Green Lantern: Emerald Knights (2011)

PG, for, like, nonstop cartoon violence.  A lot of Green Lanterns die.  But since it's a cartoon and none of the deaths really impact any of the characters in a meaningful way (with the exception of the drill instructor), the deaths don't feel that brutal.  But if you ever thought of any of those deaths, it would be pretty rough.  PG.

DIRECTORS:  Christopher Berkeley, Lauren Montgomery, and Jay Oliva

There's this masochistic side to me that wants to watch all of the DC Animated Universe.  Growing up, the DC animated movies consisted with movies based on Batman: The Animated Series.  But after Mask of the Phantasm, there was a noticable drop-off in quality.  It's not to say that they were bad, but they were less universal.  They were aimed at comic book fanboys and fangirls.  On the plus side, because they were so insular, they were able to tell stories that weren't necessarily accessible to new audiences.  Comic book nerds were able to finally see these stories performed that would normally be left to text.  Honestly, that really doesn't appeal to me.  So then why watch Green Lantern: Emerald Knights?

Well, it came free with Green Lantern on Blu-ray.  Maybe the bigger question is "Why do you own Green Lantern on Blu-ray?"  Do you know the answer?  It's because people like hating that movie and it's fine.  As a comic book guy, that movie hits a lot of buttons. But then I had Emerald Knights sitting on my MoviesAnywhere account for years.  I hate owning things that I haven't seen.  It makes me feel frivolous.  I mean, I'm doing the same thing with my books.  I don't want to own things that I haven't seen or read.  The good news?  I forgot that Nathan Fillion played Hal Jordan.

It's so hard to write about anthology movies.  While Emerald Knights handles the anthology format better than others, it still holds episodic elements that make it hard to follow the needs of a protagonist.  But what Emerald Knights does well is show this deep dive into Green Lantern mythology while telling an entertaining story.  The framing narrative of Emerald Knights does a solid job of excusing the fact that his isn't just a five episode television show. Sure, the anthology element does water down the Krona storyline, but I like the notion that, to calm down a rookie / Poozer Lantern, Hal and company are telling separate stories to both inspire and soothe this new kid.  It's good.  I mean, the Krona battle ultimately doesn't matter and I find it really weird that the solution to beating Krona is to throw Oa at him, especially considering that Mogo is there.  (I know.  Risking Mogo would be a bad idea, but it's right there.) 

It's so funny, because my brain is playing "So that's how the sausage is made" with this entire movie.  It's kind of hilarious how much action is packed into this movie.  While a feature live action film might have a few set pieces that allow for violence and special effects, Emerald Knights doesn't let you go more than ten minutes without having Green Lanterns using rings to fight some dude or blow something up.  It all comes down to that anthology element.  I remember that The Animatrix kind of had the same vibe.  With superhero movies --and I think this ultimately hurt The Batman from being a perfect movie --there is this expectation that there has to be sweet fights throughout and that there has to be a sense of grandeur to the whole thing.  With these short stories, they're framed like mini-movies.  So we get stories that have Lanterns fighting epic wars, which is fun.  You know what this really reminds me of?  Going back to Batman: The Animated Series, it has that vibe of "Legends of the Dark Knight."  Because these are the myths of the Green Lanterns, they tend to be grandiose.  I'm sure that Lanterns wouldn't be telling nuanced stories of the weight of the world.

Just because anthologies are hard to write about, I'll do what I do with other anthologies: give two seconds about each storyline.  

"Green Lantern" -This is the Avra story.  Honestly, this is the story that got me over the hump.  I know why it is the first narrative. Chronologically, it makes the most sense.  But also, it is also the most relatable of the stories. If the notion of Green Lanterns is a big pill to swallow, telling the story of Avra, a reluctant Lantern, is fascinating.  I know that more could have been done with stories, returning to my argument that anthology stories are almost a disservice to the stories being told.  Keep the following in mind as I dunk on this: I liked this one.  But this story is fundamentally how military minds shouldn't be law enforcement.  Everyone else who is given a lantern ring couldn't figure out that their rings shouldn't be guns, something that needs a little bit of inference on the part of the audience.  But there's this scribe, who Little Engine that Coulds his way through the war that is killing off his peers.  He's the one who doesn't turn tail and run.  He's the one who sticks with it.  Because Avra embodies what the notion of "willpower" means (something that is still almost a poor choice of word for the actual trait being demonstrated), he is able to make constructs.  Now, my complaint is that none of that is really spelled out.  Also, I don't know how the notion of constructs would have affected the war in the way that the film demonstrates.  The military Lanterns were basically blasting ships out of the sky with giant beams of light.  So what if the light isn't shaped like a dragon or something?  The movie doesn't have the luxury to slowly spell something out like that.

