In brightest day,
In darkest night,
No evil shall escape my sight.

Let all who worship evil's might
Beware my power,
Green Lantern's light!
--Green Lantern Corps Oath.

Find an actor who can deliver those six lines without a wink, flippant-shrug or slightest hint of irony, a team of filmmakers who understands that the recitation of such needs and deserves to be framed as the relative equivalent of 'They may take our lives but they'll never take our freedom,' 'With great power comes great responsibility,' 'May the Force be with you' and 'The list is life' and a musical composer to score the moment with appropriate gravitas and you'll have a good Green Lantern movie. Seriously. This is the 'is the shark scary?' core of this particular franchise - if this works and the movie around it is operating at about the same level, the movie works. Period.

Latino Review (hat-tip: Chud) has a modestly spoiler-free review of what's apparently the screenplay for Warner's all-but officially in-production Green Lantern movie.

What I like most about the prospect of a Green Lantern movie is that it's just an ever so slightly skewed version of the traditional superhero yarn thanks to the rules of the character. The Green Lantern Corps are an intergalactic police force, not vigilantes or hyper-idealistic do-gooders. It helps power through some of the usual genre hangups; silly costume? 'I was issued this, it's my uniform' and removes the need for too much story contrivance; anything you want Green Lantern to do or avoid doing can be chalked up to orders and regulations.

What details are provided are encouragingly fan friendly: Hal Jordan as the main Green Lantern, Abin Sur, Oa and Kiliwog all accounted for, moderately-obscure heavy Hector Hammond as a principal baddie, apparent out-loud mentions of both Guy Gardner and Clark Kent (!!!) and a tease about golden age Green Lantern Alan Scott playing some kind of part. So far, so good. Apparently Carol Ferris is already in the story as Jordan's girflfriend, which could potentially give the hoped-for franchise the most interesting recurring female role in recent superhero movies because in the books, Carol undergoes a tragic transformation into the supervillianess Star Sapphire.

I am curious to see how Warners handles the innevitable race issue that's going to come up down the road. Historically, there have been five (human) Green Lanterns, Jordan being the best known and generally favored among fans. However, Green Lantern John Stewart, the first black man to wear the uniform/ring, was drafted as the resident Lantern on the four seasons of "Justice League" cartoons to help balance out what would've been an otherwise lily-white principal cast, which were probably watched by more people than read Green Lantern comics by a pretty big margin. It's been said that, thanks to the character's appearance on this series, the John Stewart Green Lantern is probably the best known black superhero right now. So one wonders what fans who came to the franchise from that starting-point will think of the movie Green Lantern being another white guy.