Late last week it was announced that Ryan Reynolds, the man who once breathed life into Marvel Comics Deadpool, had been given the role of Hal Jordan in the upcoming Green Lantern movie. It now seems as if the GL movie is firing on all pistons with a big time leading man donning the ring and James Bond director Martin Campbell assigned to helm the epic sci-fi/comic book/adventure yarn.

I’m a big time Green Lantern fan, have been ever since I was a kid. Outside of Batman and Wolverine there was no other hero I’d have rather been than Green Lantern Of Sector 2814. The idea of a ring producing whatever I imagined was exciting to me as was the idea of being part of a galactic police force. I didn’t discover Alan Scott (the more magic based original Green Lantern) until much later so as far as I knew Hal Jordan was the first and best member of the Green Lantern world. With my devotion to the character so incredibly defined it follows that this movie news would drive me into fits of sheer ecstasy. Sadly though, it doesn’t. In fact I’m actually kind of bummed about it.

I don’t like comic book movies for the most part and I’m fully aware I’m in a minority there. To be honest the only comic book movies I have enjoyed were Superman, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Beyond those three I either hated films based on comics or I was just disappointed. I’m from the Alan Moore school of thinking that there are things done in comics that should be left there and I think Green Lantern tips into that arena. It’s not just a shallow idea that the movie will “suck” but rather an extensive collection of examples that prove why Green Lantern will be a poison pill for Hollywood.

To start Green Lantern is too peripheral a character to really get people excited to see the film. This has long been a DC Comics problem that most of their characters are peripheral outside of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman. For those of us who grew up loving comics Green Lantern is as important as any DC character but for the mainstream audience he’s little more than a name they might recognize.

Some folks may claim that Iron Man is also a peripheral character and while that may be true to a degree Iron Man has some things going for it that Green Lantern doesn’t. First off (with the exception of a small War Machine story arc) Iron Man has always been about Tony Stark and his adventures as old shell-head.

After forty plus years people recognize both the name Tony Stark and Iron Man so there’s at least a wisp of interest there. Outside of that it’s just easier to bend and conform the comic book story to fit a movie simply because all you have to do is stick Tony Stark in some kind of adventure and then add Iron Man effects.

With Green Lantern you’re talking at least three separate Lanterns that have been mainstays of DC Comics. Starting with Alan Scott, moving into Hal Jordan and then Kyle Rainer. Most moviegoers don’t know any of those three by name and by default simply don’t care about the back-story. People knew Iron Man/Tony Stark had been a billionaire and a drunk and a flashy ladies man. You ask anybody outside the comic world what Kyle Rainer did for a living or for a brief history of Hal Jordan they’ll probably ask you who the hell that is.

That leaves the comic book and nerd population to fill the seats and there you have splintered dedications about the book. Some say it should be about Alan Scott since he was the first while others say Hal Jordan is the only one a movie should be done about. There’s even a small percentage that want a Kyle Rainer movie, I know it sounds absurd but it’s true. Collectively we couldn’t make Green Lantern a hit so splintered we’d have even less of a chance. This is all of course based on the idea that the movie doesn’t suck.

That brings us to the incredibly dense and interwoven history of the Green Lanterns. Where exactly is a film version going to start? If it goes with the origin of Hal Jordan then it would have to include Sinestro which would mean including the Green Lantern Corps and by that time you have a huge plot line that will confuse the uninitiated while simultaneously boring those of us who know the history cold. The filmmakers could try to do a Parallax (the yellow entity that possess Hal Jordan turning him evil) story line but then they’d have to tell Jordan’s origins and history in flashbacks, which would quickly become too intricate for the popcorn movie crowd.

Remember, people want to go to movies like this to be entertained become incredibly involved in a rich historical tapestry they don’t care about. Besides where would that story end? When Jordan goes into the sun or afterwards when he becomes The Spectre? It’s hard to do one without the other.

Sticking with the origin story you then have to explain the crux of Green Lantern’s powers. No audience member who isn’t a comic reader is going to care that the green power comes from imagination and will but that yellow light means fear which can counteract the green and so on. When I start explaining that to people they tune out imagine how pissed they’ll be if they’ve paid for it.

You also have no direct well-known villain. Batman has Joker, Superman has Lex Luthor the X-Men have Magneto the list goes on. With Green Lantern, other than Sinestro, you have no real villain and I’m here to tell you that Sinestro is not well known.  Wolverine had no real well known adversary to in order to turn a buck Fox threw everything but the kitchen sink into the movie. Green Lantern doesn’t have that many kitchen sinks to throw into it. To solve these dilemmas those in charge would start cutting and splicing the story to fit a film and do we, as fans really want that?

One of the best things about Green Lantern is that the comics slide from one genre to the other. At times it’s a personal drama, then it becomes a straight adventure comic, a sci-fi story, a political intrigue read and so on. You simply don’t have enough time to do that in a movie so Green Lantern would be reduced to a special effects eye candy movie, a fact that does a terrible injustice to the lineage and history of the character.

In movie scripting terms Batman works because the comic was mostly a dark detective story, Superman a sci-fi adventure and Wolverine a badass action comic. The X-Men is a comic title with the same rich history as Green Lantern and look how badly those movies were handled. Huge chunks rewritten or excluded simply to make the film more palatable to movie audiences really hurt those movies. Remember I’m judging them by quality not the box office receipts.