“A new order will prevail, one that will end the chaos but it won’t be built by the faint of heart. You got soft on me back there, Earth boy, and that I will not tolerate.”
Test pilot Hal Jordan gets chosen to be a member of an intergalactic police force when a member of the Green Lantern Corps dies on Earth. As he gets dragged to an alien world to train, he gets sucked in to a conspiracy perpetrated by one of the Corps’ greatest members!
Green Lantern: First Flight (2009)
Directed by Lauren Montgomery
Written by Alan Burnett
Surprisingly, this is the first animated movie to be picked in the weekly Movies At Random poll. When this was released, the Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern movie was still two years away from release. But the DC Comics animated movies from Warner Bros had been going well since 2007. FIRST FLIGHT was the fifth animated feature, and the second to focus on Hal Jordan, after JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE NEW FRONTIER in 2008.
FIRST FLIGHT doesn’t bother spending too much time on the origins of Hal Jordan becoming Green Lantern, though this is basically an origin story. Instead, Jordan getting the ring only takes up a few minutes of the movie’s beginning. The focus is mainly on Jordan’s first trip to OA, the headquarters of the Guardians of the Universe and the Green Lantern Corps. The Guardians were wary of Jordan getting a ring, as a human had never before been selected to serve. They only allow him to keep the ring when their most honored member, Sinestro, offers to take Jordan under his wing.
But Sinestro is not all that he seems. Frustrated with what he thinks are the shortcomings of the Guardians and their plans to keep order in the universe, Sinestro has been working in secret with a minor warlord, Kanjar Ro, to bring about his own plans. He eventually kills Ro and frames Jordan for it, trying to turn the Green Lantern Corps against the rookie. But his plans get revealed, kicking off a major battle between the Corps and Sinestro, now wielding a yellow ring Ro had made on Qward.
As far as battles with Sinestro go, it’s a much better story than the 2011 movie. Sinestro’s fall from grace is expected, and right from his first interactions with Jordan, it’s clear he’s not a guy who should be idolized, even though he’s put on a pedestal by the rest of the Corps. The film does have a similar problem to many other Green Lantern stories, though – showing the abilities of the Green Lantern ring. Considered the most powerful weapon in the universe, the ring is capable of creating anything its user can imagine. But during a chase scene through a bazaar, Sinestro shoots away at a criminal instead of telling the ring to just grab the guy.
Jordan, though, takes advantage of the criminal coming out of a sewer pipe and smacks him with a green constructed steel chair.
FIRST FLIGHT isn’t one of the best DC Animated movies, even from the early set of films, but it is a fun Green Lantern story with a lot of action that should please any fan of the character.