According to the DC Universe mythology as created by DC Comics, the Green Lantern Corps have been an intergalactic police force patrolling the farthest reaches of the universe for three billion years, under a directive from the Guardians, a race of immortals from the planet Oa. On June 7, 2011, Warner Home Video is releasing on DVD, Blu-Ray, On Demand, and for download, a full-length animated movie about these heroes called Green Lantern: Emerald Knights as part of the ongoing series of DC Universe Animated Original Movies from Warner Premiere, DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation.
In this movie, the histories of favourite members of this intergalactic police force are explored in six interlocking tales based on prior stories from various GL comics, with the hopes that this will whet the appetite for the live action film, Green Lantern, hitting the theaters June 17, 2011. In GLEK, as part of the preparations for an attack by ancient enemy Krona, human Green Lantern Hal Jordan mentors new recruit Arisia in the history of the Corps and the first Green Lantern Avra. She will have to learn fast as she is destined to help Hal and his Corps comrades save the universe.
Once again, executive producer Bruce Timm and voice director Andrea Romano show their penchant to hire veteran TV actors to voice their major characters. Hal Jordan/Green Lantern is aptly voiced by Nathan Fillion of Castle and Firefly. Arisia is ably voiced by Elisabeth Moss from Mad Men. Interestingly, one of the producers of GLEK is Greg Berlanti, who has given us such series as Brothers & Sisters, Everwood, and Dawson’s Creek.
Neither Fillion nor Moss are new to animation either. Fillion voiced Steve Trevor in the animated film Wonder Woman and added his voice to animated series such as Justice League and Robot Chicken. Moss has done voice work in Steven Spielberg Presents Animaniacs, Freakazoid! and It’s Spring Training, Charlie Brown!.
Nathan Fillion as Hal Jordan/Green Lantern
Fillion showed his love for animation voice over work by showing up in his Green Lantern t-shirt. When asked about it in the studio-sponsored interview that session, he explained that he had gotten the green tee long before he was cast as Hal Jordan, “Debbie Zoller is the head of my makeup department on Castle. She saw that fan-made Green Lantern trailer and thought the t-shirt would be an appropriate Christmas present. And I wholeheartedly agree with her. I’ve been known to wear a few superhero shirts … and where better than a Green Lantern recording session to wear it today? So thank you Debbie – I told you it would come in handy someday!”
Which may be one of the reasons Entertainment Weekly dubbed Fillion a “Geek God.” Another may be that besides filming hit series Castle for long hours every other day of the week, he is willing to give up his one day off to come in and voice DC Universe characters, just because it’s fun. “I get a call saying ‘Hey, how would you like to come on down to record Green Lantern?’ And I’m asking back, ‘Can we squeeze it in on a Sunday because that's pretty much my only day off?’ I want to make it work because I love doing it,” Fillion explains. “More than that, I love being part of this lore. These are great characters – you’ve got Green Lantern, you have Superman, you have Batman, you have the Flash, all these wonderful pieces of American pop culture. And now I've got a little piece. I can say, ‘Oh yeah, I was Green Lantern for a DVD movie.’ Not a lot of people can say that. ‘Oh, Steve Trevor? Funny you should mention him.’ It may sound silly, but it means something to me.”
But when asked if he has any desires to be an astronaut, since he spends so much of his acting time in space (Firefly/Serenity and Green Lantern), he claims, “I fear space the same way I fear drowning. I would think it would be a little bit claustrophobic. Sure, you have the vastness of space, but yet you're probably going to be in some kind of little miniature (capsule) and, you know, anything could go wrong. I mean, if you're scuba diving -- let's say you're 10 feet underwater – if something goes terribly, terribly wrong, you've got 10 feet to swim to the surface, and you're good. If you're in space, you're boned. That's like being in a submarine at the bottom of the ocean. Uh-oh … Oops. Things you don't want to hear in space or in submarines: ‘Oops.’”
Elisabeth Moss as Arisia
Arisia marks the return of Elisabeth Moss to animation after a long absence, because it sounded like a cool thing to do on a day off from Mad Men. “I’ve always wanted to do more animation,” she explained in a studio-generated interview on her recording day. “I think it’s a really fun job. Obviously, it has a certain ease to it, but at the same time it can be difficult. There’s technical things that I’m not very good at or that I’m just learning, things about your voice and making clicking sounds and (using) the headphones … but it’s fun to learn and it’s definitely something I’d like to get to do more of.”
In fact, one of the reasons she feels animation voice over is so much fun is that she can show up in jeans and a t-shirt and not worry about make-up or hairstyle. “You can show up in your pajamas if you want,” Moss adds. “That’s tremendously liberating, as opposed to going through three hours of hair and make-up before going before the camera for my day job. So it’s much more relaxing.”
Moss showed her sense of humor when asked if it was difficult to have just one day in Arisia’s shoes when she gets more time to develop her characters in serial TV. “Well, I really love Arisia’s boots – they’re very cool, I like their style – so I like being in her shoes,” she teased.
Henry Rollins as Kilowog
To play fan-favourite Kilowog, Romano and Timm hired the versatile Henry Rollins, punk rock singer from the band Black Flag, white supremacist thug in Sons of Anarchy, and globe-trotting National Geographic documentarian. Unlike many voice over actors, Rollins’s fun in playing Kilowog doesn’t come from a childhood love of comics, because the few he saw as a child didn’t do much for him. “I come from the minimum wage working world of the late '70s, early '80s,” he explains, “so stuff like this, to me, is gravy. It is so not standing on my feet, carrying something to the back of a truck. I know how to do all of that. Many of us do. So, for me, it's just a really fun thing. There's pressure certainly to perform – not the same pressure that I take out on stage every night, when there's a lot of people who are there to hear me or see me.”
Rollins says that to be good at voice overs, you have to be able to laugh at yourself. “I mean, you're doing funny voices. We're larger than life here. So you have to throw your seriousness away and be able to laugh at yourself. You have to throw out your ego. The more I do it, the more I realize that you have to approach it that way – and then you get super involved in the moment. I think that's what the job requires. You have to think ‘Oh, no, here comes the meteor storm. We’ve got to go.’ When I'm doing something like that, believe me, I'm really in that moment. When you can throw away your self-importance and have fun with it, that’s when you really deliver.”
In the end, he says he’s happy with what he’s done, all he wants to do is more.
Part 2 continues with a brief review of the DVD and more insights from the actors on their roles.
Portions of the studio sessions interviews were quoted here with permission from Gary Miereanu on behalf of Warner Home Video.
Crystal Taylor - I'm a writer of TV one-hour scripts, screenplays, novels, short stories, articles, and poetry. I'm most proud of a story (episode outline) ...
