DC Extended Universe (POST NO SPOILERS HERE!)

[Johnny]

Yeah that's my guess as well. I honestly don't know which GL they'll choose between Hal Jordan and John Stewart. The studio may be weary of the former character because of the bad 2011 movie but Hal is still the most consistently pushed GL. On the flip side an entire generation knows John Stewart as Green Lantern and he's extremely popular but unlike Hal isn't consistently pushed. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

My thoughts on this have always been to bring them both from the start. If they are supposed to be the stars of a Green Lantern team-up movie, you don't want to favor one over the other beforehand. WB better not make the mistake of having a "protagonist" Green Lantern in the DCEU who shows up in a Justice League movie first and then everyone else is his supporting cast in GLC. It won't work, if it's supposed to be a team-up movie, treat it accordingly.

As for the othe GL's we will probably see only one of them show up in the GLC movie in addition to Hal/John. Too many GL's could lead to an overcrowded movie. So between Kyle Rayner, Jessica Cruz, Simon Baz, Guy Gardner we'll see who gets the nod. Alan Scott probably has zero chances. I put them in order of highest to lowest chances. Although to be fair they can just use Hal and John and ignore the others until a sequel or something.

I'm thinking either Jessica or Kyle. Guy and Simon would probably get the shaft at first.

[WhipWhirlwind]

I just don't think Jessica is strong enough of a character yet. I'd like to see Kyle and Guy, but also have a decent amount of focus on Soranik and Arisia.

Its tough to do the terrified lantern thing as a side character.

[BatmanJones]

Its tough to do the terrified lantern thing as a side character.

She doesn't have to do the terrified Lantern thing with the JL. She could, as so many of us with anxiety do, hide it publicly and it could be a big thing we learn about her character in one small moment, leaving us wanting to know her more. As the rumor goes, it's just a GL showing up in a key scene. So it's not like she needs to be as fully fleshed out as a character as the rest of the team. Let's just see her use her ring and give us that warm feeling we get from the inclusion of the GLC at all and then maybe a moment in which we learn she's fighting and overcoming a lot of anxiety in order to be a hero. There's no need to go into her not being able to make constructs. Let her make constructs. She'll have that ability eventually anyway.

I'm not saying she SHOULD be the GL they choose to use, only saying I don't think these are significant enough reasons NOT to choose her. I'm for her, Simon, or John for diversity's sake, even though Hal will always be my favorite GL.

[Vanguard-01]

Yeah, honestly, Jessica's anxiety issues could serve to make her one of the most relatable GLs available. Almost everyone has suffered anxiety in some form or another in their lives. Seeing a superhero who suffers from much the same problems, yet perseveres through them and overcomes them, could be very inspirational to a lot of people.

[WhipWhirlwind]

Fair enough, I guess I'm pretty strongly in favor of John, but Jessica could work.

[JediKage]

Eh save it for her solo. The other lady on the team crippled by panic attacks and self doubts is not a selling point.

[El_Gato]

I think if they do go with Jessica I'd be really cool to see her and Diana form a friendship.

Also I think its very safe to assume that DC is WB's biggest cash cow! Fantastic Beasts doesn't look like it'll pass Suicide Squad or BVS at the box office and it'll probably finish at around MOS numbers. It's also pretty cool to see that both DC movies will be in the top 10 highest grossing movies of 2016

[Vanguard-01]

Eh save it for her solo. The other lady on the team crippled by panic attacks and self doubts is not a selling point.

This, I agree with. If they are going to use her, and if they are going to use the anxiety approach, then it should be in a solo movie. Justice League stories tend to be very adventure-oriented. There's no time for Jessica to deal with her anxiety issues when she's desperately trying to beat back an alien invasion alongside the rest of the team.

[BatmanJones]

Eh save it for her solo. The other lady on the team crippled by panic attacks and self doubts is not a selling point.

WTF? Would you say the same about a hero with a physical disability? That you would even think this is a sign you do not understand anxiety or mental illness. Most of society is trying to cast off the stigma associated with mental and emotional disorders. Your personal thoughts on anxiety and mental illness are running a good decade or two behind those of society and history. Thank god.

[BatmanJones]

This, I agree with. If they are going to use her, and if they are going to use the anxiety approach, then it should be in a solo movie. Justice League stories tend to be very adventure-oriented. There's no time for Jessica to deal with her anxiety issues when she's desperately trying to beat back an alien invasion alongside the rest of the team.

Dealing with anxiety issues is a big part of what makes her a hero. This is like saying it would be a drag to deal with Barbara Gordon in a wheelchair. Jessica Cruz overcomes her disability and in doing so becomes a greater hero than Superman who never had to contend with such problems. And it doesn't take a whole movie to express this. It can be done in two lines of artful dialogue.

[Vanguard-01]

WTF? Would you say the same about a hero with a physical disability? That you would even think this is a sign you do not understand anxiety or mental illness. Most of society is trying to cast off the stigma associated with mental and emotional disorders. Your personal thoughts on anxiety and mental illness are running a good decade or two behind those of society and history. Thank god.

I can't speak for JediKage, but my reason for thinking it would be best to save the anxiety stuff for a solo movie is strictly based on time constraints. Unless the anxiety issues can somehow tie directly into the story being told in a JL movie, then exploring them there might seem like a waste of screen time. If they CAN make it work within the story? Fine and dandy.

