Green Lantern/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Comics:

  • Alien Scrappy: G'Nort.
  • Awesome Ego: Not without justification, but Krona still refuses to listen to anyone who tells him he's wrong.
  • Broken Base: Fueled largely by DC, who shunted Hal Jordan and the rest of the Corps out of the spotlight to make way for Kyle Rayner, who himself was counter-shunted when Hal Jordan returned and Kyle became a supporting character.
    • To say nothing of John Stewart's fanbase, largely earned from his role as the Green Lantern for the DCAU.
  • Complete Monster: A lot of the known Sinestro Corps members do not seem to have any redeeming or positive qualities, neither are most of them Affably Evil or Laughably Evil. No surprise there, as they're supposed to spread fear.
    • Romat-Ru is probably the worst the Corps has to offer. He's even regarded as "the vilest being in the galaxy". Case in point: When the police arrested him, they found, in his house, over a thousand skeletons, all of them from children.
    • Without the rings to force compassion onto them, the members of the Indigo Tribe have none themselves. Every last one of them was a monster just like Black Hand (not counting Proselyte's host and Ray Palmer).
    • Although most Black Lanterns are twisted versions of when they were alive, Deathstorm takes the cake, to the point one wonders how something that lacks emotions could be like this.
    • Mongul II. His casual and completely needless murder of Miri Riam's husband really stands out. To put things in perspective, his dad was at best a Magnificent Bastard and at worst a Complete Monster; Mongul II is an all-around monster who killed his sister so she wouldn't bother him, killed Miri's husband even though the guy would let him snack on their food, not to mention what he was going to do to Mother Mercy.
    • At first, Krona appeared almost sympathetic when one considered what the Guardians were like. Then, we found out that he was the one who reprogrammed the Manhunters to wipe out an entire sector just so he could prove a point.
  • Crazy Awesome: Larfleeze will steal the coat off your back and claim it was his all along.
    • And Dex-Starr will puke explosive blood all over your new shag carpet unless you buy him the right catfood.
    • Salaak, with the whole "robot catgirl threesome" thing.
  • Creator's Pet: Kyle Rayner early in his career. John Stewart in the Justice League book. Hal Jordan during Green Lantern: Rebirth.
  • Dork Age: Guy Gardner's "Warrior" incarnation, though he also underwent a whole lot of Character Development during this time.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Many characters qualify, but Guy Gardner is the most notable due to the fact that DC tends to treat him as the black sheep of the Earth born Green Lanterns. Other examples are Kilowog, Ch'p, G'nort, Dex-Starr, Larfleeze, and Mogo.
  • Ethnic Scrappy: Early Silver Age Tom Kalmaku, then known as Pieface, a slang term for Inuits.
  • Foe Yay: Between Hal Jordan and Sinestro, according to Yaoi Fangirls.
  • Flanderization: The Guardian's hypocrisy, intolerance of emotion, and total inability to make good decisions have been greatly exaggerated in recent years.
  • Genius Bonus: Sinestro is usually depicted as wearing his ring on his left hand. For those unfamiliar with Italian (or Latin), the masculine for "sinister" is "sinistro", which means on the left hand, but also wrong, perverse, unfavorable, etc etc etc.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Flash once had a villain called the Rainbow Raider, who could make hard-light rainbows and induce emotions in people by coloring them. He'd fit right in with the emotional spectrum retcon, but sadly, he's dead, so the only time he's been used since then was as yet another Black Lantern.
    • There was an episode of Aladdin The Animated Series which featured multicoloured emotion-inducing rings - including a yellow one which made you cowardly, an orange one that made you self-destructively greedy and a red one which made you suicidally angry - well before the Red and Orange Lanterns, and quite probably the modern Sinestro Corps, came onto the scene. (Though to be fair, the association of cowardice with yellow and rage with red are extremely old, though the orange=greed thing is kind of strange, since orange has few cultural connotations beyond "Dutch.")
