The only superhero movie I ever fell asleep in the theater to.

I feel bad for the die hard GL fans...they deserve better.

Green Lantern is a harder sell than Batman or Superman as it is a more complex concept.  Instead of one guy motivated by responsibility or grief/revenge you get a whole group of wierd aliens chosen by magic rings who fight galactic evil because they have no fear.  (And why being fearless should motivate you to fight evil instead of doing 100 other things with your life is unclear.)

And Hal Jordan is not shown being without fear.  He has no fear of physical danger, but he seems to be afraid of everything else in his life and whines about it constantly.  His important, well paying job and beautiful, rich, talented girlfriend give him no self confidence and he seems to be trying to sabotage everything good in his life in order to prove he's a failure.

In short, he's an unsympathetic mess.  Instead of rooting for the underdog, you want to shake him and tell him to get over himself.

Which was my biggest problem with the movie.  Somehow when Peter Parker struggled with confidence issues I wanted to give him a hug and comfort him.  Hal Jordan made me want to scream with frustration.

That's a script issue and really, 90% of what's wrong with any movie can be traced back to the script.  Green Lantern tried to do too much, introducing the concept of the Green Lantern Corps to the uninitiated and also trying to set up all the characters in Jordan's earthly life and oh yeah, squeeze in a plot somewhere.

BTW, I found Hector Hammond a more sympathetic character than Hal Jordan.  Hammond had genuine issues which he used the acquisition of superpowers to address while Jordan used the awesome power of the magic ring to show off to his friends and then try to deny his responsibilities because he thought training with the Corps would be too hard.  Boo hoo.  If Jordan had been written as a more stand up guy it would have been a much better film.

the way Hal Jordan was written for this movie was just not in line with that the character IS in the comic, which is the biggest mystake that could've been made.

The script was obviously terrible but in the end, if the essence of the character isn't portrait in the movie, no matter who you have as an actor, it will still fail.

I'm still saying Ryan Reynolds is NOT Hal Jordan and this movie proved it. Yes it's not entirelly his fault but, he's also not the best choice for the character so it does't help.

Karas1, I would disagree with you the fact that GL is a harder sell...think of Iron Man or even the Hulk as a movie on it's own, the characters were knowned to a certain degree but the script and directors made the difference and GL did not take that into acount so when the movie came out, it got horrific reviews and THAT'S what killed the ''sell'' of the movie.

If they make a 2nd one, let's hope the budget is smaller, a better script and they actuallyread a few of the GL comics to understand better who Hal Jordan REALLY is and not a joke man who miss his mommy and whines like a biatch all the time.

I agree with karas1. She convinced me in the Weekly DVD comments. Actually now that you mention it Hector was a lot more sympathetic until he started killing people at least.

jedibanner, I read comics too and in my opinion Hal Jordan was actually one of the blandest characters for many years (I'd add Barry Allen too).  I think personality wise you could probably swap out Hal, Barry, and Ray Palmer and their personalities were so vanilla that you wouldn't be able to tell which is which if you couldn't see them.  I think they did a lot of character development more recently with Hal that distinguishes him a bit more, but Kyle Raynor might have been a better fit for a more sympathtic character.  Kyle may have had too much of a Peter Parker vibe though (stuggling artist / struggling photographer).

Bland characters are why marvel began surpassing DC comics in the late 1960s early 1970s...hal Jordan, Barry Allen, Ray palmer, Carter Hall...a bunch of white bread characters...Contrast them with Peter parker, Tony Stark, Ben Grimm, Johnny Storm...just a huge difference.  Is it any wonder why DC went bananas in the 80's/90s by killing Barry, turning Hal into parallax, etc...

Jedi, the Hulk is a more well known character than Green Lantern.  There was a long running TV series about him.  It's old, but reruns are forever and everybody has seen an episode or two of it at some point.  And the Hulk isn't terribly complicated.  Bruce Banner hulks out when he gets angry, end of story.

Iron Man, I agree, was probably an unknown to most non comics readers before the film came out.  But it was a really excellent film and Robert Downey Jr rocked.  It probably would still have been a better film than Green Lantern with a different main actor due to the script was better.  And Reynolds is no Robert Downey Jr.  But the concept of Iron Man is still, I think, easier than the Green Lantern Corps.

Don't mistake me, Green Lantern as a character isn't that difficult.  A guy with a magic ring fights crime.  OK, we can go with that.  And maybe the first Green Lantern film should have stuck with portraying that and let the noobs get a handle on the character before introducing wierd aliens.  But once you introduce Oa and the Guardians and various Green Lanterns from various planets it gets complicated.

Now I'd hardly consider myself a Green Lantern expert.  I don't think I've ever read an issue of Green Lantern and am mostly familliar with the Green Lantern mythos and the various Lanterns from their appearances in other DC books.  I'm far more familliar with Guy Gardener and Jon Stewart than Hal Jordan.  But I do know that self confidence was not an issue for Jordan.  He was without fear in all areas of his life and never doubted that he was in the right.  His bigger problem was admitting mistakes and having too large an ego.  He was a bit of a jerk.

Maybe they thought this character would be unsympathetic because that was not the character Reynolds played.  The cringing whiner in the movie was the complete opposite of the Hal Jordan I'm familliar with.  They went too far in the opposite direction, making the Jordan in the movie obnoxious.  He was sunk in self pity and irritated the heck out of me.

Making a character somewhere in the middle of these two extremes would have been the way to go.

BTW, can somebody please explain this obsession with burying the dead I see in movies and TV shows.  Abin Sur dies in Jordan's arms and passes on the ring.  The authorities are on their way to investigate the crashed space ship and Jordan knows he will be in a huge amount of trouble if they catch him there.  Still, Jordan insists on taking time to bury Abin Sur's body.  On a public beach.  Now, not only is a beach, where waves wash the sand around, a stupid place to bury a body, there is no chance that the authorities will leave the body there.  And indeed, the body is quickly exhumed and sent off to be disected by scientists.  And the fact that somebody burried the body tips the authorities off that somebody was there and they should find that person and see what he knows.

Hal Jordan is a moron.

I understand showing respect for the dead, but people seem to have this obsession with it which I don't understand.

 Karas1 i could not agree with you more 

Green Lantern is a much tougher sell because you cannot just have him on earth saving the day and stopping crime. Green Lantern is about the whole universe and that being said is the difficult part about his character. The entire Corps could take hours to explain along with each characters own story. The problem mostly lied in the script with its cheesy lines and half ass love story but hey it still made its budget back. The movie was terrible and yes i am still going to buy it today but i just do not see a better way of introducing the character unless they decided just to stay on earth. That being said my hopes for Green Lantern 2 are high since the story should be done with earth and focus on the Sinestro Corps (if i am not mistaken i believe they are still going through with it?)

Btw Hal Jordan is the greatest Green Lantern.

This is how the first review for the Blu Ray should have gone instead of a fluff piece of garbage that could have been summed up by my 8 year old. ##Editors should at least read the review before it hits print

Karas1, I think even with the fact that the Hulk was well knowned, both movies didn't do as well as Iron Man or Thor or even Captain America but in the end, we both agree script and acting was at fault for this disaster.

As far as Hal Jordan's personality, we all agree it ain't what was portrait in this movie and that's what the suits missed at WB because they just wanted someone knowned and have that person pretend to be a hero instead of living as a hero (in the movie of course).

And say what you will, showing Oa and the guardiens isn't too complicated, it's doable...just not in the way they did it.

And about the burying thing...that's just one of the many bad things with this movie...logic or common sense isn't part of the Green Lantern universe.