I gotta agree that the yellow thing is more absurd than anything in the X-Men movies. Any yahoo with can of yellow spray paint from Walmart can defeat the guy with the “most powerful weapon in the universe”.
And if we’re talking about the very first GL, any slack-jawed yokel that can pick up a wooden stick could wail on his ass.
I can pretty much guarantee that the vulnerability to yellow and/or wood will fall into the same graveyard as mechanical webshooters and Wolverine’s shortness, to equally loud bleatings from aggrieved fanboys.
With MIND BULLETS!!!..wait
And this is why, instead of giving the ring to you, the Guardians would give the ring to a guy who would come up with a plan like, I dunno, using the ring to drop a heavy object on Big Bird. The “yellow weakness” was only a major character flaw in the hands of a bad writer. In the hands of a decent writer it was a minor annoyance or a pretty good challenge to get around (like, if all the enemy’s weapons shoot yellow beams of energy).
Well, that was kinda the point. The first human GL was a king in the “medieval” era of wooden farm implements. That king was required to use the power of the ring justly, and for the benefit of his subjects. The weakness to wood was a safety measure to ensure that he would rule justly. If he was unjust, he would theoretically be helpless against his stick-wielding subjects.
Granted, those stick-wielding subjects would have to get through his steel-wielding army first…
While we’re on the subject, might I request some clarification on the weakness to yellow? I was under the impression that the weakness was necessary; ie that the Guardians couldn’t have chosen not to have it. The ring’s construction involved a weakness to yellow, simple as that. But then it turns out that other rings have had weaknesses to wood and gummi bears and whatnot, simply because the Guardians wanted it so. Retcon? Misunderstanding? Global conspiracy? Inquiring minds want to know.
The weakness to yellow has gotten a couple of explanations over the years. At first, it was ‘a necessary impurity’ - as described by the Guardians. Later, we have the impression that it’s not the ring itself that’s vulnerable to yellow - they’re just programmed to make the wielder think there’s a yellow weakness. Presumably this was a safety feature inserted by the Guardians to prevent a GL from going power-mad. Kyle, the latest GL, has a ring with no such vulnerability, and I seem to recall an earlier GL story where, as a one-shot deal, the Guardians removed the impurity from another’s ring.
All Guardian-issued Green Lantern Corps rings until Kyle’s came standard with the yellow vulnerability.
The exception is Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern. In original Golden Age stories, his ring was vulnerable to anything non-metal, actually - resulting in him getting clocked once with a glass bottle. This was retconned to a vulnerability to wood. Why? I don’t recall the original justification - in current continuity, however, his ring originates from two sources - one is the Starheart, a collected mass of chaotic magic - The Guardians of the Universe having condensed it with the intent of isolating it from the universe. The Starheart fused with the GL Corps Ring of one Yalan Gur many thousands of years later - and the magic of the Starheart twisted the ring’s innate vulnerability from yellow to wood.
To expound further on Candid Gamera’s explanation, the original Green Lantern (Alan Wellington Scott) obtained his powers by surviving a railroad accident by holding onto a green train lantern. The lantern spoke to him, telling its history of its fall to earth to China as a meteor, and how a man named Chang fashioned it into a chinese lantern. It would flash 3 times: once for death, once for life, and once for power. It flashed the last time, for power, for Alan Scott. It told him to form a ring from the metal, and touch his ring to the lantern to charge it with energy. The energy from the lantern (and his ring) had only one weakness: wood.
More information on Alan Scott can be found here.
Also, keep in mind that although he shares the “Green Lantern” name, Alan Scott (the “original” GL) is not a member of the Green Lantern Corps and his power ring is/was not provided by the Guardians of Oa. Last I saw (a few years ago) Alan no longer needed the ring and was calling himself Sentinel…
Wasn’t his ring somehow magic-based? He seemed to absorb its powers over the years, enabling him to discard the ring and just do everything he could do before by simple willpower. Dunno if this idea has been discarded yet.
Alan has returned to the name of ‘Green Lantern’ - but his power is internalized, as you say. He contains the energies of the aforementioned Starheart. As a matter of fact, his entire body has been mostly replaced by an energy construct of the Starheart’s energy - Wood really messes him up now.