  • Jerkass Woobie: According to the Christmas comics, Larfleeze, as it's revealed he misses his family above everything.
  • Magnificent Bastard: The current version of Sinestro.
    • Way before that, Sinestro was able to take control of Space Sector 3600 after telling the sector 1,001 tales to prove that the Guardians were weak, and together, they were able to destroy countless galaxies and destroyed Kilowog's rebuilt planet, until they were stopped by the Corps.
  • Memetic Badass:
    • In certain sections of the Internet, Rot Lop Fan is this, being a Green Lantern despite not even grasping the concept of "light" or "color" because his race sees with sound.
    • Guy Gardner is a straighter example, one which would delight him immensely if he knew about it.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • Hal sure does get hit on the head a lot, doesn't he? Oh, and they all have nice butts.
    • "Help me, Green Lantern. I have no arms." * PUNCH!*
    • More recently, the color-coded rings have spawned a takeoff of the "Advice Dog" meme. Examples:
    • Hal Jordan WILL FUCK ANYTHING!
    • RAGECAT. He's in ur sector, killing ur Lanterns.
    • "Mogo doesn't socialize."
  • Moral Event Horizon: Krona reprogramming the Manhunters to slaughter an entire sector just to prove a point.
    • The Guardians mind raping Ganthet for having a personality, following War of the Green Lanterns.
  • Never Live It Down: Being weak to yellow.
    • Guy Gardner's One Punch knockout at the hands of Batman, Hal Jordan's relationship with the underage Arisia. And Hal Jordan being possessed by Parallax.
    • Hal, at least, got a Retcon escape from that: 13 years old on Graxos IV (Arisia's home planet) equals 240 years old on Earth.
    • John Stewart: Letting Xanshi get blown up. Blowing up Mogo recently cannot have helped fix a "Destroyer of Worlds" reputation.
    • Many readers (and a few writers) seem to have trouble forgetting that Kyle Rayner's girlfriend was the trope namer for Stuffed in The Fridge, and his seeming parade of dead girlfriends has become a source of dark humor amongst the fanbase.
  • Nightmare Fuel: A number of things have popped up.
    • Good ol' Alan Moore created the prison planet Ysmault, and populated it with Eldritch Abominations who prophecized the end times of the Corps.
    • Half the crap drawn by Ethan Van Sciver. Especially his version of Parallax-possessed heroes.
    • The entire Sinestro Corps, in a literal sense.
    • Parallax. Being an Emotion Eater, it's a primary weapon. Plus his appearance looks pretty demonic.
    • Kryb. Her method of instilling fear? She kills parents and steals their infant children for herself.
      • Even worse, she genuinely loves the children in question. Truly and sincerely, with all her heart. To the point that a Star Sapphire can use her love as a tether to track the children in question. High Octane Nightmare Fuel should simply not be crossed with woobiedom!
    • Romat-Ru. He killed thousands of children.
  • Older Than They Think: It's an FAQ where casual viewers confuse Justice League's Green Lantern John Stewart with all others and ask "Isn't Green Lantern black?," even though Hal first appeared a dozen years before John.
  • Replacement Scrappy: Kyle Rayner to Hal Jordan fans. Hal Jordan to Kyle Rayner fans. Both to fans who only know about Green Lantern from the Justice League cartoons.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Kyle Rayner, as written by Grant Morrison in JLA.
    • Grant Morrison asked Ron Marz "How would Rayner work in a team book as opposed to a solo one?" The characters were very similar, and Kyle's era was a best seller until Ron Marz left the book. and by that time Morrison was no longer writing JLA. It would be BETTER to say he became a Scrappy during the Judd Winick / Ben Raab Era and Ron Marz and Geoff Johns rescued him from the Scrappy Heap. The only people to whom he was ever a scrappy were die-hard Hal Jordan fans. Kyle Rayner was the star of the Green Lantern book for ten years, and thus had an entire generation of his own fans who couldn't care less about Hal Jordan and thus never saw him as The Scrappy in the first place. To those fans, it was Hal Jordan, and not Kyle Rayner, who was Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
    • Anyone who was around for the time of Emerald Twilight can say that Kyle was very much a Scrappy when he was first introduced. Morrison's JLA run went a long way towards establishing him as an interesting character.
