Green Lantern: Beware My Power DC animated movie

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by Coola Yagami

Does Siniestro even have personal beef with Stewart, other than just wanting to kill all the Green Lanterns? I always thought his personal beef was with Hal, and every time I see Siniestro in an animated series or movie as the Green Lantern villain but the Green Lantern is Jon instead of Hal, I always get that pesky feeling that the movie/show/whatever really should have been about Hal but 'we got too many whiteboys in there, someone just HAS to be black'. Same with Star Sapphire, isn't her beef also with Hal?

Yes in both cases. Although Sinestro and John did have a few personal run-ins during "Guy Gardner: Reborn" and "GL: Mosaic". But that was after Sinestro was dead (or assumed to be), and his spirit would repeatedly try and possess John's body in order to control him and stir up trouble. In "Reborn" it was so he could reclaim the yellow power ring off of Sinestro's own corpse before Gardner could get to it - which he failed at, because GUY F'N GARDNER - but I forget specifically what his goal was in the one Mosaic issue. I remember it being one of the better issues of Mosaic, but it's been years since I looked at it so I just don't remember the details.

Even then, though, it wasn't so much "personal" between Sinestro and John. More just that it had been established that John was weaker of will than Hal or most of the other Lanterns - partly because of that whole thing where John had let Xanshi get blown up through his arrogance, a failure that affected him for years afterwards - and so it made him more prone to being a puppet for Sinestro's spirit. As far as one-on-one run-ins, they didn't really have that many. He really is more of Hal's opposite number than anyone's. If there's another Lantern besides Hal who Sinestro could reasonably be called an "arch-nemesis" of, it would be Gardner. Gardner bested Sinestro's soul in a battle of wills, Gardner stole his yellow ring... these were not exactly small victories. But even then, it was just a few stories here and there.

But yeah, Sinestro is Hal's villain. Star Sapphire, too. The entire tragedy of Star Sappire is that it's Hal's ex-girlfriend Carol, possessed. I *guess* you could change it so that she's simply the ex-girlfriend of whichever GL the story is centered around... but that isn't how the story goes.

The problem with using John as the primary GL in any spin-off media is... he simply doesn't have a rogues gallery of his own or any stories featuring him that truly stand out. The most well-known and character-defining story in his entire history is still "Cosmic Odyssey"... in which he gets supremely overconfident and lets an entire planet die. His biggest solo moment is one of total failure where he let billions die.

Very hard to translate that character to other media and feature him prominently as a solo act. He's never BEEN that, and so he's never fully established himself as anything other than an appendage to the other GLs of Earth.

It doesn't surprise me that the "solution" some writers would settle on is simply to transplant enemies and supporting cast members from other Lanterns onto him... but I still don't like it. It exposes the inherent flaw in the character: He was created entirely to be "The Black Green Lantern", that's all he ever was, and he's never grown past being that, and only that. It's not the fault of the character, but it does make him a lousy choice for spin-off media. He's just never done anything important.