Genre: Action/Superhero/Fantasy
Director: Julius Avery
Writer: APJ
Based on DC Comics characters
Cast: Taylor Kitsch, Jessica Biel, Sam Rockwell, Joseph Sikora, Gil Birmingham, Chris Geere, Michaela Conlin, Jemaine Clement
Plot:
During a baseball playoff game between the Midway City Mammoths and the Bludhaven Bobcats, a small meteorite crashes down in the middle of the field. The stadium is evacuated, and the panicked crowd floods into the streets outside the stadium in Midway City.
Meanwhile at the Midway City Museum, Archaeologist Carter Hall (Taylor Kitsch) is working on repairing some degraded Egyptian artifacts with the museum's chief egyptologist William McElroy (Chris Geere). McElroy notices the museum's new anthropologist Mavis Trent (Michaela Conlin) walking through the museum floor and finds himself distracted from his work, causing the artifact, the Staff of Khuenaten, to drop. Hall is able to quickly react and catch the priceless item. McElroy breathes a sigh of relief and thanks Hall for saving his hide once again. McElroy then goes on to explain the history of the staff, saying that it supposedly belonged to King Tutankhamun himself and that some say he was even beaten to death with it by a pharaoh wanting to usurp the throne.
The museum begins shaking from the meterorite landing. McElroy holds on to the Staff of Khuenaten for dear life, trying to keep it from breaking. Once the shaking stops and he has secured the staff, McElroy runs over to Mavis to make sure she's alright, despite the fact that and elderly woman has fallen over. Mavis says she fine and suggests that McElroy help the older woman instead. McElroy shurgs and clumsily helps the elderly woman to her feet. He turns back over to Mavis, but she has already walked away.
Hall runs through the museum to the fine arts section where his fiance Shiera (Jessica Biel) works as an art restoration expert. Together they run out of the building. They don their wings and masks and fly up into the sky above the museum to see what caused the commotion. They see the crowd of people fleeing the baseball stadium down the road and fly over toward it to see what's going on. When they get above the stadium, they see a large crater in center field. Shiera asks Hall what he thinks it is, and he says it wasn't a bomb - something fell from the sky. Hall flies a little closer, and sees a glowing gold meteor in the middle of the crater.
The meteor is taken to the Midway City Museum to be studied by World-renowned astrogeologist Ed Dawson (Joseph Sikora). Based on its chemical makeup, Dawson determines that the meteorite did not come from this galaxy, but from the Mithra Galaxy, several space sectors away from our own Milky Way Galaxy. Hall and Shiera are watching through a window as Dawson runs tests on what he calls the Mithra Meteor in a cleanroom. McElroy comes over to them and asks Hall for a favor. Hall is curious what, and McElroy asks him to talk to Mavis for him to see if she'd want to go on a date with him. Shiera laughs at McElroy, asking if he's still in middle school. McElroy gives Shiera a dirty look, and Hall reluctantly agrees to talk to Mavis for him. Hall walks down the hall to the anthropology department to find Mavis. Hall introduces himself to her and asks if she knows who McElroy is. She nods and Hall hands her an envelope, asking her to bring that to him. Mavis agrees and walks over to McElroy, who gets nervous as he sees her approaching him. Shiera walks away, telling McElroy he's on his own. Mavis hands McElroy the envelope, saying it's from Hall. McElroy opens the envelope, which contains a note saying "talk to her yourself". McElroy stumbles and bumbles while Mavis is near him. She asks him if Hall is seeing anyone. McElroy tells her that Hall is with Shiera, and Mavis says that's too bad before walking away. Disappointed, McElroy bangs his head on the wall outside of the cleanroom. Dawson yells for McElroy to keep it down out there since he's trying to work.
