I went in knowing nothing about Green Lantern, and came out with a fair bit of respect for the concepts.
Concepts, plural? I dunno, I just got back from seeing it tonight knowing nothing about the Green Lantern previously, too. The movie has one 6th grade moral and hit it hard and repeatedly. Luckily for the movie, I actually agree with said Aesop of the day (courage is about conquering your fear, not having none in the first place), so it doesn't succumb to the problem many JRPGs do of "your moral is incomprehensible, ridiculous, hypocritical, or some dread combination thereof." But it isn't scoring actual concept points, either.
Anyway, uh, decent movie... yet also a tad meh. They totally cheat on some of the action scenes by just cutting the scene away and then... poof, we never return to the scene and nobody talks about how it ended. I guess they didn't want to draw attention to their plot holes, which is fine, but I'd rather they not be there in the first place.
Spoilers (ha like that matters, but I'll be cautious anyway):
How the hell do you write a sequel after Hal SINGLE-HANDEDLY slays a giant planet devouring fear entity. I'll grant he does it partially through trickery, which was cool, but he still stands up to him when Sinestro's elites apparently still got their souls sucked, and this is the Greatest Threat to the Core Ever (quote from the film!) and it's implied not even the Guardians of Oa could stop Paralax. Sure, there's the Yellow Ring for sequel villain bait, but that would presumably be a massive step down from "crazy Guardian who merges with fear entity." It'd be like if Luke kills the Emperor and then destroys the Spirit of the Dark Side of the Force in the first movie. If I'd been writing the movie, I'd have made Paralax be a "subversion from behind the scenes" sort of villain who enjoys making planets commit suicide because he thinks that's awesome, rather than OM NOM NOM. That way, there's always tons of schemes to foil and it's understandable if you don't fight him directly in the first movie.
Green Lantern's powers seem totally broken, and they couldn't find much to really use them creatively with. I'll grant that a lower-powed villain should just die to GL's overpoweredness, but against Paralax, it was all TEST OF WILL blooey where the actual form of the creations didn't seem to matter. Meh.
Minor quibble: "the ring is never wrong!" But... the lantern was made by the Guardians, and Hal mouths off to the Guardians about how they're wrong about Paralax. The Guardians made something less fallible then themselves? And with a name like "Sinestro" it's obvious who will be the villain if they do a sequel, so apparently the ring / lantern selection process can go awry. I'll just assume they were totally lying to cheer Hal up. If I was writing the script, I'd have had the conversation be more "do you want to make the ring's decision wrong or right? It's your choice. Either get on your feet, hero, or go cower in bed and admit defeat."
Another nitpick: I cannot complain too much as it was an attempt to make Token Mortal Ferris relevant, but missiles distracted Paralax? Really? The dude flew through space.
I do appreciate that the writers at least took Screenwriters 101, and had Act I prefigure Act V. That's something.
