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thevindicativevordan · 2 years

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Any chance you've seen Bewate My Power?

I have yeah. Someone uploaded the entire movie briefly to Youtube and when I saw that I said screw it and gave it a watch. SPOILERS BELOW.

First off: if you're one of those John Stewart fans who has been complaining incessantly that John deserves better because he was the DCAU GL, you better buy this movie. This one is for YOU guys. Gives John the top dog status the way Stewart fans have been begging for, in fact this movies goes out of it's way to cater towards that group's wildest dreams. Flopping means all the claims that John is the most popular and well-known GL because of the DCAU are either false, or the situation has changed enough that John being the DCAU GL doesn't mean much anymore. Time to show DC how large the Stewart fanbase actually is!

Animation is good, they've been steadily improving with each movie released set in the Tomorrowverse, and that trend continues here. Final fight between John and Parallux is especially cool looking, they tried hard to make the GL constructs look powerful, and for the most part they succeeded. Everyone gets at least one moment to contribute to the fights and it makes me wish we had gotten more time with the group bonding. Music score, when it played, reminded me of Mass Effect's OST which is a upside. GL franchise would be in a better place if it took influence and inspiration from Mass Effect in my opinion.

Story wise BMP is typical for a DC animated movie: First two acts are pretty good but the quality drops hard in the final act because they bit off more than they could chew. BMP is trying to be a John Stewart origin story, and an adaption of the Rann-Thanagar War, Sinestro Corps War, and Emerald Twilight storylines. Just one of those could be a great movie but it's trying to do ALL of them, and the end result is underwhelming. There's just not enough time to give all of these plot lines the focus they need. We're introduced to the Green Lantern Corps and then almost immediately after it's revealed to have been destroyed. Rann and Thanagar get a little fleshing out but then it's revealed that actually Sinestro is behind the conflict. Sinestro gets some backstory, as does Hal/Parallux who is the real "Big Bad" of the movie, but no one else in his group even speaks. Result is that everyone feels undercooked because the focus is spread too thin. Even John isn't developed to the level I would like.

In line with the DCAU take, John here is a Marine and that's all he is. His interest in architecture doesn't come up once, I was hoping for a mention of that when he was practicing his constructs, but no such luck. Suffering from PTSD, John is looking for a purpose in life which arrives when a Guardian crashes in his backyard and gives him a power ring. Tasked with figuring out how he ended up with the ring of Hal Jordan - the previous owner, first human Green Lantern, and founding Justice League member - John sets off with Hal's best friend Oliver Queen aka Green Arrow. Along the way he learns about the history of the Green Lantern Corps, the conflict between Rann and Thanagar two planets with a history of warring, and the machinations of the fallen hero Sinestro. By the end he's met his predecessor Hal, who has secretly become the evil mastermind Parallux, and beaten Hal in a contest of willpower to cement his status as the new Greatest Green Lantern.

Aside from a minor arc about coming to appreciate what it means to be a GL, nothing is really done characterwise with John. His PTSD is barely relevant to the larger story (apart from a sequence where he almost murders Shayera and Hal attempting to corrupt John by saying he can tell John is sick of war and conflict too). Topics like that deserve to be handled with care and respect, and while there's nothing offensive, I don't have any clue how John's relationship with PTSD has changed as a result of the story. Is he "better" now? Why, because he found a new purpose with the Corps? Will he continue to struggle with that affliction the way real life vets do? Ending is a pretty straightforward "John has found his new mission and is happy" which just makes me wish they hadn't even included the PTSD. Felt superfluous and could have been cut easily since it didn't add anything. Aldis Hodge's voice acting is ok, he does have a few good deliveries like when John is exasperated at the corniness of the GL oath, but mainly he's stoic and flat. In-line with the DCAU characterization for sure. Ollie is entertaining and his VA is great, easily my favorite Green Arrow VA since the DCAU.

Neither Rann nor Thanagar gets much in the way of fleshing out, and the same holds true for the the two characters meant to represent the two sides: Hawkgirl and Adam Strange. Shayera is just a hotheaded warrior here. There's a tease of a romance between her and John at the end but it isn't built up believably and comes out of left field unless you go into the movie knowing that those two are "supposed" to get together because of the DCAU. Adam is a reasonable figure, but he's seemingly the same Adam Strange from the titular short that was released, and if you haven't watched that - I have not - then you're going to be left wondering who the hell this guy is and why he's such a big deal. Sinestro's depiction is terrible to be frank. He's a mustache twirling bad guy who dies like a complete idiot in a way that has you groaning at how cliched it is.