"Kilowog" -While enjoyable, you've seen this one before.  Listen, I'm not a military guy, so the beats of this movie don't exactly resonate as well with me.  But this is that ol' "Beloved corps" story that the GL comics keep coming back to.  How did Kilowog get to be so much like Kilowog?  He met a guy who he modeled himself after.  If you want to know how Deegan got to be that way, I imagine the story is exactly the same.  But this is the short that reminded me how militaristic the Green Lanterns really are.  It's a bummer because the metaphor is right there in front of them and they always use their rings like weapons.  Anyway, this is that old chestnut that, oddly enough, education movies have as well.  The one who is hardest on you is the one who cares about you.  I don't know.  Deegan looks kind of broken.  Again, the anthology thing is hurting this movie.  We don't really get time to see Kilowog's shift from enthusiastic recruit to a guy who would take a swing at his instructor.  Also, there's one moment that doesn't read the way that they want to.  After the Lanterns are called in for an emergency, Deegan drops the ring to the ground, making it Kilowog's journey to fight.  But the real story is that Deegan wants Kilowog to take a swing at him because that means he's doing his job.

Laira -This is the one that I thought I was going to hate, but I actually liked the most.  Laira starts with all the ring-slinging, leaving the story to be almost aimless.  It feels like a Lantern just on an adventure, until I realized her relationship to the enemy.  Now, we've also seen this story before.  Heck, Avatar: The Last Airbender fans have gotten a ton of this exact story.  (I'm not one of those, by the way.  I'm slowly working my way through it and it seems fine.) But I do like that fight between father and daughter.  It just allows itself to be a small fight.  It is weird what the rules of the Green Lantern rings are, though. I  know that Hal Jordan (and here I go!) would steal rings from slain Lanterns while he was becoming Parallax, but I thought that was because the Lanterns were dying off.  I kind of would have loved to see the ring still accept Laira's thoughts even though it was on her father's hand.  Still, there's not much redeeming about dad in this one, making him a bit arch of a villain for my taste.

Mogo Doesn't Socialize -See, there's a flaw to this one.  This one probably could have been the most fun, but I have to remind you of the demographic watching this movie.  I really do think that the animated movies are for comic book nerds and those who have an extensive understanding of comic books already.  Then entire conceit of this one is "Who is Mogo?"  This big dopey bad guy is looking to fight Mogo and, if you know that Mogo is a planet, there's really nothing to look forward to.  Honestly, the fewer stories about Mogo, the better.  Mogo needs to be one of those things used sparingly, simply because Mogo has no real personality and is just a super weapon for the Green Lanterns.  There has to be something cryptic about the charcter to maintain the legend that is Mogo.  But if I didn't know what Mogo was before this scene, would I have found it more entertaining?  Maybe there's just something more fun to do with Mogo, like with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2's Ego.  (Although, don't do that exact thing because people would be mad that Mogo was a person.) 

Abin Sur -You had to have an Abin Sur story didn't you?  You also had to have a Sinestro story, didn't you?  I mean, I don't blame this at all.  I'm actually surprised how restrained these stories got when it comes to the spectrum of rings out there.  But the live action movie teased that Sinestro would embrace a yellow ring, so mind as well play that same game in the animated movie.  I never really cared about Abin Sur.  Abin Sur, from a narrative perspective, is only there to give Hal Jordan his ring.  I know that there's this temptation to make him the greatest lantern.  But nothing that Abin Sur does really lives up to the hype, mainly because Hal does a lot of great stuff with his time as GL.  I do like the notion of Sinestro and Abin Sur being the greatest of friends and just the hints that Sinestro was always kind of a jerk, but a likable jerk.  I don't understand that Abin Sur has this tendency to let his ring get to empty, but I'm also the guy who can't wait to gas up the car.  (Note: My tank is actually pretty low right now, so if I run out of gas, I'm just asking for it.) 

So it's fine.  I know that I shouldn't watch all these movies, if only for the sake of knowing that I'll have to write about them.  If I was a more casual viewer, I might want to knock these out sometime. But Emerald Knights reminds me about the exact amount of entertainment that these movies provide.  They let me watch stories that I already know in animated forms.