Monsters of Television

“Spent the rest of his long life making sure his ring was charged.”

I’m not a big Green Lantern fan. All-powerful rings, like all-powerful aliens from Krypton, mean big cosmic villains that steadily have to be one-upped to maintain stakes and threats to the heroes. On the upside for Green Lanterns, their rings run out of energy, meaning they have complete the mission in a set time frame.

But I’m not so much a non-fan that Green Lantern: The Animated Series is a non-starter for me. In fact, the episode is pretty solid, apart from the animation, which is more a matter of personal taste. The story has a nice balance of exposition, humor, adventure, and the action sequences are well-choreographed.

The episode kicks off with Hal not only having the ring, but also being an established Green Lantern. I like this as we get to skip over the origin story right off the bat (I’m sure we’ll get a flashback episode at some point), and it allows the action to get moving, establishing the Red Lanterns as the villains and allowing us to learn about Hal and Kilowog through an actual (albeit unsanctioned) mission.

And the mission, heading to the fringes of Guardian space (which I assume is, well, space) to look into the death of Green Lanterns, afford the opportunity to see how good both of the Lantern are, from Kilowog’s combat skills to Hal’s resourcefulness (and his ability to smooth talk even an AI). Their fight with Razer and Zilius Zox is low on complicated constructs, but I’m willing to let that slide due to the same reason I was generally okay with it on Justice League: Constructs are expensive to animate, so it’s cheaper and faster to do bolts of energy, hammers, and bats. Save the big constructs for big moments.

But getting to the animation, I love that it managed to capture Bruce Timm’s particular style in 3D (something the opening for the first two seasons of Justice League was never able to really do), and it’s a real treat to see it animated like this. However, I’m generally not a fan of this type of animation on TV since every moves the same, seems to have the same weight. When Kilowog is tumbling around the ship, he doesn’t seem to be doing it in a fashion consistent with his size. And Hal and Kilowog run the same way and same general speed.

I know I’m talking out of both sides of my mouth here. I let the lack of constructs slide on a cost-saving reasoning while quibbling with what is, essentially, another cost-saving measure.  It does, however, demonstrate where my expectations are: I want good, consistent, thoughtful animation. And while constructs can demonstrate that, I’d rather see it play out in subtler ways.

All in all though, the premiere is a solid episode, and I think given a little bit room to grow, Green Lantern: The Animated Series will be a good series.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• DC Nation Short: One of the Batman shorts from Aardman Animation (the studio behind Wallace and Gromit). It was pretty entertaining. I enjoy the child-like voices for the characters (actual children maybe?), as well some of the quick jokes and gags, including Superman riffing on why Robin is called Robin (“You never see bats and robins together.”) and Catwoman saying how good she is at the long jump, only to jump into a water tower. I like to think this is a slight dig at incredibly silly mode of travel in Arkham City.
• The “expert Archer” testing Green Arrow’s boxing glove arrow was a little bit lame.
• Hal charging his ring using the ship’s engines? Kind of badass.
• I do like that the romance between Carol and Hal is acknowledged here, and not just “Oh, crap, I’m going to miss my date!”, but as a legitimate romance.