Green LanternSave

Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) is a brash, irresponsible test pilot at Ferris Aircraft, the company that builds the US military's most advanced fighter jets. Hal is a third-generation Air Force pilot whose father Martin Jordan died in a fiery flight-test accident when Hal was a child; the trauma has shaped Hal's life-long fear of his own mortality, which manifests as compulsive risk-taking. Hal's relationships are similarly damaged: his on-and-off girlfriend Carol Ferris (Blake Lively), the daughter of Ferris Aircraft's owner Carl Ferris (Jay O. Sanders), repeatedly tries to get Hal to commit but is always rebuffed by his fear of vulnerability.

Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison) — the Green Lantern of Sector 2814, which includes Earth — is engaged in cosmic combat with the entity Parallax, a fear-empowered antagonist that has been consuming entire planetary populations. Parallax mortally wounds Abin Sur, who escapes in his Lantern ring and crashes on Earth in a meteor-like impact in the Pacific Northwest. The ring — sentient, intelligent, capable of selecting its own bearers — abandons Sur and seeks a new Lantern to inherit his sector responsibility. The ring finds Hal Jordan and selects him through a process the film treats as both mystical and quasi-scientific.

Hal accepts the ring (which transforms into the Green Lantern uniform on his hand) and is teleported to Oa — the Lantern Corps' homeworld, a cosmic city of glowing emerald light. There, he meets the Lantern Corps senior leadership: Sinestro (Mark Strong), the Corps' most-respected Lantern; Tomar-Re (voiced by Geoffrey Rush), a six-armed avian Lantern who serves as Hal's primary trainer; and Kilowog (voiced by Michael Clarke Duncan), the Corps' boot-camp drill instructor who handles new-recruit physical preparation. The Lantern Corps comprises 3,600 Lanterns across the universe; Hal is the first human to join.

Hal's Corps training is brief and the film treats it as essentially a single afternoon. He fails his first training exercise — flinching when Kilowog attacks him with a massive simulated emerald construct — and quits the Corps in shame. He returns to Earth, drops the ring on his apartment desk, and tries to resume his civilian life. The decision is the film's central character pivot: Hal must learn that the ring's power is driven by overcoming fear, not avoiding it. The film's middle act consists of Hal's gradual rediscovery of personal courage.

On Earth, Parallax's fear-consuming entity arrives — drawn to the planet by Sinestro's interest. Parallax begins attacking Coast City (Hal's hometown), draining the population's psychic energy. Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard) — a brilliant scientist who has been quietly studying Abin Sur's corpse since its crash — has been infected by Parallax's residual essence; Hammond develops telepathic and telekinetic powers, growing a grotesquely-enlarged head as a side-effect, and becomes a secondary antagonist who hunts Hal and Carol throughout the third act.

Hal's father — in a flashback midway through the film — is shown dying in a fiery jet-fuel crash that Hal witnessed as a child. The flashback establishes Hal's lifelong fear of fire (and by extension, of his own mortality). Hal's recovery from his Corps quitting is shown as a gradual confrontation with this childhood fear. The flashback sequences were filmed using practical fire effects supervisizd by Industrial Light & Magic; the production reportedly spent approximately $2 million on the practical fire work alone.

Parallax's arrival on Earth forces Hal to fully assume the Green Lantern role. The film's climactic third act features Hal flying back to Oa to recruit Lantern Corps reinforcements — only to be told by the Corps's Guardians that they will not intervene in a single-planet crisis (a decision the Guardians treat as protocol but is functionally a betrayal). Hal returns to Earth alone; he uses his ring to channel substantial Lantern Corps energy through pure willpower, defeats Hector Hammond, and confronts Parallax in a city-spanning battle that destroys multiple Coast City skyscrapers.

Hal defeats Parallax by exploiting the entity's hunger for fear — he leads it toward the sun, where Parallax is incinerated by gravitational pull. The victory is treated as Hal's complete arc resolution: he has overcome his fear, mastered the ring, and become the first Earth-born Green Lantern. The film's epilogue shows Hal accepting his Green Lantern role permanently, his relationship with Carol moving toward commitment, and his colleague Hector Hammond imprisoned in a federal facility for further Parallax-residual research. The post-credits scene reveals Sinestro turning to the dark side — taking up a yellow fear-powered Lantern ring instead of the green willpower ring, setting up a planned sequel that was eventually canceled.