Dawson continues taking samples from the Mithra Meteor, when a sharp shard of the meteor rock cuts Dawson's hand. Fragments of the gold glowing rock, mix with Dawson's blood on his hand. He leaves the cleanroom and washes the blood off of his hand. Shiera notices Dawson's wound and offers to help him bandage it. Dawson thanks her for her help. While helping him with a bandage, Shiera asks Dawson if he's learned anything new about the meteorite. Dawson says he actually has - the minerals within the Mithra Meteor emits a strange radiation that he can't quite seem to figure out, but it certainly isn't anything found on Earth.
That night, Carter Hall is patrolling the skies above Midway City as Hawkman when he sees a strange glowing light high above the baseball stadium. He flies over toward the light, which turns out to be some kind of space craft. Hawkman flies to the front of the ship to try to see inside, but the ship's lights get brighter. Hawkman wields his mace and is about to hit to ship with it, but then the lights get even brighter, blinding him.
In the middle of the night, Shiera is at home when she notices that Hall still hasn't come home yet. She takes to the skies as Hawkgirl, but doesn't find any sign of Hall. She goes to work in the morning and asks McElroy if she's heard from Hall. She has looked all over for him and he didn't have his phone with him when he left. McElroy asks what Hall was last doing, but Shiera doesn't have an answer prepared, so instead she walks away.
Carter Hall wakes up to find himself on the space craft. He stands up and is greeted by Jarl Klus (Jemaine Clement), who identifies himself as an ambassador of the planet Thanagar. Hall demands to know why Jarl has taken him captive, and Jarl expresses confusion. He says that he saw Hall flying with wings and thought that he must be a Thanagarian fugitive. Hall is confused, and Jarl tells him that there are certain clans on Thanagar that wear similar wings to fly around. Hall asks to be taken back to Earth, but Jarl says that will have to wait as they are about to land on Thanagar. Hall looks out the window and sees vast desert mountains and several pyramid structures that look straight out of ancient Egypt. Jarl says that he has to take Hall to his superior, but that Hall could talk to him about arranging for a ride back to Earth. As the ship prepares to land, it is attacked by the weapons of a group of humanoid lion beasts. Jarl fires the Thanagarian Star Cruiser's laser cannons at the lion-beasts, and lands safely behind the walls of Thanagar's capitol city, Thanaldar.
Hall is brought before Commander Byth Rok (Gil Birmingham). Byth introduces himself and apologizes to Hall for the confusion. He promises to have Hall taken back to his home planet, but that it will take a couple days to have the Thanagarian Star Cruiser repaired so that it can undertake such a journey. In the meantime, Byth tells Hall that he will be his personal guest in the city.
Dawson is in bed at home trying to sleep, but he begins sweating profusely. He suddenly wakes up and screams in agony. His body begins growing long brown hair everywhere. His muscles grow bigger and his hands grow long claws. His bed collapses under his weight and his eyes turn yellow. At the end of his transformation, he looks like a 7-foot-tall humanoid lion. He looks at himself in the mirror and is shocked at his appearance. He hears a voice in his head telling him to secure the Mithra Meteor.
When the museum opens for business in the morning, everyone finds it in a state of destruction. Shiera, McElroy and Mavis look around the museum and notice that the destruction leads toward the cleanroom containing the Mithra Meteor. Shiera decides to go into the cleanroom, even with McElroy trying to convince her to stay back until the police arrive. Shiera notices that the Mithra Meteor is gone, but she does notice a small fragment on the ground. Shiera collects the fragment in a small vial and slips out of the cleanroom just as the police arrive and secure the area. Shiera shows McElroy the meteor fragment, and McElroy chides her for stealing part of the meteor. She insists she isn't stealing, but McElroy says that if he went over and took the Staff of Khuenaten home with him, it would be called stealing. She tells him that she just wants to find somebody who can tell her about it since strange things have been happening in Midway City ever since that meteor crashed down.
