How does that work though, does the ring know that the GL intends to kill with the construct that’s being created and refuse to make it…or what?
Actually, after the Guardians made the “Lethal force authorized against the Sinestro Corps” new rule, they made a “Lethal force authorized against any enemy of the GLC” rule. They were on a kick of making 10 new rules, and you 'd think that those two just sort of waste one of the ten slots… but that storyline seems to have petered out in favor of the other myriad variants of the Guardians-are-jerks storyline.
Disposable Hero, the GL ring has an onboard AI which recognizes when a kill shot isn’t authorized, and the gun-construct (or whatever) simply fails to fire the kill shot. So the construct is still around, it just doesn’t work for that instance.
You’re right, I’d forgotten about the latest rule :smack:
I read the GL comics as a kid. To me, he wasn’t in the same class as Superman or Batman-GL was a sort of “low rent” crimefighter.
The “Power Ring” and “Lamp” were kinda hokey-and the costume was stupid looking.
Plus the mantra he was always mouthing “In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil can escape my sight”-really an ersatz Superman.
Anyway-how did GL handle the changing (from street clothes into costume)? Superman used phone booths, Batman had the batcave-did GL strip down in public?
The ring basically transforms his clothing into his uniform. Or replaces his clothing with the uniform. Not exactly sure which. Either way, it’s basically instantaneous.
Ah, I see, I imagined the way it would work is the ring would read the intent of the GL behind the creation of the construct. If it was something simple like a sword it wouldn’t allow it to be created at all.
At least that’s my theory and I’m sticking to it… 
btw that was something I did wonder about the training scenes in the movie, they didn’t seem to be messing around and at least in Jordan VS Sinestro appeared to be genuinely trying to hurt or kill the other, you don’t create a working gatling gun if you’re just trying to make a point. How do you train realistically with a weapon like that (the ring) without hurting your opponent?
If the movie had done better, would the Green Lantern still be in the closet?
Considering that it’s not the movie Green Lantern (or even the movie WORLD’S Green Lantern) that they made gay, it’s kind of moot.
Um, the gay Green Lantern is now the WORLD’S Green Lantern outside of comic book circles. All Normals know about the Green Lantern, as shown by the unpopularity of the movie with them, is what they have heard about him on TV and it’s that he’s gay. Even the next guy to don the ring will have to keep saying, “No, I’m straight. You’re thinking about the last guy,” in every issue. 
Um, there are at least three Green Lantern comic books in the stores now (Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, New Guardians). Alan Scott – the newly gay Green Lantern who has nothing to do with any of those – isn’t going to be in any of those and (at this point) isn’t going to have his own comic title.
If the “Normals” or the WORLD are going to try to find anything on Green Lantern, it isn’t going to be gay Alan Scott they’ll find.
Actually, it will be. A Google search for “Green Lantern” has as its first two hits news stories about Alan Scott being gay. Then we’ve got the Wikipedia page, which is about all of the Green Lanterns, then IMDb for the recent movie, then Yahoo Answers for “Do you care that Alan Scott is gay?”. So out of the first five hits, three are all about Scott’s orientation, and one of the others is partly about that.
There’s more than one Green Lantern? [/most people]
“Why would they EVER make more than one Green Lantern?” [/most people who’ve seen the movie]
Wow, thanks for the detailed explanation, Mister Rik. I had no idea the writers had removed the yellow vulnerability. I don’t really see how the new one, fear, makes the rings any more limitless though. Can’t the corps just recruit meatheaded teenagers to wear the rings? They’re fearless enough by themselves, and given a powerful ring I can’t imagine they’d be any more sensible. I don’t know what would happen if multiple lunkheads faced off against each other though; maybe a black (green?) hole?
As for the “ring as visualization tool” concept, well, I’m not sure I see why that limits it either. Say I have such a ring, and I want to destroy a mountain. (It’s blocking my view, OK?) I firmly believe my ring can do that, and protect me and innocent bystanders from the blast to boot. I visualize a big pile of dynamite - maybe even a nuclear bomb - and unleash the power. If the ring is just generating a force, and only stops working if I feel fear (or, as your and other posts mentioned, I’m trying to kill someone inappropriate), why shouldn’t that mountain go kaboom? Maybe I should rephrase my objection: I’m not annoyed that the ring’s power does or doesn’t take particular forms, but I find it’s a weak plot point that it has near-infinite power in terms of effects. It seems to me that anyone with sufficient will and imagination could defeat anything, therefore eliminating risk and drama.
PS Am I the only person who noticed that “being yellow” is slang for being afraid? Nope? Alright then…
If you want to reduce them to quivering bundles of self-doubt, just say that green suit makes them look gay.
Only on Thursdays.
There’s a possibility that the selection process the Guardians go through filters out people whose grasp on power is a little too much in the “blow up that mountain because I can” direction. Then again, there are multiple defectors from the Corps that turned bad (Sinestro being only one), so their process can’t be THAT good.
Well, being a GL requires a certain amount of discipline, responsibility, and ability to follow orders. There’s been at least one teenage GL, a girl named Arisia. I can’t recall what planet she’s from, but she was 13 years old when she got her ring. Then she developed a big crush on Hal Jordan. When he rebuffed her advances because she was “just a kid”, she somehow used her ring to artificially mature her body into “full-grown woman” form (I don’t think she got the point). However, that was one of those silly storylines from the '60s or '70s, and I don’t think that’s something the writers would allow the ring to do now.
Ultimately, it comes down to writer discretion. “Modern” comic writers understand that unlimited power effectively eliminates dramatic tension, and they’re pretty good these days about avoiding “power inflation”. They may not explicitly define the limitations of a characters power, but they avoid making those powers into an automatic “I WIN” button. The Green Lantern Corps has thousands of members, and they face plenty of threats that require multiple GLs to handle - sometimes the entire Corps.
Power inflation was one of the main reasons behind the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” back in the 1980s. Superman, in particular, had gotten completely out of control as far as how powerful he was. Different writers over the years kept giving him new powers, and making the powers he already had even more powerful, culminating in one story where he actually flew into space and blew out a star with his “super-breath”. So the folks at DC said, “Okay, let’s start over”.
Oh, that was quite a deliberate thing on the part of the writers when they came up with the “yellow impurity” (and later, Sinestro and his Corps. More recently, they’ve expanded the “Emotional Spectrum”:
Red = Rage (The Red Lanterns)
Orange - Avarice (There’s only one these guys. Because the orange lantern and ring are his. Don’t touch his stuff! It’s not yours!)
Yellow = Fear (Sinestro Corps)
Green = Willpower (Green Lantern Corps)
Blue = Hope (The Blue Lanterns)
Indigo = Compassion (The Indigo Tribe)
Violet = Love (The Star Sapphires, an all-female corps)
There are also Black Lanterns (Death) and White Lanterns (Life).
Black Lanterns being (literally) zombies, or at least demon-inhabited corpses…
Candidates are selected by the ring’s AI when its previous bearer dies, but then the ring does rather forcibly haul the candidate back to Oa (the GL base planet) for basic training, where actual, living GL members and the Guardians can evaluate them and weed out those who are unsuitable (or where the candidate can say, “no thank you”).