Green Lantern (Emerald Knights): The Corps’ Champions

Continuing on with the DCAU Spotlight feature is this review I did for the second Green Lantern animated movie, quite a different one in both tone and mood and content than the previous one, which was really good. I didn’t enjoy Emerald Knights as much as I wanted to, largely because the split narrative had bad pacing and some of the characters just weren’t as interesting as they could have been. But there were some really cool moments throughout, and that, I suppose could have been the point.

So here it is, another repost of an old review, from way back in 2011.

The latest DC Animated film, Emerald Knights is not just another origin story, but explores what makes some of the more famous and unusual Green Lanterns tick. We explore their stories through a new recruit, Arisia, as she is thrust into her first ever combat situation under the tutelage of Hal Jordan himself.

In the final reckoning, the movie just does not hold up to the quality of First Flight, Wonder Woman, Batman/Superman: Public Enemies or some of the other ones.

First off, it is not a direct sequel to First Flight itself, and seems to contain several retcons involving some of the major characters shown. Second, it is all too jumbled up and several scenes are just too boring to watch because they are so predictable and unnecessarily comical.

Secondly, I know that this is all based off a comic series, but several of the character designs are just too comical and derivative, especially when two of your female leads have the same elven ears and wear short uniforms, or when there are grasshoppers and squirrels masquerading around as the galaxy’s most powerful heroes, or even some random villain who looks like The Thing, but with lava running through his body, it gets a little tiring on the eyes.

Thirdly, compared to First Flight, Emerald Knights just does not hold itself well together in terms of its plot structure and content. Another great universe-destroying calamity is at hand and the Green Lanterns have to step up. /yawn Next please?

All that aside, seeing a part of the background of some of the Lanterns like Laira (which was the most tragic in my opinion), and of Sinestro (which was nearly heart-breaking) somewhat redeemed the movie. The dialogue of these same I am not familiar with the comic series Emerald Knights but the movie of the same name has proved to be quite a letdown.

Jason Isaacs as Sinestro, Kelly Hu as Laira and Nathan Fillion as Hal were the other shining moments in the film. Not to mention what is perhaps the best piece of dialogue in the movie: “Mogo doesn’t socialize.”

I could say more about how some of the locales were cool, or how the fight scenes were nice, but I am really struggling to say anything further about the movie that is positive. The film was just that disappointing and has very few redeeming features. You can perhaps already tell that from the very short review.

I recommend the film only if you want to watch it for completeness, otherwise you are better off staying well away from this.

More Green Lantern: First Flight.