Green Lantern’s First Flight Review

Green Lantern’s First Flight

I am an avid Green Lantern Fan. My DC comics reading goes Batman, Birds of Prey, Green Lantern. Darkest Night made me one happy fan girl. I finally sat down and watched First Flight. I am going to tell you now, I do not have anything really positive to say about the film. In fact I have several questions for the Warner Brothers.

1. Have you ever cracked open a comic book in your life?
2. Are you all really that sexist?
3. Do you hire writers who also are unaware of source material and or don’t know how to put together a story?

I get it, this movie is for kids. I hate that excuse for poorly written slop. You know why? As a child my reaction was the same to poorly written slop. I am not going to bother seeing who acted in this slop, who wrote it, nor can anyone convince me that this film was worthy of my time.

My first complaint is the sexism.

Only two female characters speak and they are really treated as after thoughts. Carol Ferris is the ball buster, she was written as I perceive her in comics mostly, except there was no show of her softer side, her connection to Hal. Boodika was turned evil. REALLY NOW? REALLY? Not only was she poorly drawn and miscolored (as most of your aliens were) but she had to be evil? Sinestro had no side kick in the comics and that took away from his actual and abhorrently Hitler based evil.

Second point on the sexism. Abin Sur: “Find HIM.”

Do human males really have the only capacity for Will Power? Let me see… NO. I am always told I would be a ring bearer because of how much will I have. I know plenty of women with AMAZING will. I know plenty of people that would be Green Lantern Corps material. Most are women.

Third

Arisa looks terrified the entire time, has no lines, I am fine with the costume change but good lord… she is a Green Lantern. She has to be rather TOUGH.

Second:

Sinestro. This is where the crappy writing shows. It would’ve been passable writing otherwise, or maybe even fantastic writing. You see, Sinestro is written to be as obtuse as a brick wall. You can see he is the villain from the get go. Sinestro’s evil came from his oblivious lack of free thought. He was blind to any flaw with the Guardians, and wouldn’t talk about them ala Guy Gardner. Well he was more bitter than Guy would’ve been but calling them gnomes et al is a Gardner tactic. Sinestro was the perfect lantern, he was the one that set the bar before Hal Jordan outed his evil. A good Sinestro blindsides a new reader/viewer with his evil. You know, you could even make him likable to make it sting more. It is supposed to hurt. Instead I was bored with waiting for the villainy to start so the movie could be OVER.

Continuity Errors:

Lets just talk about the ones in the film. Obviously no film can be completely perfect when based on another medium. I didn’t expect perfect. Continuity errors include the whole yellow impurity, a vague mention of a green impurity and then the writers ignoring this and having EXPERIENCED Green Lanterns blasting at Yellow. Yellow being effect… there were more but this was the most cumbersome.

Lots of the voice acting was crappy, there were words that were mispronounced. Poozer was pronounced POSER repeatedly. This was just an element of bad acting. The voices were all awkward, jarring, though I admit the Hal Jordan voice was better than when David Boreanaz took the ring. Geesh.

Another element of this movie that sucks is that the Green Lanterns wait, even after rings are powered to act while Jordan gets his rear handed to him by Sinestro. Not only do I have to endure really poorly designed constructs (a construct is anything you imagine and it’s wads of light and clamps?!) but there is also the issue of these folks having Will. The entire corps is portrayed as if it lacks will. The guardians have names, which I guess makes them identifiable to kids? Not sure why but it was weird to hear the varying styles of names used.

The main writing issue however is again the Alien’s use of earth colloquialism. It is understandable in the comic after a time, as the Corps has been exposed to human idioms and therefore assimilation on both sides occurs. It is not okay in this film because not only does it destroy various character personalities (as does the abject cowardice portrayed) but further more even with a translation by the ring the phrasing wouldn’t BE with words used in slang it would be a grammatically perfect translation. I somehow doubt Sinestro’s world has gnomes.

Over all this was a waste of my time. This was a waste of your funding, and for anyone new to the Green Lanterns it is a waste of enticement. This film does not entice new fans, but instead drives existing fans away with it’s horribleness. A climactic laxer light show does not make up for an hour and some odd minutes of BAD WRITING. I wanted to see a creative construct. I wanted to see a good movie. I expected less. This was still below my basement level expectations.

It’s enough for me to give in and write out my comic character proposal to challenge Warner and DC’s blatant sexism. There was a moment in Green Arrow and Green Lantern’s team up book where Hal’s racism is called out. It looks like time for a girl to hand Guy, Hal, and Kyle’s butt’s to them on a platter of green glowing light.