Thanks to Geoff Johns, Green Lantern has become one of my favorite super heroes. Unfortunately, my love for the character doesn’t get past the comics. The live action movie last year was pretty lackluster to say the least and the first animated film left something to be desired. I held out hope for the next one though, titled Green Lantern: Emerald Knights. This time the rest of the Green Lantern Corps would get some time in the spotlight as the movie focuses on a few different members of the Corps, none of them being Hal Jordan.

Although I didn’t think it was as good as the main book, the Green Lantern Corps comic was still pretty decent with some interesting stories and more importantly, some characters that I grew to love. That was nowhere to be found in Emerald Knights as each chapter focused on mostly no-name Lanterns aside from Mogo and Kilowag, although the latter wasn’t really the main focus of that segment. The film should have just been called “Story Time with the Green Lanterns.”

The whole thing centers on new Lantern Arisia. Instead of going through normal new recruit stuff like training or learning how to use this immensely powerful weapon that she’s been given, she’s thrown right into an epic battle that has the Guardians so afraid that they’ve moved out of their fortress on Oa. Sounds reasonable. Hal Jordan (who goes on to bang Arisia in the comic, despite the fact that she’s really only like 13) spins a few yarns about past Lanterns to kill time or get into her pants until the big fight against Krona. This guy has a pretty cool story in the comics where he goes back in time to watch the Big Bang only to inadvertently create the Multiverse and the Anti-Matter universe. The filmmakers decided to skip all that interesting back story and just made him a power mad super villain who throws around Anti-Matter. The Green Lanterns fight him by shooting green beams at him. Hooray!

Outside of All-Star Superman, I’ve been incredibly disappointed by all of the DC animated movies. Each one seems to at least try to be a decent film but just misses the mark entirely. They go after name actors instead of professional voice actors and throw together a hodge-podge of a storyline that sort of resembles a popular arc in the comics. I thought this might be my inner fanboy struggling to be free, but it’s not that. I can accept the idea that some specifics need to change in the transition of the story from the comic to the film, but this is more than that. These movies are just bad. There are huge plot holes in most of them and they’re just uninteresting.

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