Dc fans the company is known for making great animated movies in fact as of this writing the companies latest animated feature is due out on Digital release within the coming week. For this review tho we're going back to near the start of there animated movie line back to a time where it wasn't as popular as it is now and when Bruce Timm was a producer on all the films and the film i'm looking at is Green Lantern: First Flight.
The plot of the movie is Hal Jordan is a rookie Green Lantern who teams up with mentor Sinestro to find out who killed Abin Sur but during there quest they discover that one of them is a traitor. I admit that while the story is well told and fairly well paced if you know anything about the Green Lantern lore then you'll know right away for the traitor is so it isn't that much of a surprise when it happens and I have no idea why various GL movies keep trying to do this twist because we all know it's coming.
Starring in this movie is Christopher Meloni as Hal Jordan / Green Lantern , Dr. Martin Stein as Sinestro , Number Six from Battlestar Galactica as Boodikka , Michael Madsen as Kilowog , My Foot Up Your A*s as Kanjar Ro , John Larroquette as Tomar Re and Olivia d'Abo as Carol Ferris. I know that alot of people love Nathan Fillion as Green lantern but for me Christopher Meloni is a good Hal Jordan as well granted he might not get as many funny lines as Nathan but for the tone that this film is going for it really does work.
As for the rest of the actors I was honestly surprised at how many great actors were in this movie and I know that I made alot of jokes when I was listing who played who. I only made those jokes because I was honestly shocked that they were in this movie and there all really good in it as well altho Olivia is only in the opening of the movie and she was good so the movie could have used more of her somehow.
The animation for the film was done by Telecom Animation Film Company who are now TMS Entertainment and they did work on the 1994 Spider-Man series as well both the Batman and Superman animated shows. I can say that having them on board did give me some hope for the quality of the animation not like it was ever needed because the DC films are always well animated but here it honestly looked like this film belonged on the big screen.
What is surprising when you think about it is that even Wonder Woman is the more popular character she's only had one solo animated movie where as Green Lantern who isn't as popular has had two solo movies plus a solo animated series. That was honestly quite a shock to me altho given how poorly the Wonder Woman sold it does kind of make sense but still you'd think that Warner Bros would want to make more stuff with a popular character instead if focusing on a character that isn't as well known.
For those wondering if this is an origin story the simplest answer is kind of I say that because the opening few minuets is the traditional backstory. After the credits tho that does kind of continue as we see Hal joining the corps but it's not a backstory in the more traditional sense and that does make sense since apparently they did his backstory in Justice League: The New Frontier and director Lauren Montgomery didn't want to cover the same story.
There is a lot of CGI in the film and unlike the live action Green Lantern film it's not that bad but don't get me wrong it's pretty bad but unlike the live action film which had a huge budget here it's more understandable since the budget for straight to DVD films is alot smaller. So you can forgive them for having pretty bad looking CGI and also unlike the live action film Hal's super suit isn't fully CGI whoever made the call on that film to have the whole suit be CGI should have been fired because it was a dumb move to make.
This film was the fifth film in the DC Universe Animated Original Movies line up of films and for me this isn't the best film in that line up which I will always state is Wonder Woman heck this one wouldn't even crack my top 10. It is still a really good film tho and alot of that does come from the action scenes which are really well handled and to make things interesting the final isn't just a scene where the hero and villain use there super powers instead it's a hand to hand fight.
Anyone remember when this movies had opening title sequences because I do and they were always fun to watch granted alot of them where nothing special but they always looked visually interesting. For some reason the recent movies have got rid of the opening title sequence instead just opting to show the title of the movie can we bring back opening title sequences for these movies please when they look good there great.
Overall like I said this is a really decent film it does have a very predictable plot twist tho which is something that the GL movies should just stop doing because we all know it's coming but apart from that it's a movie that I really did enjoy so it gets a 6 out of 10 from me.