When it comes to the Achilles heels of famous superheros, it doesn’t get much more recognizable than kryptonite. As the famous weakness of the DCU‘s Superman, kryptonite is a mineral that comes from his home planet of Krypton.
Even the best superhero movies show our favorite caped crusaders being weakened by something. Iron Man has his defective heart. Shazam can’t say his own name lest he be turned back into a human. Batman…well, Batman is just a guy in a suit.
And while some of the best MCU characters and DC characters have pretty cool sounding weaknesses (kryptonite being one of them), there are a few heroes who have to suffer from some less than desirable flaws. One of these poor folks is none other than Green Lantern.
Green Lantern isn’t regarded as one of the better heroes. Part of that is probably due to one of the worst movies in the superhero genre, Green Lantern, which came out in 2011. But he’s also just a weird guy. In fact, one of his weaknesses comes from his own misunderstanding.
Alan Scott, who was the first Green Lantern, believed he had a weakness to wood. Yep, wood. This is because on one occasion, he was hit in the back of the head with a piece of wood, having been caught off-guard. Because the ring has the power to make the wearer’s thoughts real, he ended up sealing his own fate on that one.
His other weakness is…the color yellow. This was because the ring was unable to effect anything that was the color yellow, which was also the color of fear. Other comic book characters took advantage of this, with the funniest example being in All Star Batman and Robin #9, in which Batman painted an entire room yellow, including himself and Robin, to taunt Green Lantern.
Luckily, both of these insane weaknesses were corrected at one point or another. With his aversion to wood, Green Lantern eventually realized his error, and so the ring corrected the truth according to his thoughts. And as for yellow, it was revealed that the lack of any effect on yellow things was down to the entity known as Parallax.
Located in the Central Power Battery (where the rings’ power comes from), Parallax was eventually removed, and the ‘Yellow Impurity’ was corrected. Good thing, too — lots of nice things are yellow. Sunflowers, corn….butter. So many things he could have missed out on.
Actually, we’re glad that both of these ridiculous flaws were eventually erased, since it’s incredibly difficult to take Green Lantern seriously on a good day, let alone with the knowledge that he’s basically allergic to wood and a full-blown color.
Check out how to watch the DC movies in order to get to know your other heroes. You can also get to know all the best DC villains, and see what’s to come with the Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters slate. You can also check out the Aquaman 2 release date and Superman Legacy release date.
Elsewhere, we’ve got lists of all the best movies and new movies for you to watch. You can also read our feature on why DC has doubled down in the wrong direction, and the five things we want to see from James Gunn’s new DCU and one we don’t.