5 Villains We Want to See in the Green Lantern Corps Movie

Given the failure of the first Green Lantern movie, the forthcoming Green Lantern Corps is probably the superhero movie that most needs to do well in order to keep the property alive cinematically.

That’s also important to DC because Green Lantern is inherently something that’s probably too expensive to reasonably do on TV, so in terms of other-media, you’ve got animation, video games, and movies.

All that said, it should be a no-brainer to make a Green Lantern film that holds up to a lot of the same criteria that made this year’s Suicide Squad a huge hit: cool characters, bold visuals, big effects, and ties to the larger DC Extended Universe.

A key to making it work, though, will be the villains. In the last outing, Ryan Reynolds was fine as Hal and supporting characters like Kilowog and Sinestro were close to perfect, but poor plotting, lazy dialogue and (most of all) terrible villains sunk the whole thing.

So how can they improve next time out?

We have ideas…!

MONGUL

This character started out his life as a Superman rogue and is probably more interesting there…but it seems unlikely they’ll ever get far enough down his list of baddies to use him in Superman film, so instead, why not give him to the franchise that would allow him to be a big threat, and to really explore the world he rules with an iron fist?

With Superman, he can fight alien menaces but at the end of the day people expect to see him in Metropolis. A full-on sci-fi battle with Mongul on board a traveling Warworld is great for the comics but probably wouldn’t work in a Superman film.

For the Green Lantern Corps, though? That makes perfect sense.

ATROCITUS

With deep ties to the history of the Green Lantern Corps, a backstory that would allow the Corps to question the wisdom and authority of the Guardians (a staple in Green Lantern stories for decades now), and probably the coolest look of just about any major DC villain created in the last ten years, Atrocitus would not only make for an interesting, compelling, and sympathetic villain but potentially set up future challenges by laying the groundwork for things like Guy Gardner as a Red Lantern.

This is a character who’s appearing in Injustice 2 in the near future, and has been playing a major role as the primary antagonist in the first arc of DC’s Green Lanterns, so clearly DC sees the value in him. It would almost be more surprising NOT to see the Lantern powered by rage and driven by vengeance brought to the big screen.

ENTROPY

Entropy is both a force of nature AND a literal, physical villain you can punch in the Green Lantern universe.

When Krona, a rogue scientist who was part of the same race that gave us the Guardians of the Universe, tried to pierce the veil and see the beginning of time, he unwittingly unleashed chaos and evil into the universe, dooming it to destruction.

(Because once entropy is introduced, all things tend toward it.)

Millennia later, Krona would be a periodic thorn in the side of the Green Lantern Corps — and while Gerard Jones’s Green Lantern run from the ’90s may not be one of the most-talked-about periods in the character’s history, his story “The Third Law” was fantastic — and dealt with Krona returning, having harnessed the very power he unleashed into the universe and acting as the one-man force of nature called “Entropy.”

Hell, a loose adaptation of The Third Law might be the perfect Green Lantern Corps movie in some ways, as it would allow the filmmakers to recap some necessary origin and mythology stuff without having to tell the same story of the first Earthman getting his ring all over again.

NEKRON

This lord of the underworld has only appeared in a few Green Lantern stories, but he’s got a great, creepy look and is one of the most powerful character the Lanterns have ever faced.

He’s also the driving force behind Blackest Night, probably the biggest Green Lantern story ever told, and a potentially really cool thing to explore in the cinematic universe. Could Superman — who died and returned — make a cameo as a Black Lantern? What about seeing Jason Todd, Slipknot, El Diablo, and others known to be dead in the world of the DC Extended Universe?

Before you could even consider Blackest Night, though, Nekron would have to make an appearance somewhere and establish himself. Even just a cameo — perhaps as something even the villain is scared of? — could work.

THE SINESTRO CORPS

At the end of Green Lantern, they finished off a movie that would go on to become one of the most-mocked in superhero movie history with a tantalizing glimpse at what could have been — Sinestro taking a yellow ring for himself.

In the comics, of course, Sinestro was drummed out of the Green Lantern Corps and ended up wielding a yellow ring as a villain for years. Like any good villain, he believed himself to be the “true” hero, and so eventually set about recruiting others to his cause. 

The Sinestro Corps is what the Green Lanterns would be like if they were uglier, meaner, and wanted to terrorize and cow everyone into obediance. Not only is The Sinestro Corps War probably the best standalone Green Lantern story ever told, but given the current climate of distrust of authority, there’s likely a lot of good storytelling to be found in some of those metaphors.