HBO's upcoming Green Lantern series is a bold move considering the damage the brand has endured for over ten years. The 2011 film was received moderately well, then got more negative, and was somehow blindly regarded as one of the worst cinematic disasters in history. But is that true?

"Billions of years ago" is a tricky opening piece of dialogue. The 2011 Green Lantern film potentially overestimated audiences' ability to comprehend such a vast amount of world-building so quickly. The movie opens like a Saturday morning cartoon from the '80s or '90s. There were certainly many Green Lantern fans excited about the bold cosmic storyline that didn't exactly hold your hand but rather dropped you right in the middle of complex ancient mythology involving alien gods and demons. However, there were an equal amount of people confused and maybe a little overwhelmed by what was playing out before their eyes.

What exactly happened to the 2011 Green Lantern film, and will anything be salvaged for the upcoming HBO series? Why is there such a dark cloud hovering over the 2011 film? The answer resides in the wacky realm of creativity, human insecurity, and the clumsy power of grassroots hate campaigns on the internet.

Let's take a deep dive into the weird green glow of willpower and the terrifying realm of yellow fear.

Green Lantern is a Genre-Blender

Green Lantern 2011
Warner Bros. Pictures

While certainly not perfect, Martin Campbell's 2011 film is overlooked as a wildly inventive genre blender. The movie attempts to bridge sci-fi, horror, superhero, and comedy into a blockbuster extravaganza. Essentially, Green Lantern is an exorcist film, with all the ambiguity of religion stripped away. God is an alien species from Planet OA, and demons are cosmic entities exploiting energy fields where all the colors of the rainbow represent the different spectrums of emotion.

Campbell isn't a stranger to weird genre blenders. In 1991, he directed a movie for HBO called Cast a Deadly Spell that was way ahead of its time. It starred Fred Ward as Detective Harry Philip Lovecraft in a blend of film noir, horror, and fantasy with a world entrenched in Magic and spells. Think Who Framed Roger Rabbit but with magic instead of cartoons.

Green Lantern's power resides in a giant central battery, like a satellite that sends its signal into various smaller batteries. Those chosen to wield this power do so with a ring that requires a battery to maintain a charge, which lasts about a week. It enables the wearer to fly anywhere in the universe and will anything into creation using green energy known as constructs. Green is the color of willpower. Yellow represents fear and is particularly dangerous.

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While there remains a healthy dose of mysticism and magic, Green Lantern is about as close as DC gets to Star Trek or Star Wars. In fact, in 2017, IDW Comics published a crossover series where the Kelvin timeline Enterprise crew encounters the Green Lanterns. Their story mechanics function perfectly well in Gene Roddenberry's vision of the future. An endless multicultural army of sentient beings are chosen throughout the universe to wield the various powers associated with the different spectrums of emotion. A human had never been chosen until... Jack Black?

If you're a little confused, don't worry. You're not alone. Back when George Clooney was Batman, and Nicolas Cage was suiting up for Tim Burton's Superman that never came to be, Green Lantern went into development. Eventually, the script was penned by Conan O'Brien writer Robert Smigel with Jack Black in mind to play the lead. As DC's cinematic brand identity began to shift, Clooney's Batman may have been responsible for both Superman and Green Lantern projects being canceled.

While most fans happily lament the idea of Jack Black as the emerald knight, it actually reinforces one of the brand's greatest strengths which is anyone can be a Green Lantern. There's a sentient fish and a squirrel too. No joke!

Comedy is a valuable ingredient to make the absurdly high concept of Green Lantern work for most audiences. The mythology is dense, akin to The Lord of The Rings or Dune. The Guardians of the Universe (not to be confused with Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy) run what is, in essence, a galactic police department, harnessing what most believe is the ultimate power in the universe, the green energy of will.

Krona, a misguided guardian, abandons this belief pursuing the temptations of the yellow energy of fear. Once merged with this power, Krona becomes Parallax, which bears similarity to Marvel's solution to bringing Galactus to screen for the first time in Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

Instead of the enormous humanoid being, studio execs landed on a kind of amorphous storm to better speak to mass audiences. Parallax is sometimes portrayed as a giant winged demon in the Green Lantern comics. Many fans were unhappy with the on-screen design, although, in its defense, it is slightly more octopus inspired before it gets to earth. The massive head is another trait shared by Hector Hammond, played by Peter Sarsgaard in the movie. Hammond is the human form of Parallax, the person possessed by the demon. The more consumed by the entity, the larger his head becomes.

Embracing the Negativity

Green Lantern 2011 Flying
Warner Bros. Pictures

When the negativity started rolling in, Ryan Reynolds was quick to take the side of the haters. Critics seemed to express a lot of general fatigue toward the growing popularity of superhero cinema, and Green Lantern was an easy target. Maybe the green splat of the Rotten Tomato was just too tempting. Whatever the reason, the popular opinion was that this movie was a mess, and Ryan Reynolds saw an opportunity to embrace the negative PR, bashing the film at every possible turn.

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When production commenced on an expensive Deadpool sequence, Reynolds violently executes himself for performing in Green Lantern (exploding gore all over the Green Lantern script). Anyone holding onto a glimmer of positivity about the Green Lantern franchise was shot down at that moment. For fans, it was insult upon injury when Reynolds would later reveal that he had never watched Green Lantern. While Deadpool is a fun Marvel character, it's unfortunate that he pitted fans against one another at that moment. Green Lantern is a massively complex mythology linking much of the expanded DC universe with incredibly thoughtful science fiction and spiritual meaning.

HBO Steps In

Green Lantern Cliffhanger in Arrow Finale Brings 'Consequences' Teases David Ramsay
Warner Bros. Television

Luckily, HBO is now stepping in to rebuild the incredible potential of the Green Lantern brand in serialized television form. Fans rightfully questioned DC's initial choice to premiere the live-action Green Lantern with Hal Jordan instead of John Stewart. Green Lantern naturally lends itself to inclusion. It was surprising they didn't begin with a character who could have rallied a more diverse audience. The ground had already been paved by the Justice League cartoon series that ran for years on the Cartoon Network, featuring John Stewart as the Green Lantern member of the league.

However, neither Hal nor John will appear in the series, at least at the start. Finn Wittrock will star as Guy Gardner, with other Corps members like Jessica Cruz, Simon Baz, Sinestro, an original creation called Bree Jarta, and Alan Scott (the original 1940s Green Lantern). The project sounds like one of the most ambitious series in the history of HBO. It will also be an exercise in inclusivity featuring female, Muslim, gay, and a wide array of extraterrestrials as Green Lanterns.

While it is unlikely that the Martin Campbell film will have any connection to the new series, Ryan Reynolds returning to the role would be an earth-shaking move in the world of superhero fandom, if only for the fact that it goes completely against all conventional wisdom. Let's hope it happens!