Byth walks with Hall through the city. Byth explains that as long as history is recorded, the Thanagarian Police Force dresses wearing similar wings to represent their Hawk-God, the Thanagarian God of War and Protection. Byth indicates a statue of the Hawk-God, and Hall comments that it bears a striking similarity to the Egyptian God Horus. Byth tells Hall that there once was two Thanagarianx who traveled to the planet Earth, many thousands of years ago. They were sent as ambassadors of the Thanagarian race, but they never returned. For centuries, they waited for their safe return, but it never happened. When the Thanagarian Police Force finally sent a scout back to Earth, they discovered that the Earth city of Cairo featured many Thanagarian elements. Byth shows Hall a statue outside of the Thanagarian Police headquarters, saying that it is of the ambassadors who went to Earth: Katar and Shayera. Hall is surprised that their names are so similar to his and Shiera's , and is even more surprised when he notices that Katar and Shiera look just like Shiera and himself. Byth tells Hall that he believes that he is Katar Hol himself reincarnated and that it must be destiny that returned him to Thanagar after all these centuries.
Dawson wakes up in the middle some forest outside of Midway City. He has mostly transformed back to his human form, although he still has claws on his hands and yellow eyes. He looks over and sees the Mithra Meteor next to him. The voice in his head calls Dawson "Lion-Mane" and tells him that his mission is to expose the populace to the meteor's radiation in order to create more lion-beasts. He uses his claws to begin breaking away at the the Mithra Meteor to make smaller pieces. He takes one piece, and then covers up the rest with branches and leaves so that nobody will stumble upon it. The voice then tells Dawson that the meteor was missing a piece. Dawson puts on a pair of sunglasses and glove to disguise his tranformation and heads over to the Midway City Museum. Dawson then begins sniffing the air. He catches a scent and starts walking down the street.
Shiera boards an eastbound train at the Midway Central Station. Dawson continues tracking the scent of the meteor when he spots Shiera boarding a train. Dawson begins transforming back into Lion-Mane at the sight of her, knowing that she must be the one with the remaining piece of the meteor. As the train takes off, Lion-Mane begins running after the train
Hall asks Byth for an update on the status of the star cruiser, and Byth tells him it will still be another day or two. This frustrates Hall, who then asks why the Thanagarian Star Cruiser was on Earth in the first place. Byth explains that they were alerted by the radiation of a meteor that recently crashed on Earth. A similar meteor crashed on Thanagar many years prior, which turned many Thanagarians into uncontrollable lion-beasts. Hall asks how it turned them into such monsters, and Byth explains that his scientists told him that the meteor emits a radiation that will slowly mutate the blood of the beings around it, ultimately transforming them into the beasts.
Lion-Mane manages to catch up with the train, grabbing onto the back of it. He rips the rear door off of the train and begins searching the cars for Shiera. The commuters on the train scream and run toward the front of the train in terror. Shiera, recognizing the commotion, slips into the train's lavatory, and exits in her Hawkgirl costume. Hawkgirl begins walking toward the rear of the train against the steady flow of scared commuters. When she finally makes it to Lion-Mane, Shiera is shocked at the beast in front of her. She swings her mace at Lion-Mane, but he deflects the weapon and pounces toward Shiera. She jumps out of the train and begins flying along side it. Lion-Man jumps through the ceiling of the train, landing on top of the moving locomotive. Hawkgirl hits Lion-Mane with her mace before he can notice her, sending him flying off of the train and tumbling away from the tracks. Lion-Mane then turns back into the clawed and yellow-eyed Dawson. He watches in anger as the train fades away into the distance.
Shiera arrives at the prestigious Ivy University. She heads into the physics department building where she sees Dr. Ray Palmer (Sam Rockwell) giving a lecture on quantum physics to a small group of students. He explains that if one were to, completely theoretically, re-calculate the dimensions of the quantum field, one could potentially re-scale different forms of matter to whatever size one wishes. One of the students asks what the practical purpose of such a recalculation would be, and Palmer says that someone could make a lone potato large enough to feed an entire village, or shrink something large into a more manageable size - the possibilities would only be limited to the imagination and know how of the operator. Palmer then says that they will end class there and meet again next week.
