Green Day are hated by many people, for varying reasons.
Before I begin to elucidate these however, I think it should be noted that Green Day has begun to gain favor amongst those who would once have despised them; the ambition and political slant of American Idiot has allowed both rockists and scenesters to overcome some of their reservations. Warning was a respectable maturation process, but it wasn’t a good enough album to really show a wider audience that the band had moved on from its younger days, although many critics grudgingly praised it. And although I say “grudgingly,” to be fair to those critics, Warning was a transititional album, solid without being spectacular, mature but not comfortable in its maturity.
One of the major criticisms of Green Day is its lack of authenticity. This is very important to the punk kids, yet authenticity is so problematic within even a punk context as to be almost irrelevent (outside of a punk context, it is so unnecessary as to be laughable). For so long, authentic punk has been impossible to pin down. The Sex Pistols were created to sell fashion. The Ramones adored '60s pop, and its music so often attempted to imitate the Beach Boys and girl groups that to pretend that it was a band uninterested in the more mainstream aspects of popular music is pointless. Meanwhile, The Clash was, with London Calling, showing that punk didn’t need to be sloppy playing and simplistic guitar work. By 1980, punk as a movement was well established enough to be a cliche, and the most interesting bands growing from the movement had moved on to pop, post-punk or new-wave (see Joy Division, Blondie, Talking Heads, etc.)
None of this is meant to be a criticism of the original punk bands, nor of the bands that followed them, such as Black Flag, Hüsker Dü, Rites of Spring, Fugazi, NOFX etc. It is just to say that by the time punk had become an established modus operandi, the notion of authenticity meant little if one continued to try to measure it by the original punk standard.
Of course, outside of a punk context, who gives a fuck about authenticity? Who cares what record company is doing what, and where the band members came from? If a record sounds good, it’s a good record. Blondie might have had pop production all over their songs, but Atomic is still a great track. The people who claim the non-musical elements of a band’s history matter are the same people who discount entire genres like hip hop, R&B, techno and pop simply because they do not fit into their narrow view of what “good music” is meant to sound like, which is for the most part a template established in the late '60s by middle-class white guys.
Have you ever been to an independent record store and passed by the PUNK/HARDCORE section, and looked at those carefully outfitted guys (and sometimes girls) with their leather jackets, their safety pins and their mohawks? I always wonder why these kids wish to so slavishly imitate those who experienced their adolescence a good five years before they were born. Are they trying to maintain the rebellious spirit of the original punk movement? How is regression rebellious? It is akin to the '60s-era Rolling Stones taking to wearing tuxedos and imitating Sinatra. If this is real punk, it makes Green Day look like poster boys for anarchism; at least Green Day builds on its influences to create music relevent to a contemporary age, rather than fetishizing the subculture of its forebears.
So Green Day is hated by baby boomers because baby boomers are convinced there is little worth in anything created outside their adolescence. Green Day is hated by punks because the elements of the punk subculture Green Day maintain are different to, yet no less important than the elements modern punks maintain. Green Day is hated by Propaghandi fans because Green Day is popular. Green Day is hated by rockists because it veers too close to pop to be credible (although, with Green Day introducing ten minute songs and politicism into its music, the rockists have begun to embrace them). Green Day is also hated by some people because they just don’t like its music.
I think Green Day is a good band. It is isn’t the best band out there, but it possibly is the best modern rock band on the charts at the moment, considering the Foo Fighters hasn’t been able to get anything right for a long time, Coldplay continues to be soporific and Radiohead has seemingly abandoned us. I also think that as time passes, Green Day, and other pop-punk groups will be recognized as writers of amazing pop songs, rather than derided as sell-outs from a scene that isn’t sure what is credible and what is isn’t. I expect that within ten years, Dookie will be celebrated as one of the best albums of the '90s (you’re kidding yourself if you have any interest in modern music and can’t at least give this idea some credibility), American Idiot will be seen as a signficant and ambitious, though not perfect modern rock album, and even the albums between these two recognized as, while not classic, certainly containing some of the best pop songs of the era; “Good Riddance” may be hated by the punks, but it’s nevertheless a great song. (I doubt that Green Day’s first two albums, while containing good songs, will ever hold much interest outside fans, completists and historians.)
In short, people hate Green Day either because they don’t like the sound of its music, or because of immaterial authenticity objections that don’t stand up to intense scrutiny.