I don’t really know shit about the comic books (aside from a very basic understanding on who/what the GL is) but I thought this looked great.
Often these early trailers don’t show much, and have lots of cuts of short bits, because they’re just not done with the editing/effects/etc yet, and have to work with what they have ready.
I have no doubt that Van Wilder can carry the movie, he’s good in pretty much everything, and the effects look good to me. All depends on the story, and that’s hard to show much of in a trailer.
Quite aside from the fact that this is essentially Kyle’s origin…
That only worked for Kyle in that the Corps was gone, and Ganthet had to give the last ring to SOMEONE, and then bugger off.
With a functioning Corps, it’s just ridiculous - one does not give some random schmuck on a random planet the most powerful weapon in the universe, just because he happened to be near where the last guy who had it died, and let him noodle around with it without guidance. That’s a recipe for disaster.
The rings are always referred to as “the most powerful weapon in the universe”, but I don’t recall a story in which they demonstrated that level of power. I’m mostly familiar with the Justice League cartoons, where they didn’t seem that much more powerful than a good laser blaster or Superman’s heat vision.
In the comics, just how powerful is a GL ring, exactly?
Green Lanterns are powerful, but not omnipotent, and their foes are usually equally powerful. In this film, the villians are Sinestro and Hector Hammond. The former also wields a power ring while the latter is an extraordinary telepath and telekinetic. The concept originally was fearless, but has morphed over the years into ‘able to overcome great fear’. As comics have matured, they’ve moved past much of the foolishness of a few decades ago and especially the animated series, which always gave any hero the power of plot device. This story is based more on a recent updating of Green Lantern’s origin story. I know some diehards never want stories ‘retold’ and ‘updated’, but I feel it is necessary as modern readers can’t cope as well with Vietnam-era (and earlier) heroes. Be true to the source material, but don’t let half a century of convoluted, inconsistent storytelling limit current storytelling.
Guy Gardner was actually closer, but was incapacitated at the time. He was the first choice. Jordan was the second.
The short-lived (and post-Crisis) Action Comics Weekly featured Jordan in occasional story arcs and, I figure, did its level best to fuck everything up and was eagerly indifferent to the messes it created.
[ul][li]Star Sapphire kills Katma Tui, John Stewart’s wife, then she fakes her own death, implicating Stewart. Stewart gets arrested. Ultimate outcome? Who knows?[/li][li]After Stewart’s inconclusive arrest, Jordan calls around his various super-buddies for advice, and for no reason that I can understand, they all treat Jordan with contempt, like he’s some kind of crybaby. Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred is atypically rude to him. Clark Kent chews him out in a “I’m so disappointed and I’ll hint that if you can’t get your act together, I’ll have to come over there and fix things for you” manner. Even his close buddy Green Arrow blows him off. Why? Who knows?[/li][li]Jordan, wondering how exactly he came to be without fear, queries his ring. The ring tells him that Abin-Sur acted improperly, telling the ring to find a replacement. That should have been done by the Guardians. Also, Abin-Sur directed his ring to find a human without fear, but the ring was unable to actually do so, since all humans harbor at least minimal fears. The ring found Jordan and reprogrammed his brain to remove these fears, satisfying the requirement. Jordan demands his brain be put back to normal. The ring does its best. Jordan flies out the window to rescue a jumper and when he realizes he’s hovering in mid-air, has a massive panic attack (!). The ultimate outcome of this? Who knows?[/li][li]Jordan’s ring is destroyed (!) by an alien named Malvolio, who has a ring of his own. Jordan eventually kills Malvolio in self-defense and takes his ring. Malvolio was only faking, though, and the whole encounter was an illusion for some complex purpose to get Jordan to take the ring. Ultimate outcome? Who knows, but I recall Guy Gardner making a reference to the unresolved Malvolio story arc.[/li][li]At the end of the ACW run, Jordan is fatally shot by a crazy army guy with a conventional pistol(!). As he writhes in his death-throes, the ring goes hunting for suitable replacements and picks up Clark Kent, Dick Grayson, Boston Brand, and pastiches of Desmond Tutu, Lech Walesa, a few other political figures who I forget… Anyway, Jordan gets better. Only Kent and Brand, by nature of their powers, are aware of this (all others are frozen in time) and they get into a minor philosophical debate while Jordan recovers.[/li][/ul]
So basically, Action Comics Weekly was an experiment in fucking continuity over and not even calling the next day.
Point. But this version puts Hal right there, and being handed the ring by Abin Sur, and inserting Guy complicates things unnecessarily, unless Guy is actually going to be featured, so we can ignore that.
Unclear. Potentially unlimited, theoretically, with the right user.
[li]Jordan’s ring is destroyed (!) by an alien named Malvolio, who has a ring of his own. Jordan eventually kills Malvolio in self-defense and takes his ring. Malvolio was only faking, though, and the whole encounter was an illusion for some complex purpose to get Jordan to take the ring. Ultimate outcome? Who knows, but I recall Guy Gardner making a reference to the unresolved Malvolio story arc.[/li][/QUOTE]
That was almost 10 years later, so he’d forgotten a lot of the details, but basically, his recollection of where they were planning to go with that was that having Hal take the ring was part of Mal’s plan to escape from the prison he was put into by the GL Priest.