Greenless Lanterns Isn’t Looking Any Better

Sorry, I don’t have one of just Hal and John together in my media library. Kyle’s continuing to get the shaft.

So, the new trailer for Lanterns dropped. Still doesn’t have “Green” in the title, which isn’t surprising from the guy with the same mindset that brought us Greenless Arrow. No, he didn’t work on it, but he also hates bright colors, as the last trailer and the new one both demonstrate.

Lanterns took a cool sci-fi space cop premise and made it a gritty torch passing procedural set totally on Earth. Points for not being another James Gunn style show like everything else that’s come out of Gunn’s DC Studios like Creature Commandos, Peacemaker, and James Gunn’s Superman By James Gunn, with Supergirl: Woman Of Tomorrow following the trend despite not being made by Gunn. So few projects and they’re already in a rut.

After a joke about thinking the “green” part was “stupid” resurfaced on the internet brought backlash from fans and creators who actually care about the Oa based heroes, showrunner David Lindelof wanted to prove that he was totally not against the color. You wouldn’t know it from this trailer. Quite a bit of swearing, just to warn you. Like so many superhero shows, the age group most responsible for making superheroes popular are left behind.

Let’s start with the big problem in this trailer. We finally get to see the outfit in action, not hanging in a closet (that’s not how the costume works because it’s created by the ring) and it looks like this.

Because we still hate bright colors. Yeah, it’s “green” but its such a dark green you wouldn’t know it at first glance. My watermark (I wish I could get the white border out) is brighter than the outfit.

Here, I’ll fix it. Brightened the picture a bit and I still had to up the costume’s color saturation.

Probably should have taken my watermark out first. Still dark but it’s an improvement. The question is why they bothered making this…

…look like that. This is a cool action sci-fi superhero story about space cops protecting the galaxy and Hal’s adventures on Earth and Sector 2814, a former test pilot who was able to conquer his fear, not be without it. Laurell K. Hamilton: “If you fear nothing, then you are not brave. You are merely too foolish to be afraid.” Or here’s a quote by Philippa Gregory Google AI also brought up: “It’s a fool who is afraid of nothing,” I say. “And a brave man is one who knows fear and rides out and faces it.” Another one I’ve heard is “only a fool fears nothing”. Hal’s talent isn’t fearing nothing, it’s being able to overcome great fear, which retroactively was what their opposite number the Yellow Lanterns like to drop on people. It’s an unnecessary explanation of the yellow impurity, which now can be overcome if you can get over your fear, not be without it. Fear can be healthy.

So instead of superhero adventure we get a lame middle of nowhere crime drama that happens to have a ring that makes glowy things. Imagination really has gone to die. That’s on top of all the other ways besides the uniform we barely see, because now Hal has no secret identity as Hollywood’s fragile little ego fest doesn’t believe in them, that breaks the lore. Hal isn’t the type of guy to use his ring to make fake money. There is more than one ring, as we notice Guy Gardner is here as well, especially on Earth now that the comics decided to make numerous Lanterns from one planet, which was always an odd thing to do but somehow became a stupid thing because “diversity” is limited to Earth melanin shading rather than all of the various alien races with different colors, sizes, and forms.

The main reason I’m not going to watch this is how boring it looks compared to the source material, the one who has had numerous animated movies, solo and team TV appearances in cartoons, and even a live-action movie that will be more exciting than this no matter what its faults might me. (I kind of liked it.) I would stop here, but then YouTube recommended this video by PUP., going over his thoughts on the trailer and some more interviews by one of the other showrunners. It’s not as helpful as he thinks.

First of all you aren’t winning me over with Smallville, which started out okay but then started screwing with DC continuity, bringing him in contact with superpeople early and by the end of the show didn’t feel like Superman’s early years, a Superboy minus Superboy because even when they changed showrunners Tom Welling didn’t want the suit. Having that Clark give up in powers in Supergirl when they revisited the Smallville dimension wasn’t a shock. He never seemed to want to be Superman. As for Gotham it’s Batman minus Batman and lost me on episode one. At least Smallville was enjoyable in the early seasons.

It also doesn’t put my mind at ease when Chris Mundy swears they’re going to pay respect to the Green Lanterns. I have heard that @#$% so many times with the stuff I love that I’ll believe a politician saying they want to help before anyone in modern or even older Hollywood say they’re fans of something. They’re all about how they like it until it comes out and fans realize what the creators liked was their misinterpretation. Frank Miller swore he was the only one who could get The Spirit right but actually wanted to show his ideas were better than Wil Eisner’s. Transformers and Avatar: The Last Airbender was supposed to be out of respect and neither was. Right now Christopher Nolan is swearing he wants to make a more historically accurate version of the mythology fanfic The Odyssey, then tells us about all the changes that aren’t accurate to anything. It’s about as believable as “we’re from the government, we’re here to help”.

I also have to repeat that despite Hal’s reckless nature and self-motivated interests, COMITTING A FEDERAL OFFENSE THAT WOULD GET HIM KICKED OFF THE LANTERNS WOULDN’T BE ONE OF THEM! No, he wouldn’t counterfeit money. Dude once got a job at a travelling toy salesman because he lost his test pilot job. Was that stupid? I haven’t read it but it sounds like it to me. He still didn’t use his money for crime. That’s what supervillains do, not space cop superheroes. I also don’t need grumpy old-timer Hal. I didn’t want evil Parallax Hal, either, but we aren’t getting that.

Splitting the case into two time periods? At this point I’m not sure I care. The power battery lantern looking mythical? Would make more sense for Alan Scott given he’s the one with magic while the ring and battery from the Guardians and is supposed to be technological, something most writers forget when they want a GL without power along with the other heroes.

Overall, I don’t agree that they’re respecting the Green Lanterns. Not only is it not doing what I expect (which sounds way too close to “subverting expectations” for my taste and preference), it’s not doing what I’d WANT from a Green Lantern series. I want supervillains. I want aliens. I want more interesting outer space worlds than a plain with two moons and yellow light everywhere that could just as easy be a short bit of Hal showing John an alien world, like when Companions on Doctor Who discuss some planet they’ve been to with their parent or friend. I’m not seeing anything fun or interesting about this show. I really am not excited about a few random constructs and the same old problems I had with the first trailer. I’ve seen more interesting takes on Green Lanterns. If you like the “true detective” type show maybe you’ll like this, but I was promised superheroes because they’re adapting superhero stories. That’s not what I see here and there are better places to see what I want than this.