MOVIE REVIEWS: “Green Lantern: First Flight (2009)

Finally saw this last night on Cartoon Network (It's debut broadcast), and I found myself wishing it was a series. I really liked it.

I thought the Senior Lantern - ok, I'll play along - was very well portrayed, even if some of his scenes were pretty brutal. One of my kids left the room when he was torturing that alien woman in a bar. Kurtwood Smith was really good as Kanjar Ro. Granted, he always sounds exactly like Kurtwood Smith, but he's got great timing, and few play rapidly-amping-up exasperation as well as he does.

The scenes of the dead Lantern's rings raining down were suitably poignient and chilling. That's the part that'll stay with me, that's what makes it worth the price of admission. I also liked that Hal thought differently than the others, which gave him an advantage.

I loved how Oa looked like a Bob McCall cityscape.

On the what-the-frack? side, How did Hal instantly learn how to use the ring? It couldn't have been some kind of Telepathic learning, or else he wouldn't have been so freaked out when the Battery Educated him.

So who was the pretty blonde GL in the short skirt?

BTW, Neorandomizer, you might want to check out "Justice League: The New Frontier." That one is also largely a green-lantern story, though it also prominently features others as well. Also, if you've never seen 'em, I just can't say enough good things about the DCAU Justice League http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_League_(animated_series) and Justice League Unlimited series http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_League_Unlimited both of which prominently feature Green Lantern John Stewart.

Now that I have seen the show I can say something about it. I liked the character designs and the animation was first rate. It has been so long since I read a Green Lantern comic the retcon did not bother me. And yea this is not a show for kids if cartoon network shows it outside of adult swim the editor is going to be busy if there is not already a TV friendly version in the can.

Now the constant putting down of the human race that we see lately in movies we heard it in Transformers that we are a violent and cruel race, this from a bunch of guys that burned there home world down to bedrock during a war. And here the galaxy is so bad you need a corp of super powered cops and we are the bad race, don't the writers see the irony in that. In the 50's and 60's they would just say we where not ready which would make more sense. But these are the same guys that changed The Day The Earth Stood Still so much I do not even want to see it.

But thank you. Despite an enormous ammount of effort to the contrary, it appears all those years I spent in school weren't entirely misbegotten. Dammit.

Anyway, it's an old saw: Winners write the history, loosers are doomed to be reviled by it. I mean, who's even heard of Bacon's Rebellion, or the one in Maryland that same year? How many people have ever heard of Bar Cochba? How many people think that Robert E. Lee was a really really really bad man and completely forget his undeniable heroism in the Mexican war?

I am surprised R3 most people I know would not even know who Spartacus or Cincinatus was. Now when it comes to our founding fathers most of them where a real motley crew and most of the top guys were royalist of for most of their lives. Adams defended the soldiers from the Boston massacre at their trial and won and his cousin Sam was a real trouble maker. Ethan Allen was another trouble maker turned revolutionary but that is usually the way it goes. You are are a trouble maker before but a hero if you win.

No, I'm not one of those people who like to throw stones at famous figures and show that they had feet of clay and weren't all that good to begin with. I'm not saying Lincoln and Washington were bad by any means. I just don't feel the need to sanctify them and make them out to be better than they were, either. Everybody is a lot of different things in their lives. For a long time, Washington was an almost insanely loyal British subject who longed to be nobility, and who more or less single-handedly started the French and Indian War because he saw it as a fast track to advancement, and didn't follow orders well. (To be fair, the war WOULD have eventually started anyway). When his British overlords (In the literal sense) disapproved, he got pissed and spent the next two decades cheating them blind and becoming probably the greatest real estate swindler the world has ever seen. Certainly the most successful criminal of his age. After that, he became the George Washington we all know who, with all his eccentricities and questionable deeds was undoubtedly the right man in the right place at the right time, with the right axe to grind. And after he was done, he (Eventually) became a superlative president, but for me, personally, I think it does an injustice to pretend that people we like are flawless and people we don't like are nothing but flaws. In fact, I think it makes Washington a bit of a larger figure to realize his warts-and-all past actually somehow made him such an effective leader.

R3 I did not say that Washington was a saint but when the army wanted to make him king he passed and he left office on his own. Now he did use force to put down the whiskey rebellion so he was for a strong federal gov but over all he did right. Now Lincoln he violated the constitution left and right but in the end it was for the good you can't say a divided America would have been good for us or the world. (and their was the whole slave thing he was against that gets him some points.)

Spartacus, yeah. Cincinatus, yeah, definitely. Teddy Roosevelt, yeah. Franklin Roosevelt, again, yeah. Lincoln...maybe. I'll give him a pass because those were uncommon times. Washington? You're aware the man spent like 20 years blatantly ripping off the Royal Surveyor's Office and in the process became the richest man in North America, right?

Green Lantern was one of the few DC comics that I liked when I was a kid in the late 60's(I was a marvel guy). It sounds like I need to check this movie out and being that I do not have kids the rating does not bother me much.
Now R2 and R3 history is full of people that said they where for the people and against corruption only to be more corrupt than the old order. (Lenin, Stalin, Mao. Hitler etc). But also their where people that said they where for the people and meant it.(Spartacus, Washington, Lincoln) So it's buyer beware when it comes to leaders. Something most people should have thought of last November.

Punk? He looks like the devil, who as we all know is a freakin' glam rocker from way back. What the hell is punk about satan? "Ooooh! I'm the total authority in this place, and no one dares defy me!" That's like saying Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili (Stage name: Joseph Stalin) was punk.

get a dig in on that.

(spoiler!)

I mean, come on, Sinestro is an anti-authoritarian chaos monger who wants to remake the galaxy in his own vision of order. There's no moral authority to do so, except his own ego.

Very punk.

(grinning, ducking and running)

Full quote: >>>(See, R3- it's the BAD GUY who wants to tear things down to make a new order!)<<<

Yeah, bad guys like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and Ben Franklin and Oliver Cromwell and King David.