Ranting and Rambling: It's Not Easy Being Green, aka "50 Shades of Green"

Any franchise that has multiple facets to it, or an ensemble cast, or any room for differing tastes is going to be heavily divided. You'll have people arguing over who the best Doctor was (even Peter Cushing has his die-hard fans), Kirk vs. Picard vs. Sisko vs. Janeway vs. Archer (not even getting into the new timeline), but there's really only one franchise where I start to lose my mellow a bit: Green Lantern.

You may not have heard of most of them, but someone will fight tooth and nail that the most obscure one's the best.

Green Lantern has an incredibly diverse but fierce fandom. Any GL sub-fandoms for a specific character can only agree with each other when they come together to hate another group, usually the group that likes the newest Green Lantern. In any adaptation, you have, like, at least three Lanterns to choose from, and that's just talking about the human ones. This leads to the inevitable firestorm that occurs in any DC adaptation that somehow involves a Green Lantern: Which one should be the "main" Green Lantern? Right off the bat, it's always going to be a human one, because I guess we're all species-ist. At that point, the list of Lanterns to choose from is as follows:

• Alan Scott
• Hal Jordan
• John Stewart
• Guy Gardner
• Kyle Rayner
• Simon Baz

I just want to state that I do not dislike any of these characters. They all have interesting qualities that lead to good storytelling. Let's narrow this list down.

Alan Scott
...is not a likely candidate, because he's most closely tied to Earth-2, WW2, and other such things. Those aspects of DC continuity aren't often used in TV adaptations or films, so he's not likely to show up.

Guy Gardner
...is probably the least likely candidate for one simple reason.

Thank you, Mr. McFly.

All of the characters fans are now thinking, "Wait a minute! Guy Gardner's willpower is just as strong, and his sense of duty is..." I'ma cut you off right there. You raise a valid point, whatever it may be.

However, Guy Gardner's abrasiveness and other character flaws quirks don't really work if he's the only Lantern. His character works so well because he's a side character who contrasts the other Lanterns, the occasional solo book aside.

To translate him to film, he'd be put through a story arc where he'd have to mature and lose that edge to conform to the standard arc for jerks this massive.

And if that happens, then Guy Gardner's story has been turned into Hal Jordan's story, so why not just use Hal Jordan at that point? And we wouldn't love Guy Gardner half as much if he wasn't the kind of person who'd do this:

Batman's actual response: "Tell Guy he needs a shave." And that's why he's Batman.

Simon Baz
...is also quite unlikely as a leading Lantern, as in the comics, he's still a rookie, and doesn't really work well with others. This is primarily because he's the newest Lantern, and needs a bit of time to grow and mature. (Yes, there's an elephant in the room, here, but that deserves it's own essay.)

This leaves us with the trio of Hal Jordan, John Stewart, and Kyle Rayner.

Either Hal or Kyle tend to be the primary Green Lantern in an adaptation, because they both had the most notable runs in the comics as the primary Green Lantern of Earth.

John Stewart
Sadly, John Stewart is most often summed up as "the black Green Lantern."

Not this guy.

This guy.

This means that when DC wants to adapt the predominantly caucasian Justice League into a cartoon, they tend to gravitate to John Stewart, which is one of the only things that can make the Kyle Rayner fans and Hal Jordan fans come together.

But again, I want to stress that I'm not saying John Stewart isn't a good character, quite the opposite.
John Stewart can be an incredible Green Lantern with unique qualities that set him apart from the others, including his backstory as a Marine and the quirks of his ring constructs.

Hypothetically, if I were in charge of a Justice League adaptation, and I had to decide to decide on a single Lantern, I'd bend the rules and choose a rotating cast of Hal, Guy, and John, as they would logically probably rotate JL duty.

But that's cheating. If I had to choose a single one?

...Hal Jordan, but that's simply because I think adapting the Parallax storyline could be really cool.

But... why have a single one? Why not have two?

My solution: Hal Jordan and Simon Baz. Simon has many interesting qualities that could be used quite well in a team dynamic, and he would represent a minority which, let's face it, does not get enough positive exposure in the media. And being a relatively new character, this would allow for more creative freedom as they wouldn't have to slavishly follow decades of source material.

And even then, why not at least have cameos from other Lanterns?

Basically, my point is that there are many choices for Green Lantern protagonists, and no matter which one you pick, someone will be upset. Still, at least we have Green Lantern: the Animated Series, which has been slowly but surely building up its roster of Lanterns. Why, I'm certain that soon, we'll get to see all five Earth Lanterns on screen, kicking butt and...

Well, ****.