Ricky Church chats with Green Lantern: Beware My Power co-writer Ernie Altbacker…
DC Animation’s latest feature film Green Lantern: Beware My Power is notable for several reasons. First off, it showcases DC fan-favourite John Stewart as the lead in his first feature film in an origin story detailing how he became chosen as a Green Lantern and second, it launches DC’s new continuity into the cosmos as John and Green Arrow take a trip into space and meet intergalactic allies and enemies as they try to stop a war between two alien civilizations.
We spoke with screenwriter Ernie Altbacker who co-wrote the film with John Semper. Altbacker has had a long career in animation writing, dating all the way back to Spider-Man: The Animated Series in the mid – late 1990s and has worked on several DC animated films including Batman: Hush, Justice League: Apokolips War and Injustice. We chatted about bringing John Stewart to screen in his first animated feature film, what separates him from his fellow Green Lanterns and pairing him up with the likes of Green Arrow, Hawkgirl and Adam Strange. Check out our interview below…
Ricky Church: You co-wrote Green Lantern: Beware My Power with John Semper and this movie features John Stewart as the main Green Lantern instead of Hal Jordan like we’ve seen before. What’s the difference for you in writing John versus a character like Hal Jordan? What’s the difference in their personalities that struck you the most?
Ernie Altbacker: Well, with Hal, he is a cocky test pilot and John Stewart is a Marine and, in our movie, someone that’s been very affected by the fighting he has seen up close and personal. He has PTSD. So the characters are very different.
John Stewart is such a fan-favourite among Green Lantern fans. Did you feel any intimidation writing such a beloved character for his first feature film?
There is to do the project well. I think behind everything, John Semper, myself, Jim Krieg [producer], Butch [Lukic, producer], we hope that this project in some small way puts John Stewart on the way to taking his place in the pantheon of DC’s greatest heroes where we think he belongs.
For sure. What was it like co-writing with John? What aspects of the film did each of you tap together? How much did you communicate?
Well, you know, John gave me my first job on the animated Spider-Man of the nineties which he ran and then I wrote a couple more on a couple other shows, like Static Shock and the preschool Jay Jay and the Jet Plane for John. But he hadn’t written an animated feature for DC and I had and Jim wanted to team us up so it was really seamless. He was great with the process because all our previous collaborations he was the boss and I was the writer whereas with this one it was much more an equal thing and we just divided and conquered. I wrote half of it, he wrote half of it, we jammed together and then he would go through the entire thing then I would go through the entire thing, talking to each other all the time. We’d just call up all times of the day going “I’m gonna put this in the first half. Can you pay it off in the second?” And you’d just get it. We have a shorthand.
Nice. Beware My Power is best described as a galactic space-faring adventure mystery, which is really cool. Was there anything that influenced you to make this different from some of the other DC superhero origin movies we’ve had lately, like Superman: Man of tomorrow or Justice Society: World War II?
It is an odd one. It is a different one, isn’t it? I’ll tell you what this came from. The original idea came from the fevered mind of Jim Krieg and he wanted to make a mash up of Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams’ hard travelling heroes which features Hal Jordan and Ollie Queen on earthbound adventures and Apocalypse Now!. So Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, right? And he’s like “The perfect character to do this would be an ex-military person that has been damaged from his experience.” And the only way, like when you look at Martin Sheen, he’s very screwed up, the only way he’s going to get over whatever he’s been put through is to go back into the jungle. So in that same way John Stewart is going to have to go back, well, he’s going to go into space, but back onto a battlefield. To rediscover who he is, he has to come through this fire crucible and emerge healed. It doesn’t always happen that easily, but that’s what we’re trying to do with this movie.
You know, you bring up classic Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams, who unfortunately they’re no longer with us –
Yeah. I thought I heard he was going to go to the premiere at a point. That would have been awesome.
For sure. So of course their run with Green Lantern and Green Arrow has had such an impactful history in the comics and we usually do see Green Arrow with Hal Jordan, but in this one you’ve gone and paired Ollie up with John. How does Ollie and John’s dynamic differ between him and Hal?
I think John being so damaged, Ollie is a bit of a light character in that he can do the wise cracks and stuff. Hal Jordan can go wise crack for wise crack with Ollie, right? Whereas John Stewart’s not that type of character here. So we definitely wanted to give him a foil to play against. And I mean, the other part of the question is why Ollie? The answer to that is A) there’s some fan service for hard travelling heroes, but the other thing is if we put one of the Trinity on this adventure, then John Stewart becomes a bit player in his origin story. So we couldn’t have that. Can’t have Superman bailing him out or even Wonder Woman or Batman.
Or even Martian Manhunter.
Right! Same with Martian Manhunter. I mean, the thing with Ollie is he’s extremely capable, but is he the first guy you think of to go on a space adventure? Absolutely not. And that also is something that appealed to us for the writing of it. It’s like, you’re not gonna get the best guy. You’re not gonna get the best guy on this. So John’s gonna have to take the lead here. He’s gonna have to get over the things affecting him and save everybody! (Laughs)
Yeah, for sure. Of course, aside from Ollie you’ve got an ensemble featuring Adam Strange and Hawkgirl. What made you decide to pair John with the two of them as well?
Both of the characters haven’t been dealt with. In this movie also, we are introducing, we are fleshing out a corner of the DC universe that these characters have hardly had anything done with them. We wanted to bring in Hawkgirl and we wanted to bring in Adam Strange, who was in a short that actually deals with this movie a little bit. It’s another thing that Jim Krieg is doing, having the shorts put a little bit of emphasis on the continuity, give you little more information. You know, everything’s got to stand alone, it’s got to be a good story by itself, but if you are a completist and like watching all the things, you will know more than everybody else because you’ve seen it.
Cool. How was it for you writing some of these action scenes with John and others creating these crazy constructs? You have John making a big hammer and then a truck and all this stuff. Was there difficulty capturing that on the page to translate for the animators?
Well, you know, I think it goes the other way actually. We need to put something in there for the battles. And we don’t want to do the first thing off the shelf, but in the end the animators are going to storyboard that stuff. They’re going to pick what the constructs are. They might use ours that we put on there, the writers, but storyboarding battle sequences is something that is under their purvey so they think up a lot of them too.
SEE ALSO: Exclusive Interview – Green Lantern: Beware My Power’s Jamie Gray Hyder on playing Hawkgirl
Thank you very much to Ernie Altbacker for speaking with us!
Green Lantern: Beware My Power is now available on Blu-ray and 4K home media. Read our review here.
Ricky Church – Follow me on Twitter for more movie news and nerd talk.
