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How the new animated Green Lantern tweaks the mythology; will you like it?
Why stop at Batman and Superman when you can write an adventure for Green Lantern, too?
That's the enviable predicament faced by Alan Burnett, the veteran television writer-producer and comic-book writer whose credits include the animated series SuperFriends, Batman, Superman, Batman and Superman, Batman Beyond and The Batman. After so much time spent in the Batcave, he just couldn't turn down the opportunity to write Green Lantern: First Flight, an upcoming DC Universe original animated movie that puts beat cop Hal Jordan (Christopher Meloni) out on the street with his partner, Sinestro (Victor Garber), for the very first time.
"I knew the development people over here at Warner Brothers were looking for a take on Green Lantern, and they were having difficulty coming up with one," Burnett said in a recent interview. "I was driving my car, just thinking about it, when suddenly an idea occurred to me, and I called them up and said, 'Have you ever tried this?' They said, 'No. Go with that.' And that's how it got into it."
So what exactly was the "this" that Warner had never tried?
"I always thought that Green Lantern was unique," Burnett replied. "His powers are such that sometimes they seem magical. So he sort of bridges magic and sci-fi to me, and he's part of a complex network of characters that literally cover the universe. And there's so much going on that you have to anchor it. What I did in the script was just anchor the Green Lanterns into a police force and think of their sectors as precincts."
Burnett called writing First Flight "freeing." He'd previously dealt with Superman and with stories that took place on other planets, this new project was his first shot at doing a long-form story set almost entirely in space. "It was nice to see some starlight," Burnett joked. "That was the fun for me, to create alien versions of everyday locations on Earth."
Once he handed in his script, Burnett left First Flight in the hands of the animators, producer Bruce Timm and director Lauren Montgomery. "I wanted the experience of seeing a script of mine go through people without me tinkering with it too much, and then seeing what happens," he said. "And they did a great job. I'm very happy with it. It was a long script that needed some cutting down, unfortunately, and in a way it works fine. We get the origin over pretty quickly and head right into the adventure.
"It's one of the darkest stories I've ever told," Burnett added, "and it keeps getting darker and darker as it goes on."
Green Lantern: First Flight also features the voices of Tricia Helfer, Michael Madsen, John Larroquette and Kurtwood Smith. It will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on July 28 by Warner Home Video.
By GQ at 6:20 AM ON 06/22/09
Hardly original. Thats the way GL Corps has been written since the relaunch. Partners, precincts, procedures, stations, the whole works.
By SighFyeGuy at 7:25 AM ON 06/22/09
I don't know why it should've been so difficult to 'come up with a take on Green Lantern'... I mean there are only THOUSANDS of comics featuring him out there....wtf??
By CharlieLantern1710 at 7:46 AM ON 06/22/09
I think the difficulty in coming up with a take on GL comes from the same difficulty as any superhero. "How do I take this comic book character and make him work on screen in 90-120 minutes?"
By Dread at 10:43 AM ON 06/22/09
I'm hoping that they'll do a better job than they did with Wonder Woman. Though they had a good story and everything was fine, they dropped her ability to fly and most of her strength. Wrecking what had become the first real woman to be able to hold her own against Superman, etc.,. They watered her down. Then they insult us all by including the stupidest creation ever: The invisible plane. Not once but in Justice League also. This sort of tampering only leaves me doubting that there's a reason to even watch this.
By MBrown at 12:57 PM ON 06/22/09
Have to agree with GQ. Hardly original. Even with the version(s) prior to the current 'reboot' the "GL Corps" as police force was often there. It's really there with idea of partners (2 per sector), sector houses, rookies going thru training (before it seemed like GL were on their own), etc.
By stargazer_1682 at 1:02 PM ON 06/22/09
Hopefully this will be good. I agree, Wonder Woman had a lot of missed opportunities and stumbled in some areas.
I also didn't care for the way they clubbed the viewer over the head with stereotypes of misogynistic men and do it yourself amazon.
By this guy knows GL? at 3:28 PM ON 06/22/09
"What I did in the script was just anchor the Green Lanterns into a police force and think of their sectors as precincts"
Uh, that's what GL is all about.
By splinter at 9:35 PM ON 06/22/09
I actually thought the Wonder Woman animated movie was pretty good. I liked that the violence was not watered down at all, and she came off as pretty powerful to me. I mean yeah she is supposed to be able to give superman a run for his money, but where is the tension if she can beat every enemy with a minimum of effort? That would be pretty lame. Besides, she was up against the God-of-freaking-War!
As far as the invisible plane is concerned, they used it in both the comics, as well as the Justice League animated show, so it is not such a stretch that they brought it back again. You can hardly call that "tampering" when every single previous incarnation of the character includes that. While I personally wanted to see her flying on her own, I could accept that the producers wanted to pay homage to as many past elements as possible.
I am looking forward to the new GL. I am not concerned with how original the story is as much as how well they retell this classic character's story in an animated format. This character is so old that criticizing the producers for lack of originality seems kind of silly to me. The only way you could really be original is if you changed who and what the character is, but then why bother calling him Green Lantern? I personally don't want to see a Tangent Universe or even an "Ultimates" style Green Lantern. To me it is all about the execution.
Really my biggest beef with all these direct to dvd superhero movies are their short run times. That to me was the biggest problem with, for instance, the Justice League: New Frontier movie. The first half to 2/3 was pretty good, but then they had to squeeze in that big alien invasion/battle - at the expense of character- and as a result it felt completely rushed and disappointingly generic. It needed at the very least another 20 or so minutes to really flesh the epic nature of the story.
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splinter:
I actually thought the Wonder Woman animated movie was pretty good. I liked that the violence was not watered down...More »