First Flight?

So here's something not many people know about me. I'm a massive green lantern fan. Be it Hal or Kyle or Guy or...well not John but you cant win them all.

For those who arn't in the know (or have lives) GL is baisically a cross between Star Wars and...ermm The Bill? Green Lantern Corp are tasked by the guardians of the galaxy to be Space Police in less than 30 words. Guardians being little small blue dudes with big heads...smurfs really.

Anyway each lantern has a ring which gives them their abilities be it flight or whatever. The ring is tied to the users willpower and allows them to make constructs of whatever they can think of..it depends on the user. Hal tends to go for the less subtle approach (baseball bats etc) Kyle is an artist, but also a guy who grew up in the 80s (giant robots etc) and John is an engineer (waaaay to much detail).

So why am i telling you all of this? I recently saw the new GL animated movie from the awesome Bruce Timm studio at WB (he did the 90s Batman cartoon...what more do you want?)

I love WBs animation...they way they draw their characters. Its always very art deco in my mind. Beyond that, the storyline here wasnt that great until the middle. We start we Hal at Ferris and Abin Sur's crash...and end with all out war between the Lanterns and Sinestro with a very early adoption of the yellow lantern. We kinda skip the training part and go straight to Hal being....Hal. The writers pitched it as Training Day meets Star Wars...well Moss Eisley and Cloud City turn up, but Beyond Sinestro's wonderful characterisation by Victor Garber (of Alias fame) there wasn't much there.

There were some nice touches. Chip and Kilowog and the rest make an appearance. Best scene hands down was After Sinestro cut the power to the rings, all of the dead lanterns rings raining down on Oa. That was...really impressive writing.

In all i'd give it a B-. Good fun, but could have been much more.

Why bring this up? Well it seems that after playing Deadpool (i'll kill the writer for what they did to him) Ryan Reynolds has been signed up to play Hal in the movie coming next year. He's much more suited to Wally West, but we shall see.

Also if you happen to read comics at all of the super hero variety..pick up Blackest Night. The current arc going through the GL books and others. Ive read the first issue...its not civil war, but its damn good anyway.