As Palmer is leaving the lecture hall and walking toward his office, Shiera introduces herself and asks for a few minutes of his time. Palmer looks at his watch impatiently, then looks at Shiera, eyeing her up head to toe. She then pulls out the Mithra Meteor fragment, which is glowing gold in the vial. His attention is captured and he shows Shiera to his office. Shiera tells him that it is a fragment of the Mithra Meteor. He says that he was hoping to get a chance to study the meteor, and was honestly surprised he didn't get it when it crashed. He then says that Dr. Dawson is okay too, he guesses. Shiera says that Dawson is missing and so is her fiance Carter Hall.
Palmer shows Shiera the White Dwarf Star fragment he has on display in his office. He tells her that he can harness the energy of the White Dwarf Star in order to alter matter, but he's still working at controlling it fully. Palmer demonstrates using a device he has created. He places an apple onto the device and presses a button, the apple then grows ten times its size. Palmer then presses a different button and the apple begins shrinking down to the size of a grain of sand. Shiera is impressed, but Palmer explains that the device isn't as practical as he was hoping yet. He explains his goal of using the device on living creatures, but is nervous about doing the test.
Palmer then takes a look at the Mithra Meteor under a microscope in his lab. He tells Shiera that the radiation emitted from the meteor acts like a parasite looking for a host to attach itself to. She asks him if it could affect a human, and Palmer says that it would definitely be possible. He synthesizes a sliver of the meteor into a chemical solution. He then injects a mouse with it. The mouse grows to the size of a guinea pig and grows long brown hair and claws. The mouse begins breaking the glass of the cage until Palmer seals off the air to the glass cage, killing the mutated mouse. Shiera is shocked at the sight and tells Palmer about her encounter with Lion-Mane. She says that it must be Ed Dawson, mutated from when he was cut by a Mithra Meteor fragment.
Hall again asks for a status update on the repairs of the Thanagarian Star Cruiser, and Byth tells him that it should be almost done. Hall walks around Thanaldar when he is attacked by a a group of Thanagarians led by Darl Klus (Jemaine Clement), Jarl's twin brother. Hall uses his Nth metal wings and begins flying away from them, but they too have Nth metal wings and fly after him. Darl eventually catches up with Hall and promises that he just wants to talk to him about Byth and Jarl's ulterior motives for being so friendly to Hall. On top of one of the Thanagarian pyramids, Darl tells Hall that Byth has been lying to him. Katar and Shayera weren't ambassadors, but rather they were sent to scout Earth for invasion, and they apparently decided to not follow through with their mission. Darl then tells Hall that the Space Cruiser wasn't there to simply investigate the meteor crash - they were the ones responsible for the meteor. Hall asks why they would do that, and Darl explains that Thanagar is dying, so they want another planet ready to populate. Byth and Jarl sent the meteor to Earth in order to infect the population with the curse to make them all lion-beasts. Hall asks how a population of lion-like monsters would be easier to defeat than humans, and Darl says that when he was still working with the Thanagarian Police Force, he had figured out how to kill the lion-beasts - the cold. The parasite that turns the host into the beasts cannot survive in even barely freezing temperatures, so the beings would revert to their original form. Jarl and a police force arrive and quickly arrest Darl and his men. Hall manages to get away without being seen and hides. He then watches from a distance as Jarl executes his own twin brother.
Palmer is in his lab, finally ready to test his size altering device on a living creature. He attaches a mouse to the device and presses a button. The mouse grows to over 6 feet high. Palmer then presses the other button, and the mouse shrinks down to the size of a grain of sand. Palmer takes a deep breath, knowing that now is the time for the real test. He presses a third button, and the mouse slowly begins to grow back to normal size. Palmer gets excited that the device works on living things.
