BW Media Spotlight

If you don’t follow my X-Twitter account, and I’m betting you don’t, I was considering watching the first episode of Lanterns. I’ll be honest, if I had the livestreaming thing going I might just for the conversation. Ultimately I decided that I really don’t want to watch it, and opted to pass. It’s rare I get to review something in my wheelhouse when it drops since so much is behind paywalls these days. We only have HBO Max because my dad wants access to Discovery’s programs (particularly shows like Restaurant Impossible and Moonshiners) as well as older movies, as he has less interest in new movies and shows than I do. I just turned 53 last month, so you can guess how old he is.

I do reject the recent idea that watching something you know is bad just to review it is somehow foolish or grifting. Meanwhile, even when I admit I’m going by reviews both praising and negative, or just the promotional material–the thing that’s supposed to get you excited for the project–, someone is going to complain that I didn’t watch it. What’s really going on, to me, is that some people don’t want to hear any negative reviews. Some reasons are understandable and some are just dumb, but that’s a discussion for another time.

As for this series, I read review from a site that would ordinarily be on the “hater” list say that on its own merits the show was okay, though it didn’t sound like it was the same genre as the source material. You know, the comics. Someone on X-Twitter even tried to defend the show from people upset that Hal Jordan was out of character by saying “this Hal is different”, and refusing to understand that’s the problem. The lore is wrong, the characters are wrong, the genre is wrong. I don’t even mind that the show isn’t set in space. That would be a serious budget issue for live-action and they’d never be as believable as they are in comics or cartoons because they’d try to make it realistic to match the live-action presentation. Animation’s benefit is that you can make a world that’s believable without being “real”.

Since the promotional material, the ads and interviews, are supposed to help you decide whether or not to watch something, it’s all done the exact opposite for me for a bunch of reasons. I don’t care that it’s good. It’s not what I’m looking for. Allow me to explain…otherwise why are you reading this?

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