[BatmanJones]

I can totally see her as a new recruit in the 2020 GLC movie. But yeah, I think if there's any truth to this "report" at all, they would go with a more popular Lantern first. The DCEU is still in its preliminary stages and to have a more solid foundation you need the established guys first.

With the vast majority of the movie-going public there's no such thing as a "popular Lantern." For the small percentage of the audience that will see this movie and care about which GL is used I'd say half would say Hal and half would say John according to when they became fans. But most people that see the movie won't be comic book fans. We're an incredibly small slice of the pie because there just aren't that many of us. Add to that the Ryan Reynolds debacle, which is why there wasn't always a GL front and center in this movie, and I don't think the movie-going public will care too much who wears the ring. I would venture a guess that upwards of 85% of moviegoers can't name a single GL's secret ID. The character(s) just doesn't/don't loom that large. They were on their way but we all know what happened there.

To add a Latina or a Muslim/Arab-American in Cruz or Baz would create diversity and attract more viewers by doing so. People want heroes that they can relate to. How many Latino superheroes are there out there? And even if Mamoa is Polynesian, the league is still dominated by white men. The two women appearing (Wonder Woman and Mera) are also white.

I would like to see a person of color wear the ring, in what we're told is only an appearance in a key scene. Given the male dominance of the League, it would be nice if that person of color was also a woman.

I think CBR was the site that first predicted/pushed the idea of using Jessica Cruz in JL, a year or more ago. I was persuaded then (though I have always been a diehard Hal fan since I started reading in the 70s) and I'm more so now.

[BatmanJones]

I can't speak for JediKage, but my reason for thinking it would be best to save the anxiety stuff for a solo movie is strictly based on time constraints. Unless the anxiety issues can somehow tie directly into the story being told in a JL movie, then exploring them there might seem like a waste of screen time. If they CAN make it work within the story? Fine and dandy.

No matter which GL we see they won't have much screen time according to the rumor, but her anxiety isn't what defines her. It's a part of her, not all of her. If we're just going to see a GL contribute in an action sequence I think any of them will do so why not choose a woman and person of color when the team is so white and male otherwise?

I think people overestimate the name ID of Hal and John. I think what most audiences know about GL is he's a guy with a ring that can make a green version of anything. And I think that's all the vast majority know.

And if they did choose to use Jessica and include her anxiety issues a good writer can introduce the issue or nod to it or tease the fact that she is overcoming something in order to be a hero. Jessica hits three important diversity points though: she's a woman, she's Latina, and she's disabled. As a high functioning manic depressive with anxiety issues myself I would be inspired by her inclusion and it would make me feel included in a way I wouldn't otherwise.

There aren't a lot of disabled heroes out there and there reallyaren't a lot of heroes out there overcoming mental/emotional health issues. I said before this could be done in two artfully written lines of dialogue but it could also be done with a look or what some of us in the experimental theatre business call a "toxic leak."

A toxic leak in this context is when--if someone happens to look at the character an actor plays at the right time they will learn a secret about that character. In a movie, the equivalent to a "toxic leak" will be visible to all--not just those that are looking at a character on a stage at a certain point in time--but could be done with just a look or exchanged looks between Cruz and another character.

It needn't take more than a second or two to register though they could always choose to spend a whole minute on it, which would be a lot. I think the tease of her anxiety also makes her more interesting and a more compelling draw for any GLC movie (not just a character with a ring that makes constructs but that plus an interesting character trait and a badly needed female addition to a group of heroes that are almost entirely male. Still, in a GLC movie, I would love to see at least Hal, John, Jessica, and Simon. I'm neutral on Kyle and actively dislike Guy. For me the comedy to his character is too obvious, a la Lobo.

[BatmanJones]

I can't speak for JediKage, but my reason for thinking it would be best to save the anxiety stuff for a solo movie is strictly based on time constraints. Unless the anxiety issues can somehow tie directly into the story being told in a JL movie, then exploring them there might seem like a waste of screen time. If they CAN make it work within the story? Fine and dandy.

Also, I wasn't offended or hurt by your post as I was by JediKage's. Your reason for not using Cruz (not enough screen time) is valid. JediKage's isn't.

He leaned into the mental illness stigma by saying, "The other lady on the team crippled by panic attacks and self doubts is not a selling point."

What if he'd said such a thing about someone overcoming cancer, for example? Or someone confined to a wheelchair?

1. I doubt he'd say such a thing about a physical health issue, and
2. If he did I expect he'd receive a slap on the wrist, at least, from the moderators here.

Mental health parity is enshrined in law for the moment (Trump will overturn all of Obama's good work and more so maybe this doesn't hold) but JediKage's post is proof that society has not caught up to the fact that mental health issues are every bit as serious and real as physical health ones. In fact, they ARE physical health problems, a lot of them, as a lot of them come from a chemical imbalance in the brain.

But it's clear a poster like JediKage does not regard mental health issues to be on par with physiological ones and that does hurt and that is offensive.

[Atlanta96]

But it's clear a poster like JediKage does not regard mental health issues to be on par with physiological ones and that does hurt and that is offensive.

What? No, that's a leap in logic. Just because you don't think a subplot about anxiety belongs in a fast-paced action film with an ensemble cast doesn't mean you're against mental health being explored in mainstream films period. You don't have to agree but it's not mental health stigma. You can object to a certain theme being used in one film and approve of it being used in others.