People Just Can’t Enjoy a Good Thing

Recently the first full trailer for Lanterns, the new DC UniverseThe successor to WB's failed cinematic universe, the DCEU. Headed by James Gunn and Peter Safran, this new DC Universe carries over some continuity from the former film and TV series while crafting a new, rebooted universe for the future. show, came out and it did not meet with people’s expectations. With that said, it should have, although not in the way people might have thought. People were clearly expecting a high-flying, cosmic adventure series with two Green Lanterns in the lead roles. Instead what we have is a couple of guys that don’t like each other, driving around a small town in Middle America, bickering while working on an investigation. It’s not the Green Lantern show people expected.

But, yeah, that’s not what the show was going to be. When it was originally pitched by James Gunn (when he first announced the slate of movies and shows that would make up the DCU’s first arc, “Gods and Monsters”) it was described not as a superhero show but as a kind of play on True Detective. Dark, introspective, grounded. Fans that were passingly familiar with Green Lantern stories were upset by the look of this because it’s not the Green Lantern show they expected. And also, they complained, why wasn’t it called Green Lantern?

Well, to address that second point first, the reason it’s called Lanterns, which anyone that has read the comics should realize, is because it’s going to feature more than just Green Lanterns. It’s already been confirmed that a Star Sapphire will appear in the series (they’re the Violet Lanterns, in case you were wondering), and an Orange Lantern is supposedly going to make an appearance as well. That indicates that a name like Lanterns makes more sense (and calling it “Skittle Lanterns”, like the comic fans often do, wouldn’t have worked for trademark reasons, obviously).

But to get into the bigger gripe, about how this doesn’t feel like a proper Green Lantern adaptation, that’s just silly. The show focuses on Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler), the older, grizzled Green Lantern of Earth, as he takes his younger second, John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), on a training mission. He does this by driving them through a back stretch of the Midwest, exploring the countryside while looking for trouble. And then they find trouble, in the form of a murder investigation, and have to see what’s going on. Sure, that doesn’t sound like a normal Green Lantern adventure, but it’s actually not that far off from stories that used to be in the books in the 1970s and 1980s.

Bear in mind that the Silver Age of Comics, for all its high-flying, cosmic adventures, also tried to tackle many social and political stories. Famously there was the run of Green Lantern/Green Arrow that saw the space cop Hal Jordan pair up with street-wse avenger Oliver Queen, as they traveled across the countryside, looking for trouble and righting wrongs in society. Does that sound familiar? It looks like Lanterns is kind of playing in the same pond as that comics series, although with a second Green Lantern in place of Green Arrow.

That’s fair, though, as there was another arc where Hal had to train John, and the two butted heads regularly as each had different ideas about what it meant to be a Lantern. And then you also had an arc in the 1980s where Hal, fed up with the Guardians of Oa (who gave him his power ring) cast off his ring and retired because he just couldn’t deal with their bullshit any longer. And even in the 1990s Hal was going off on sabbaticals, traveling the countryside just to get in touch with the people at a local level. This is Hal’s thing, and the show is playing off of that version of the character instead of the one that is a space cop, happy to be doing the job without a second thought about it.

This is actually good for the character, and for the series. Hal as the happy space cop isn’t really a character that can have much growth. Part of the reason why the comics keep setting him against the Guardians, going off and doing his own thing, is because if Hal is happy in his job then there isn’t much room to push his character forward. That’s the end of his arc, not the beginning. If you want to write a show about Hal it’s much easier to take him at a low point, where he hates the Guardians and is sick of his “job”, so that he can rediscover what it means to be a hero. That’s a character arc that can pay dividends.

And yes, that does mean we get a Hal Jordan that cusses and hates his job. That might feel out of place in a bright and shiny superhero universe, but when we have shows like Peacemaker and Creature Commandos in the same universe, it doesn’t really feel out of line for the series. Some online fans apparently have an opinion about Hal Jordan’s character that’s created by a very narrow band of knowledge when there’s a whole like more to his character, and his history, than they might know. Lanterns looks like an adaptation of the character and his stories that takes the good with the bad, and I honestly appreciate that as a fan of the character.

Although we also do have to acknowledge that some of the fans are upset that there’s a black Green Lantern in the show. Yes, they are racist assholes, and yes, most of them are Snyderbros that know nothing about the comics, the characters, or Green Lantern in general. I mention them so we can dismiss them as the screwed up gutter trash they are. Jon Stewart is black, and has always been black in the comics (and in every other adaptation of the character out there). Them bitching about his race clearly underlines that they know nothing about the comics they supposedly hold so dear.

As a Green Lantern fan I am hopeful for this series. Was this the show I dreamed of? Not really. I love the Geoff Johns era, which went from Rebirth through Brightest Day, and I would love to see a long-form adaptation of that whole arc. But to get there we have to get through a lot of other Hal Jordan stories (including, I would think, the destruction of Coast City, Zero Hero, Emerald Twilight, and more) just so we can see his rise again into that arc I love. This show looks like a strong adaptation of his earlier stories, and as a fan that has read a lot of his history over the years I’m excited for what this series could do.

So yeah, I’m gonna watch Lanterns (and not just because I run this site and was likely going to watch it so I could review it). I love Green Lantern and seeing a version on the screen that is true to the characters (and not that 2011 abomination of a film) gives me a lot of hope. James Gunn has done right by us so far with everything he’s produced. I have faith this will be a winner as well.