalizing on its greatest assets and establishing for a wider audience characters who weren’t so easy, a few years ago, to bring alive on the screen. The timing is perfect in so many ways it’s impossible to say that Green Lantern isn’t ready for maximum exposure, and hey, his due, at last. There’s much more to Hal Jordan’s story than this, but ‘First Flight’ is an excellent starting point.