Yeah, I honestly don't get what they are doing with this movie. Sure, can't adapt comics directly, creators want to leave their own mark and so on. I...
My pet conspiracy theory is that Johns wanted John killed and have Simon "replace" him as non-white male Lantern. Timing with Simon is too convenient...
DC, and Marvel I guess, always struggle to develop new environment for legacy characters and this is especially bad with GL since we have 10 of them...