True story: The first time I saw a trailer for the new Green Lantern movie (2011, directed by Martin Campbell), a little girl a couple of rows behind me said to her parents: "That's not right! Green Lantern is black!" All hail the power of television, because the John Stewart iteration from Justice League is the version of the character that has had the most mass-media exposure, in spite of DC Comics' best efforts. John Stewart supposedly makes an appearance in the movie, but I didn't spot him. Perhaps as a kind of sop for going back to a whitebread Green Lantern, the movie makes room for Amanda Waller, head of DC's version of S.H.I.E.L.D., but it doesn't solve what may be a fundamental miscalculation on the part of the filmmakers if their intent is to build a franchise on a familiar character, because the Hal Jordan iteration of Green Lantern hasn't been the dominant one to the world at large for more than a decade.
I realize that I'm speaking in code. I apologize to any non-comics geeks out there. But then, this is the kind of movie that's really tailored for an audience of comics nostalgists with deep knowledge of the material. If a general audience can penetrate its mysteries, well, bully for them.
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