Hall runs toward the Thanagarian Police Force headquarters. He charges through the complex and toward the Thanagarian Star Cruiser. He is stopped by Byth. Hall tells Byth that he isn't going to stand idly by and let Byth and the Thanagarian Police Force lead an invasion of Earth. Byth pulls out a gun and aims it at Hall, who dodges the fire and tackles Byth. Hall punches Byth until he's unconscious and boards the Star Cruiser. Hall looks at the controls of the ship and tells himself that he should know how to operate it if he really was a Thanagarian at one point. He looks over the controls once more and presses a button. The ship then begins elevating over the ground. The pushes the controls forward, and the ship blasts off away from Thanagar.
Shiera is on the train back to Midway City when she hears word that the Midway City Museum has been taken captive by an unknown assailant. Shiera changes into her Hawkgirl costume and flies toward the city, mace in hand. When she arrives at the museum, she finds the mutated Dawson has imprisoned the museum workers and customers while he works on creating a syrum out of the Mithra Meteor that he can inject directly into the bloodstream. Shiera throws her mace at Dawson's solution, spilling it all over the floor. Furious, Dawson begins transforming into Lion-Mane. He drinks a vial of the Mithra solution, and grows bigger. Hawkgirl collects her mace and begins flying above the museum to distract Lion-Mane.
Palmer is driving toward Midway City when he hears about the hostage situation. When he gets close to the museum, he opens up his trunk and pulls out a blue and red leather jumpsuit. He hastily throwns on the jumpsuit and attaches his size altering device to a belt. He presses a button and grows to over 20 feet tall. He greets Hawkgirl and suggests they destroy the meteor that the lion creature is generating his parasitic powers from. Hawkgirl flies through the museum and grabs a meteor piece. Lion-Mane chases after her. Hawkgirl throws the meteor piece to the giant Palmer, who crushes the rock into a dust. Lion-Mane is furious and begins climbing up Palmer's leg. Palmer tries to kick Lion-Man off, but it doesn't work. Palmer presses a button on his belt and rapidly shrinks down to the size of an ant. Lion-Mane is confused by the disappearance of Palmer, so he turns his wrath toward Hawkgirl, who is flying toward Lion-Mane with her mace out. Lion-Mane deflects Hawkgirl's attack, hitting her, and sending her flying into a statue outside of the museum. The miniature Palmer climbs up Lion-Mane and begins pulling his hair. Lion-Mane begins swatting at his fur, trying to hit Palmer. Eventually one of the swats connects, sending the miniature Palmer flying through the air. When he hits the ground, he reverts to his normal size.
The monstrous Lion-Mane stands before the exhausted and injured Hawkgirl and Palmer. Suddenly the Thanagarian Star Cruiser crash lands in the vicinity of Lion-Mane. Hall emerges from the ship and grabs his mace. He hits Lion-Mane over the head with the mace, forcing Lion-Mane to hit the ground. He yells over to Shiera that the parasite can't stand the cold. Shiera runs into the museum and grabs a canister of liquid nitrogen. She begins spraying the meteor fragments with the canister, freezing the meteor and keeping its radiation from emitting, while Hall continues to attack Lion-Mane with his mace. Hall grabs Lion-Mane by the scruff and flies upwards. Lion-Mane fights back, clawing and biting at Hall, but he keeps going upward. As they reach the upper atmosphere, ice begins to coat the bodies of Hawkman and Lion-Mane, who slowly begins devolving back into Ed Dawson. Hawkman then starts slowly flying back toward the Earth. Hawkman lands back down on the Earth with Dawson now a normal human again. Hawkgirl lets the captive museum workers free. McElroy gets one look at Hawkgirl and seemingly forgets all about his crush on Mavis. Hawkgirl introduces Hawkman to Palmer, who refers to himself as The Atom.
Soon things are back to normal, with the scientists all back to work at the museum. McElroy is happy to see Hall back at work, but tells him that the next time he skips town on a bender he better come up with a story ahead of time.
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