  • Rooting for the Empire: Sinestro has been getting some attention in this manner recently, mainly due to him being a very charismatic villain and his arguments against the Guardians being too involved with their mysteries and prophecies to do an effective job policing the cosmos.
  • Straw Vulcan: The Guardians have been used this way in recent stories, with their rejection of emotion being emphasized at the same time as their inability to run their own corps.
  • Tear Jerker: When the Butcher looks into Atrocitus' mind to find out what makes him angry, we see a flashback him with his daughter, telling her they'll be a family forever, followed by one when the Manhunters attacked.
  • Unfortunate Implications: Kilowog's been a popular character since his debut, and several Lanterns in the comics informally nicknamed him after the last syllable in his name, with the writers presumably unaware that this is a racial slur in England. In the 2011 film, he's being voiced by a black man.
  • What an Idiot!: Hey Mongul--Sinestro created the friggin' rings; of course he'd have a manual override in case of an attempted coup!
  • The Woobie: Holy shit did Karu-Sil have a horrifying childhood.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: All Red Lanterns are victims of something traumatic.

2011 Film:

  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: While the fandom's reaction to the movie has been mixed, the reveal that Rot Lop Fan would be in the film has been met with universal delight.
    • The first trailer was a bit underwhelming, showing more of the Earth-bound sitcom moments rather than what the fans wanted. The second trailer showed the constructs (including the artillery gun), Kilowog, Tomar-Re and Sinestro and was wildly praised as being a vastly superior trailer and gathering interest in the film.
  • Box Office Bomb
  • Critical Backlash: If you read some online reviews like at Amazon.com, a lot of people are saying "I liked the movie, I don't get why the critics absolutely hated it..." making this a strange example of having both Hype Backlash and Critical Backlash.
  • Critical Dissonance: The critics absolutely blasted it, while the fans had a more moderately positive impression (as a movie it may have been flawed, but it does do right as a Green Lantern story).
  • Hype Backlash: The movie was supposed to be DC's response to Iron Man. But it wound up getting a mixed response.
  • Moral Event Horizon: When Hector Hammond turns two giant flamethrowers on a US Senator and roasts him alive. To make it worse, the senator is his father.
  • One-Scene Wonder: Kilowog in the film. In fact, most anything involving the GL Corps in the film.
  • Special Effects Failure: Conspicuous CG is mildly invoked with the Lantern uniform and constructs. They're alien energy objects; they shouldn't look wholly realistic. That said, some of the non-alien effects have no such excuse.
  • Tainted by the Preview: Many fans were not encouraged by the trailers, partly due to the special effects being underwhelming and also due to the "Iron Man" vibe.
  • Tough Act to Follow: Not necessarily a bad movie, but being the first major DC film after The Dark Knight, Green Lantern had a lot to live up to comparatively speaking. The comparison isn't exactly fair in the first place as although being "superhero" movies within that spectrum they are in wildly different genres. The Dark Knight is a crime/vigilante drama while Green Lantern is a Sci-fi Space Opera.
    • Getting to theaters behind Thor didn't help things either.
  • Uncanny Valley: The "painted" on mask and CGI suit never quite looked right to a lot of viewers. Although considering the uniforms are energy constructs, this may have been a deliberate design choice. The glowing blue eyes as part of Hal's "disguise" are perhaps the worst part.
  • The Untwist: In the 2011 film, a yellow ring is forged, and... No one ever actually uses it. Sinestro is still with the Corps at the end and even ends up rescuing Hal after he collapses post-victory. Of course, he does put it on during the credits...
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