First of all, I don't think GL was as bad as a lot of the professional reviewers thought it was. I won't go into all the plot details (you can read that in a thousand other reviews) but let me talk about one major thing that dragged this film down: The stale, cliche, and distracting love story.
For some reason (I suppose to lure in investors) almost every superhero movie comes equipped with a manufactured love story. The first Spiderman showed this plot cliche in all its glaring ridiculousness, with Mary Jane having some degree of love and/or sexual tension with Norman Osborn, Harry Osborn, Peter Parker, Spiderman, and, if I recall correctly, a random high school guy who treated her bad. Essentially, 5 love stories. Completely idiotic and distracting.
So anyway, GL continues in the tradition of unnecessary, boring love stories, with Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris.
The central plot to GL is already a little weak, but still mildly interesting. But the 4 or 5 love/romance scenes sidetrack you into boring-land. These scenes are so stale, mundane, and cliche that you're left yawning over your bag of popcorn.
There is one scene that is particularly absurd. GL brings Carol down from their little rooftop lovey-dovey scene, and they exchange some ridiculous dialog, and she walks off, ducks behind a wall and fights back tears. One problem though: There is no discernible reason for her tears. It's as if the writers said, "Well, we need a scene here where a beautiful woman is crying....y'know....to pull at the heart strings of the audience....even if it doesn't make any sense....cause....well...all films MUST have a crying, sympathetic damsel."
Hopefully, when the GL DVD comes out, there will have a version with the love scenes deleted.
Is this what we have to look forward to with the Avengers? Love stories for each and every hero? Will there be any room left for an interesting story plot?