‘Green Lantern: Beware My Power’ Review
Features the voices of: Aldis Hodge, Jimmi Simpson, Ike Amadi, Brian Bloom, Jamie Gray Hyder | Written by John Semper, Ernie Altbacker | Directed by Jeff Wamester
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.
*½ 1.5/5
Green Lantern: Beware My Power is out now in the US. The film is released in the UK on July 18th 2022.
I very much agree, I like John Stewart – but making Hal go nuts and evil? Knowing that Hal has fought and won against this same thing, held the full power of Oa in his hands before and not gone crazy.
They could not come up with a better origin story? How many other green lanterns have their been?
Sad scripting, shoot almost as bad as the live action GL.
Never thought i see a DC animated movie i didn’t like. Horrible, and full of plot holes.
How does John beat Hal/Parallax so easily? At this point he’s been a green lantern for, what! half a day?
Agreed. I liked Jon Stewart in the JL cartoon, but this movie was a flop for me.
At one time DC Animated did a fantastic job! Now they have completely lost their way! A horrible storyline coupled with bad writing and bad casting “both Jordan and Stewart”. The voice work may have been received better if Stewart was not written as a some what unintelligent former soldier with absolutely nothing special about him! The only this this movie does is make me long for the days of justice league and justice league unlimited!
This movie could have been better if they hadn’t given us Kyle Rayner’s origin and just passed it on to John for whatever reason. John in the comics was a morally complex character that had an interesting background due to his anger issues surrounding race and other social ills. The writers of the film threw that all out and decided that just him being a PTSD war veteran was all there was to him. The film also robbed us of John’s interactions with the Guardians and the other GL members because killing them off without reintroducing them in this new universe somehow made sense. Let’s also go into how Hal and Sinestro were treated as expendable plot device antagonists because whoever wrote this clearly hates these characters and just used them to prop up John. We could have seen how Hal and John would have worked together despite them historically not liking each other initially but we never go that because again clearly the writers didn’t like these characters to go that route. It’s very obvious that when it comes to adaptations of the GL characters, DC and Warner still don’t get it.