Review: Green Lantern: Beware My Power

What in the world has happened to the DC Animated original movies? During the run between Justice League: War all the way through to Superman: Red Son, DC and Warner Bros. had been on an absolute tear, releasing banger after banger. Hell, Since the inception of the DC Animated “universe” with Superman: Doomsday, You can count on one hand the amount of trash movies on less than one hand. However, Since Superman: Red Son, DC and WB have had something go very, very wrong. There has been a strong mission to keep the DC Animated original movies in a shared universe starting with Justice League: War.

Now, you may be asking why I’m starting out the most recent movie with a little history lesson. I wanted you to see where I’m coming from when I say this: Green Lantern: Beware my Power is a dumpster fire. At this point, Green Lantern: Beware my Power feels so disconnected from the rest of the DCAU, I’m almost certain that we’re dealing with some sort of Elseworlds story like Superman: Red Son.

What gets me absolutely infuriated, is that if we had this movie come out in 2015, the quality for everything would have been better. Everything from the script, acting, and actual animation would be infinitely better, because it felt like WB actually gave a damn for this division of the company. Honestly, I should have seen this coming when I saw the absolutely bare minimum when it came to the cover art. What gets me, is that if the voice actors showed emotion when they were acting their lines, I would have been more invested in this origin story.

Let’s go over that for a minute. This is an origin story in two folds. We finally get John Stewart into the DCAU, as well as the Thanagarians and Shayera Hol. You know, the woman in Justice League‘s cartoon who was in love with John Stewart. This was all tied into the Rann-Thanagar war that was first in the prelude to Infinite Crisis back in 2005. There are a lot of deep cuts in here, which is a novelty. Unfortunately, the novelty didn’t do a whole lot when the rest of the movie was kind of a disaster.

So, let’s recap what this movie is actually about:

1. 1. We get the Green Lantern origin of John Stewart, kind of.
   2. We get the debut of Shayera Hol and Thanagar, as well as the Rann-Thanagar war.
   3. We then get Hal Jordan becoming Parallax.

This reminds me of what happened with Iron Man 2. When you try to shoehorn more than one story into a movie, you do justice to none of them. How can writers do justice to any of these stories? John Stewart is an integral Green Lantern, often being the moral compass to the Earth Lanterns. Stewart is probably the most well known Green Lantern to those who came up watching Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. Getting his origin story isn’t hard. Just get Ganthet involved by sending some big bad monster to test John. John wins. And then we have a new Lantern. Instead, we get a Wish version of Hal Jordan’s Green Lantern Origin.

Speaking of John Stewart, Aldis Hodge did not do justice in his performance of Stewart. Any time there had to be any form of emotion, Hodge had Stewart coming over like a wet noodle. That said, the animation and art style did no justice to convey. Any sort of distress came off as straight fear. As I’m watching, I’m expecting some sort of urgency from Hodge, showing the distress Stewart was under. Unfortunately, I think there would have been more emotion if Ben Stein voiced him. But that isn’t all of it. The only actors that showed any sort of emotion were Jamie Gray Hyder as Hawkgirl, and Jimmi Simpson stealing the movie as fan favorite Oliver Queen. I’ve never been so disappointed that a voice actor was not involved. I missed you, Phil LaMarr.

And then we get Thanagar and Hawkgirl getting propped in. Shayera Hol came off as a bloodlusted maniac whenever someone mentioned Rann or her people. One thing I did like was that they completely redesigned Adam Strange, and made him look as messed up as one who was involved in a zeta wave…mutation? At least I think that’s what they said. The writers didn’t go into it, or seemed like they didn’t care. And once Strange was introduced, zeta waves just being out of control didn’t even matter. Shayera Hol and Strange spend five minutes of off screen film time together, they magically become closer and trust one another. There was no recourse as to why the duo started to get along. But hey, movie magic, right? One thing that the writers gave us was an easter egg for who were Lanterns until Oa got annihilated. I think I saw Guy Gardner in there. That was neat.

And then we get to our most egregious screw up in Green Lantern: Beware my Power. Why did we have to get Hal Jordan shoehorned into this movie as the actual big boss of tis movie? We get a killed off Sinestro, just to feed into the real ending of Stewart fighting a Parallax’d Jordan. But if you payed attention to any time Jordan was mentioned, at all, you heard how amazing Jordan was. The writers played their hand way too early, and told you how the movie was going to end. We could have easily ripped this entire plot line out, and make this into its own movie. They had a easy movie to make in the vein of Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox, where we get cameos from heroes, or the Justice League as a whole involved. Instead of giving time to flesh out, and making a two part movie like they did with Batman: The Dark Knight Returns or The Death of Superman / Reign of the Supermen.

DC and Warner Bros. screwed up. This was the first Green Lantern animated movie since the anthology Green Lantern: Emerald Knights, and they did not deliver. It feels like the fallout from the live action Justice League failing in theatres is still being felt across the board. It baffles me that an anthology movie does more justice to the Green Lanterns than a full on movie. Hell, Green Lantern: The Animated Series was an infinitely better story, and I suggest watching that instead of this dumpster fire. The heads of DC need to go back to the board and try to reinvigorate the animated movies again, because if this continues, we’re going to get another Joss Whedon sized failure. This time, we don’t have that scumbag to blame for an entire universe failing.

Do yourself a favor. Do not watch this. Go read Rann-Thanagar War, Green Lantern‘s “Emerald Twilight” (Vol 3, #48-#50) for the Parallax story, and Green Lantern vol. 2 #87 for John Stewart’s debut.