Green Lantern: Beware My Power – Film Review

Recently discharged Marine sniper John Stewart is at a crossroads in his life, one which is only complicated by receiving an extraterrestrial ring which grants him the powers of the Green Lantern of Earth. Unfortunately, the ring doesn’t come with instructions – but it does come with baggage, like a horde of interplanetary killers bent on eliminating every Green Lantern in the universe. Now, with the aid of the light-hearted Green Arrow, Adam Strange and Hawkgirl, this reluctant soldier must journey into the heart of a galactic Rann/Thanagar war and somehow succeed where all other Green Lanterns have failed.

To be completely honest with you, I didn’t even know that Green Lantern: Beware My Power even existed until today when I watched the film, and that’s saying something because I am almost always totally up to date with all of the upcoming superhero movie releases, whether they’re live-action or animated. This line of DC Universe Animated Originals has been quite hit or miss, with a few of them being seriously exceptional (Batman: Under the Red Hood) whereas some ended up being total duds (Reign of the Supermen).

It’s weird because I do enjoy a large number of these films but, because even the best of the series can be mediocre, I wasn’t even remotely excited to click play on this movie. I was hoping that director Jeff Wamester would seriously surprise me with a gripping, emotional, and exhilarating origin story of Jon Stewart as the Green Lantern, but instead, he presents us with a boring, shallow, one-dimension, messy film that, while gorgeously animated and featuring some truly excellent voiceover work, is proof that we may never get a truly good movie based on the iconic character.

The storyline here isn’t the problem. The setup is actually quite great in this film. To tell you the truth, the first twenty minutes or so of the film are stellar, but it immediately takes a nosedive as Hawkgirl shows up. It’s there that the movie starts to introduce some pointless sub-plots and starts to make the initially simplistic story into something far more complex than it needed to be. Why couldn’t we have just had a straight-up Jon Stewart origin story that didn’t get bogged down by so many pointless things surrounding it?

There are some moments where the film genuinely soars and becomes exciting (such as the third act), but these moments are few and far between. The action sequences here are… okay, I suppose, which is kind of disappointing seeing as how this is a Green Lantern movie. He has some amazing powers that fans adore, and yet I can’t help but feel as though die-hard fans of the popular character will end up watching the film and wishing they had gotten a better meal out of it.

I’m not even a big Green Lantern fan and even I was disappointed by just how lackluster of a film this was. As mentioned earlier, the voice work here is incredible. Aldis Hodge is phenomenal as the voice of the titular superhero, as is Jimmi Simpson as the wise-cracking Green Arrow. Brian Bloom gives a menacing performance as Adam Strange, and Jamie Gray Hyder perfectly embodies the character of Hawkgirl.

It just pains me to say that they deserved a much better movie because this one seriously wasted their talent. Green Lantern: Beware My Power certainly isn’t the worst of the DC Universe Animated Original Movies, but it’s certainly a massively disappointing one.