Okay, I feel like I have to elaborate on my previous post. Justice league doom did such a good job portraying Hal. It's not very often we see Hal afraid of something which is one of my biggest problems with the current green lantern mythos because truly no one is ever completely fearless. Even as a green lantern, Hal (and all GL's for that matter), are afraid of something. In the movie when Hal thinks he lost Carol he is crushed and quite frankly feels undeserving of his light all while simultaneously keeping to his original personality, It makes his character seem much more two dimensional. We have very few adaptations of Hal facing his fear unless we are talking about Green lantern Knight Terrors (2023). Yes, in this book Hal faced his fear but it was very short lived and really did nothing to flesh out his character. The difference between Justice League Doom and Back In Action is Hal’s reaction to his fears.
As I mentioned previously in JL Doom Hal felt undeserving of his title as a Green Lantern but in Knight terrors (2023) Jeremy Adams brushed it off as moments where Hal made a choice to push through which is fine until he immediately starts physically fighting his fear of Parallax. I understand what Adams was going for but it just doesn’t work because Hal goes from being scared by his deepest traumas then to almost immediately chasing said fears like a Tom and jerry game of tag. The distress Hal feels in JL Doom is set in the real world unlike in GL (2023) Knight Terrors which is essentially an over exaggerated nightmare and isn’t a gradual build up to his fear unlike Justice League Doom which was explained by Batman as it was apart of a contingency plan in this film. The point of a Green Lantern is willpower and if you are truly afraid of nothing do you even have will in the first place? Would that not make you a yellow lantern? Now, in no way am I hating on the current GL continuity because it’s not just Adams who makes this mistake. In fact, I’ve actually noticed it the most in Geoff John’s writing.
Everything I have read from John’s (and I've read a lot), he has a hard time fleshing out characters who aren’t Hal but even then he also makes Hal seem fearless. Hate it or not this is why Emerald Twilight was so important to Hal's character. Was it rushed? Most definitely but after losing Coast City he went off the deep end out of grief and dare I say fear as well. To hammer this in when Geoff Johns wrote Green Lantern Rebirth and reconnected the origin of parallax he made the literal cosmic entity of fear possess Hal.
Hal Jordan is best when his vulnerability is shown but also when he overcomes it and I think this goes for most Green Lanterns as well especially Jessica Cruz. Jess is probably the best example of this which is what makes her such a relatable and compelling character. Her battles with anxiety and her struggle to control the green light of will makes her stand out from her peers who were all naturals from the start. I think DC needs to start showing more Green Lanterns weaknesses and that vulnerability is why Hal’s nature in JL Doom is so important. Hal Jordan is cocky, confident, a good leader, and he’s got a lot of Willpower but he’s more than that and this movie shows that. This is why I think Justice League Doom is the best movie interpretation of Hal.
okay I had to think about this one a little bit because my specialty is hal's relationship with his father, but he's definitely got issues with his mom too.
i think a lot of it is the emotional burden of having to carry someone else's emotional burden. after his dad died, i think there was a lot of strain on his relationship with his mother because of his dad's abusiveness and his death causing a lot of hardship and grief for their family. of course, there's also the main struggle between them which is hal dreaming of becoming a pilot and his mother being adamantly against it. he definitely has some deep-seeded resentment built up for her, even if he doesn't realize it and doesn't feel it in a malicious way necessarily
