6/10
ALRIGHT, I SAY ALRIGHT
4 April 2023
If you're not caught up on my lore, I have an unhealthy Green Lantern fixation on these characters. There'll be spoilers but I don't think anyone cares anymore.

What better way to start the movie than by killing off the entire corps, every guardian, and blowing up their planet. I remember seeing people on twitter complain so much how one of the guys in charge of this movie admitted he's only read a single John Stewart comic but I can't even blame him since everyone decided his personality consists of being a veteran and nothing else after the Justice League cartoons. John's a character defined by loss and they featured this in the worst way possible by emphasizing his military background; while the death of his wife and the destruction of Xanshi were events he couldn't stop, he willfully joined the military in a country people didn't even want him in. His architect background's not even mentioned even though it's a reason he was personally chosen by the guardians and no one else just like in the movie, in trying to fulfill the master builder prophecy and make a mortal guardian.

Instead they gave him Kyle Rayner's origin, added in Green Arrow for fan service (Hard-Traveling Heroes is a very good comic with Hal and Ollie), and kept emphasizing Hal was the greatest almost as a way to soften fan reaction when he gets killed at the end (and overpowered too for some reason by someone who had the ring for a few days). I guarantee you that stupid Rann-Thanagar war plot was only included so they could awkwardly tease him and Hawkgirl at the end despite them having no chemistry for the sake of the JL cartoons again. Adam Strange was altered a lot for the plot and every character to do with him became a plot device that got killed off when they fulfilled their purpose. They specified Adam's wife was dead but that his daughter was only missing but then they killed him off so the poor girl isn't getting found.

Parallax being included at all was always going to be controversial but I mostly hate how Sinestro became a mustache-twirling villain again. The 2000s comics were basically dedicated to fleshing out these two and now it's further cemented in people's minds that they're two-dimensional. What was the point of including Sinestro Corps members if they aren't using rings at all and why did they have to kill all of them?

It's a okay watch but the more I think about it the less it gets characters right. If you're into cookie-cutter superhero movies, you're probably in the right spot.
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