Lanterns Is a Slap in the Face to Green Lantern Fans
It’s kind of ironic that you watch a TV show about one of DC Comics’ most imaginative superheroes and keep asking yourself, “Where is the superhero? The Green Lantern mythos should be one of the easiest superhero properties in Hollywood to make spectacular, an absolute triumph, but that most certainly hasn’t been the case here.
What is there to think about? You have awesome magic rings that function on the wearer’s strength of will. You also have an intergalactic police force, patrolling the vast expanse of space, protecting diverse alien civilizations, strange planets, ancient enemies, cosmic conspiracies, the Guardians of the Universe, Sinestro, the Manhunters, and an entire mythology surrounding the emotional spectrum.
When it comes to Green Lantern, sorry “Lanterns,” there are virtually endless possibilities for storytelling.
But what did Lanterns do with all of that? They made a mess of a crime drama that is dark, brooding, and tries too hard to be realistic at times. That’s the main issue that at least I have with this show. I don’t know why, but this series seems obstinately set on making Green Lantern “serious” by taking away a lot of what makes Green Lantern Green Lantern.
That’s the criticism that lies at the core of mine and anyone else’s complaints; those who have read comics for a long time, and when it comes to Lanterns, these issues are something that isn’t easy to shrug off completely.
This Is Not What People Signed Up For
Suppose you announced a Green Lantern TV show and said to the fans,
“Calm down, it’s going to be a prestige detective show.”
That’s the general notion of the pitch. Lanterns takes a lot of time to build a solid murder mystery before they get into the superheroic business of the Green Lantern Corps. The official premise is that Hal Jordan and John Stewart are investigating a mystery on Earth. I don’t know about you, but I for one had signed on to watch Hal and Jon actually be Green Lanterns, not engage in a tepid murder mystery that makes you want to claw your eyes out. Also, this show makes me want to ask a very basic question: Why was this show about Green Lantern? The glowing rings could be replaced by badges, the aliens could be removed altogether, and the character names could be changed, and the basic structure would resemble a terrestrial crime thriller. That in itself should be a point of intense contention and worry to anyone who actually likes the source material.
Green Lantern Is Supposed to Be Weird
This is where the adaptation really gets the concept of the property wrong.
Green Lantern isn’t Batman. The property is not meant to be limited to Gotham City streets, dark discussions, and suspicious small-town characters.
The whole idea of Green Lantern is that the universe is big.
The character should make us look up. Rather, Lanterns continues to peer sideways. At farms, diners, crime scenes, and interpersonal drama, and I don’t know why, but the political and social issues of the Earth are also a point of focus in this show. In the meantime, the cosmic mythology that makes Green Lantern special seems like a side dish. That isn’t sophistication; it’s limitation.
The “Serious” Superhero Trap
Hollywood has been discovering for years now that comic-book adaptations can be serious.
Ok, fine, understandable even. No one, especially the ardent fans, wants Green Lantern to be a children’s cartoon.
There’s a huge difference, though, between grown-up storytelling and siphoning the fun out of it because fun isn’t sophisticated enough. Great superhero stories know that seriousness and imagination don’t have to be mutually exclusive. The Green Lantern show should be about exploring fear, courage, trauma, responsibility, and flying through space with an emerald energy ring. That’s what makes Green Lantern interesting. In fact the silliness is where the fun lies. The mythos is the draw. The appeal of the property is the profound imagination it evinces. However, all of this is absent here
What is the Green Lantern Corps doing?
This is the most frustrating thing for me about this show. Green Lantern is arguably one of the best ideas that DC has in their repertoire. Consider the implications of that. Thousands of beings from all over the universe have been recruited because they have the ability to conquer fear with will. They are an intergalactic police force. They have their headquarters on Oa. They have been the scene of wars, betrayals, political struggles, and ancient cosmic threats.
There are many, many Green Lanterns, allowing for countless stories to be told and near-infinite worlds to be visited.
