Green Lantern isn't a superhero who means much to me. I read his comics sporadically when I was younger and, while I never felt as much overriding hatred for the Ryan Reynolds movie as some, it didn't turn me into a fan of the character, either. So it was more happenstance than intent that led me to click on Green Lantern: Emerald Knights, an animated movie that preceded Reynolds' live-action version of Green Lantern's origin story by just a few months, on HBO Max one day while killing time.

It didn't keep me engrossed enough to complete it in one sitting; I finished watching the 84-minute movie over the course of four days, which should tell you something about its allure.

I won't say it was terrible, but it wasn't terribly interesting, either. The premise gives us Krona, a massive, world-destroying villain who is escaping his prison in Oa's sun and threatens to destroy the Guardians' homeworld in a fit of revenge. The Green Lantern Corps is all that stands in his way.

But he's not really all that much of a threat, it turns out. His attack and subsequent defeat takes up only a few brief minutes at the end of the movie. Instead, the time is filled mostly with Hal Jordan (voiced by Nathan Fillion) and other Green Lanterns telling stories to new recruit Arisia (Elisabeth Moss) about past and present luminaries of the corps. Each vignette is brief, and each is more or less "meh" in scope.

There are nuggets of good stories here, but none is given enough time to develop and, consequently, it's hard for viewers to care all that much when some Green Lanterns die. Sure, it's a little sad each time you see a green ring, newly bereft of its owner, floating back to Oa to be reassigned to a new Lantern recruit, but you don't get to know the Lanterns well enough to feel any sense of loss.

Besides Fillion and Moss, voice actors include Jason Isaacs as Sinestro, Henry Rollins as Kilowog, Arnold Vasloo as Abin Sur, Kelly Hu as Laira and Roddy Piper as Balphunga. No complaints about their performances; they did what they could with a lackluster script.