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If Bruce W. Timm couldn't produce something interesting, character-orientated and captivating about Green Lantern, a character with a rich mythology but a difficult one to translate properly, in the usually stellar animated films that DC and Warner Brother's produce...what does this mean for the upcoming live action one? Oi vey.
It's not that First Flight is bad. It's that it seems more interested in creating big, loud, ponderous action sequences than it is in creating characters, a more engaging plot, or giving the viewers a reason to care about anything that happens. Green Lantern's origin is given five minutes of screen time before he is whisked away to outer space. Hal Jordan's response? Like he's been doing for years. Decades even. Huh? That makes no sense. He's a pilot who's gone from mere mortal to intergalactic police squadron within minutes, and he walks around nonchalant and like it's been the norm for his life for about a decade. I call bullshit on that. Where's the joy in discovery? Where's the sense of overwhelming power as a member of the Lantern corps, yet complete insignificance in the universe as a human being? There's plenty of wasted opportunity here for mining into Jordan's character. I had no reason to care about him, or any of the nameless members of the Corps. Some I knew from the comics and animated series, and some were totally foreign to me. We couldn't spend some time getting to know them? The only one we truly get to know is Sinestro. And if you couldn't figure out that he was the bad guy from the name alone, I'd like for you to meet Marvel's Dr. Victor Von Doom.
Another problem is the animation. The combination of hand-drawn animation and computer graphics can be very well. Wonder Woman and both of the Justice League movies attest to that. It's not done well here. The two styles never mesh well, and the differences in shading, color, texture and line quality can be fairly startling at times. It looks cheap. And the same could be said about the hand-drawn animation. Batman/Superman: Apocalypse, while still the worst of the bunch, was beautifully drawn. I'll give it that much, even if I did have problems with the character designs. First Flight has two obvious design elements: if they're not one of the main characters - they get no detail work. If they're a main character - a lot of time, effort and care is put into them. It's distracting. Especially towards the end as we get into large groups of characters fighting.
I expect more from these films. Sure, they started out rough with Superman: Doomsday, but they improved quickly. Sometimes they nail it out of the ballpark, and sometimes they just hover at very good. I'm not asking for greatness every time. But I am asking for more effort, care and artistry to be placed into every facet of the product in each of these films. First Flight is not up to par.