But the majority of the series takes place on Earth, totally ignoring the bigger mythology of the comic book mythos, something that can feel like a rationing to the audience.
It’s a bit like making a Superman show and deciding that Metropolis is too much of a distraction, so Clark spends most of the season investigating a murder in a small town. You need to determine at some point if the adaptation is interested in the property.
Hal Jordan Gets the Worst of It
Hal Jordan should be one of the easiest DC heroes to make compelling. He’s arrogant, fearless, reckless, funny, stubborn and he’s a natural pilot. Also, he’s one of the most important human Green Lanterns in the history of the Corps.
But Lanterns often appears to be more concerned with making Hal an older man who’s been beaten down and made irrevocably miserable than with showing readers the larger-than-life hero they are familiar with. The important thing is that Kyle Chandler is making the best of the stuff. The criticism isn’t necessarily about the actor. It’s about the version of Hal Jordan that the writers have decided to give him. A good actor can’t transform a changed character into a comic book character.
And John Stewart Deserves More: John Stewart is potentially the biggest opportunity in the whole series. He isn’t merely “the other Green Lantern.” He is one of the most well-known Lanterns in DC and has decades of interesting comic book history under his name. There is a lot of material in his military background, his engineering skills, his sense of responsibility, and his relationship with the Corps. But the show starts him off in a story that is all too earthly. Again, ask yourself what sounds more exciting: John Stewart, the Green Lantern, in the wide, vast universe, or John Stewart, the man dragged into another earthly murder mystery? The answer shouldn’t be controversial.
The Power Ring Becomes Almost an Accessory
And here’s perhaps the most embarrassing part: one of the most powerful superhero weapons ever invented is the Green Lantern ring. It can create virtually anything its wielder can imagine.
A bridge, a weapon, a giant fist, a vehicle, a shield, a spacecraft, a thousand-foot construct, and anything else that the wearer visualizes and fuels with their immense willpower. The restrictions are just the imagination and will of the wearer. It should be a dream come true for a visual-effects artist. Rather, the series frequently uses the ring as a plot device. A character’s use of something when the script calls for it, that’s backwards. The ring should be one of the highlights of the show. Also, Hal exchanges the ring with Jon like a simple accessory, completely overlooking the established fact that a Lantern’s Ring wielder needs to be chosen for it to function properly. But that little caveat is conveniently forgotten or ignored here.
The Show Does Not Trust the Show’s Audience
There’s another issue lurking under all of that. The series seems to be making the assumption that viewers will not take Green Lantern seriously unless he loses his comic book persona. That’s a very old-fashioned notion. People have already proven that they’ll accept weird, fantastic superhero stories when they’re delivered with conviction. The answer is not to shrink the mythology; it’s to enhance the storytelling.
When adapting Green Lantern, adapt Green Lantern. Do not have a cosmic superhero and spend the whole season apologizing for him being one. Embrace it and do it emphatically so that the viewers get what they signed on for.
The Verdict
Perhaps Lanterns will grow into the mythical cosmos that fans have been hoping for, and maybe the parts that will be shown in the upcoming episodes will eventually bring something amazing, and maybe the series will prove its doubters wrong. However, the underlying grievance cannot be overlooked: this is not a show about all the things that make Green Lantern awesome. It’s like a prestige crime drama that haphazardly incorporated Green Lantern characters, and the writers and management team were told to fit them into it somehow. That’s not just disappointing for comic book fans who’ve been waiting years for the Green Lantern mythos to be fully realized on TV; it’s downright insulting. Because Green Lantern didn’t need to be “fixed,” it had to be set free. There was the universe before that, and the mythos had already been established. The characters were amazing and were already in place. The stories were just waiting to be told, in a manner that befitted them. But like always, Hollywood didn’t trust them and ignored them all in favor of gaslighting us into believing that being a Green Lantern is almost irrelevant in the best version of the character. And that could be the worst slap in the face ever for the fans who enjoyed the comics in the first place.