Ending is especially weak. We don't get to actually see John and company negotiate an end to the Rann-Thanagar War, it happens entirely off-screen. How were they able to compel the two factions to end their conflict when all of the conspirators were dead? All John and friends have is their word that Sinestro was responsible for everything and Hal went insane. Adam is gone so there's no reason for the Rannians to believe John that actually Sinestro was behind everything. Shayera is a low level soldier from what we've seen, and even if her side believes her that doesn't fix the problem of Thanagar and Rann being close in proximity to each other, or the long-standing animosity between the two sides. At best I could buy a temporary ceasefire from Thanagar in return for Rann trying to send the planet back where it's supposed to be, but there's no mention made of how the heroes resolved the conflict, we're just left to assume I guess that the war is over and everything is fixed. Never mind the exorbitant loss of life on both sides - that's sure to have resulted in some members wanting to keep fighting until the other side is utterly annihilated - I guess somehow they shook hands and let bygones be bygones.

Meanwhile Ollie is pretty nonchalant about killing his best friend, to the point he and John are seemingly new best friends. They spent what, the equivalent of maybe a week together? How long were Ollie and Hal comrades? Did they even bring Hal's body back to Earth for burial? Man was a founding Justice Leaguer! Writers had it out for Hal here, he gets dumped on relentlessly. Lipservice is paid to Johns' depiction of Parallux as a "fear parasite", but the writers still make Hal out to be a bad guy. At the end there's no dying moment of clarity where Hal tearfully begs for redemption, he dies with a spiteful "fuck you" line about how it's too late for them to stop his genocidal plan. Some have claimed Hal was at his most interesting as a villain but I sure as shit didn't see that here. Typical generic power hungry maniac, with a halfhearted "sympathetic" angle about how Hal was corrupted because he was tired of conflict. Doesn't really make sense given Hal was seemingly in charge after being possessed, and had to be giving Sinestro orders to continue provoking the Rannians and Thanagarians to keep fighting, but whatever he's evil now. Logic isn't his thing anymore.

More I think about this movie the more baffled I am about the creative decisions made, and the worse I rate it. They shoved an entire trilogy into one movie, and left the GLC in their brand new shared continuity completely destroyed. Why would the first thing you do with the GL franchise in a new continuity be destroying it? Where could they even go with a hypothetical GL sequel in the Tomorrowverse? Hal is dead and died unrepentant, kinda ruling out Spectre Hal and an adaption of Johns Rebirth storyline. Sinestro and his fledgling Sinestro Corps are all dead too. No way could they adapt any of Johns storylines in the Tomorrowverse, something I'm personally glad about given how they treated Hal here. Guess maybe they could steal some of Kyle's stories for John?

Like I said at the start, this movie is for John fans. By the end he gets everything Hal had - his friendship with Ollie, his status as the "Greatest" Green Lantern, seemingly his place on the JL - and everything of Kyle's - he's the Torchbearer who will rebuild the GLC, the Last Lantern, the one who surpasses Hal - in a way that's going to piss off those two fanbases. John and Hal are my two favorite Lanterns, and I hate how the two fanbases are at each others throats. Plenty of John fans will eat this up the same way Batman fans eat up another "Superman turns evil and Batman has to kick his ass" storyline, but it just doesn't feel satisfying. John graduates to "Greatest" status over the course of a week and is so powerful he can outwill a god-tier Hal, armed with multiple rings, who was able to destroy the rest of the GLC. It's too fast to really feel believable that a rookie John is that good. While I think it's long past time that John got his due, elevating John at the cost of everyone and everything else is not how I wanted them to do that.

Spreading the story out over a trilogy could have worked. Start the first movie with Hal recruiting John to help him with the Rann-Thanagar War, and have Hal seemingly die at the hands of Sinestro at the end. Next movie do Sinestro Corps War with Sinestro leading his army against Oa, have John lead the GLs to beat them, then you end with the reveal that Hal is possessed. Final movie you do Emerald Twilight where John and Hal face off and the GLC's future is at stake. That would give you time to flesh out John, Sinestro, and Hal in a way that makes the events feel impactful since we'd get to see Hal and John be friends, as opposed to here where the two don't even know each other.

Final verdict for BMP is a 6/10. If you're a hardcore John Stewart fan: go buy this. Show your support for John because if this movie fails you guys are unlikely to get anything else. DCAU fans will have a good time too. Hal fans should stay away, there's nothing for you here and this movie doesn't care about extending an olive branch to you. I do hope we get a sequel because I'm genuinely curious where they go from here, and I wouldn't mind seeing a John/Shayera romance. Make that the focus and stop trying to cram three movies worth of plot into one.

#green lantern #john stewart #green arrow #shayera hol #hawkgirl #green lantern beware my power #tomorrowverse #dc animated movies #hal jordan

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