Then he should avoid taking Enzyte!
Well, this thread and another movie thread finally got me to spring for the full membership… Mainly because I’m surprised no one’s posted a reference to Greg’s Previews. From what I’ve seen, it’s a very reliable site for all known information on any upcomming movie (including movies that were in talks ages ago, but remain canned for one reason or another).
The Green Lantern page has no news at all about Jack Black, or any other casting choice for that matter.
I have no idea how reliable AICN is, but it’s been several days and this site hasn’t mentioned anything. I’m hoping it’s just a joke; but then again they may be right and this Greg is just a little slow. I emailed him and am still awaiting a response. Let’s hope he can give some kind of info on it soon.
Oh, and put me on record as being overcome by a plethora of emotions at hearing the idea of Jack Black as Green Lantern. Happiness was certainly not one of them.
Part of me thinks this is the worst idea ever.
Part of me desperately wants to see this movie.
But, AICN is the sort of site that’ll post just about any rumor, no matter how tenuous, unless they know it’s been specifically debunked somewhere. I’d definetly wait for confirmation from somewhere more reliable before bunching my panties.
Interesting that you should mention that. Alan Scott’s daughter, Jade, inherited his Green Lantern energy powers. She briefly lost them and gained the power to manipulate plants, but then her boyfriend at the time, Kyle, restored her powers with his ring. Whether her current powers are powered by Alan’s or Kyle’s energy is unclear, though I’m of the opinion that Kyle merely jumpstarted her latent ability rather than supply her with a new one.
Her powers are innate, so she never has to recharge them, and they don’t have any weaknesses either.
Alan’s weakness to wood always seemed a bit goofy to me, but DC recently introduced a similar weakness to Powergirl, who is now vulnerable to raw or unprocessed materials. Shoot her with a particle gun gun and you’re out of luck, but poke her with a sharp stick and you can do some serious damage.
GL’s “weakness to yellow” was all a part of the silver age approach to comics at DC, and to a lesser extent, at Marvel*. If a character were powerful enough, he or she had to have a weakness that the bad guys could exploit. Superman had kryptonite, and it was apparently available in corner drugstores and by mail order through Sears, it showed up so often.
GL had the color yellow, which makes sense in silver-age comics logic. Weaknesses were frequently related to powers; Superman’s powers came in part from yellow solar radiation and the lesser gravity of earth, so his weakness was radiation from parts of his home planet. GL’s power was a specific color, so another specific color was its weakness, in addition to needing to be recharged every 24 hours.
*At Marvel, it was usually the villains with the cosmic level powers and an exploitable weakness.
You leave Jon Stewart out of this.
Unfortunately, GL’s been in the hands of way too many bad writers.
OK, I hit send before I really finished my thought. ^o^
GL writers seem determined to artificially draw out action that should be resolved easily for GL. They only go for the direct rout when that’s a bad idea.
The bad guy’s wearing yellow! Should I bring a wall down on him? Nah, save that for the guy in red. I’ll ineffectually try to grab him! Hey, that’s not working! Oh, hey, there’s a wall I can bring the wall down on him!
There’s a missile streaking for that city! Not a spot of yellow on it! My power ring is capable of generating a force bubble that can set the missile off and contain the explosion…what should I do? I know! I’ll chase the missile and try to disarm it! >_<
I thought Snipes had optioned Black Panther the same time he optioned Blade.
DC should just do a movie and a limited comic series about Wonder Boy and Nasty Man, and we wouldn’t have this trifle of an argument…
Well, that’s a relatively easy situation to remedy. Explain to them that Catwoman is a DC Comics film, and that DC doesn’t have as much control over their own films to ensure they are compentently done. Then explain that The Fantastic Four is a Marvel film, and that Marvel created their own studio in order have full control over their own films. And point out that the X-Men and Spider-Man films were Marvel films.
On the subject of Green Lantern, “internalized” power and not needing a ring, did this happen to Hal Jordan just before he died? Or was that just part of the original storyline idea from the time, before DC decided to kill him off?
Anyhoo…