Touching down June 7, DC’s latest straight-to-DVD-and-download animated feature teleports in 10 days ahead of Ryan Reynolds’ live-action Green Lantern movie, setting the table for an emerald summer. The cartoon hews closer to DC’s masterful multinarrative animated experiment Batman: Gotham Knight than the straight-ahead star picture Green Lantern: First Flight, which tested the superhero’s pop-cult mettle in July 2009.
Fillion fills out Green Lantern’s supersuit, while Mad Men ‘s Elisabeth Moss stars as new recruit Arisia, in the upcoming animated film. It’s illustrated by comics heavyweights like Watchmen ‘s Dave Gibbons and DC’s newly promoted chief creative officer, Geoff Johns, who once told Wired.com that Green Lantern has the star power to compete onscreen with his more popular counterparts Batman and Superman.
Not so fast. First let’s figure out where Green Lantern: Emerald Knights will land in DC’s animated pantheon.
DC’s last animated installment — a stunning adaptation of Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman by the late, great screenwriter Dwayne McDuffie — was the best Man of Steel film ever made. Previous films like the bloody Batman: Under the Red Hood, the sexually charged Wonder Woman and the cerebral Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, were alternately more interesting and ambitious than most live-action superhero films in history.
Not that there weren’t any animated stumbles. Superman: Doomsday was a testosterone mess that muddled the Man of Steel’s benevolent heart. Justice League: The New Frontier was nostalgic jingoism, unsuited for a complicated post-9/11 century. But no one’s perfect, even superheroes.
Screen Emerald Knights’ trailer above and let us know in the comments section below how you think DC’s latest animated feature will fare. Don’t forget to factor in Fillion, who’s geek cred and sheer talent can lift middling work (like his current mystery soap, Castle) into must-see viewing.
See Also:
