Supergirl was a terrible adaptation of a great comic book run. Lanterns, however, might be one of the worst adaptations of nearly 70 years of comic book history to ever grace the screen. With this HBO series, DC Studios' James Gunn and Peter Safran's vision for the DCU finally comes into focus. While it's likely to produce some wins (the stylish Creature Commandos and uplifting Superman immediately come to mind), this eight-episode series suggests the franchise could become every bit as much the "GunnVerse" as the DCEU became the "SnyderVerse." That's not a good thing.
Marvel Studios has taken some big swings over the years, and they don't always pay off. However, even in the movies and TV shows that fall flat, there's a sense that the MCU is at least trying to be true to these characters. That's why, even in a mess like The Marvels, a character like Ms. Marvel is still a delight to watch. Eternals was a bloated disappointment, but dang, they left us all wanting more of Ikaris, right? Lanterns, in contrast, feels like a series created by people who have nothing but disdain for the source material. They appear embarrassed by it and all those silly aliens and constructs. So, the mythos is reinvented, and in doing so, the show delivers an admittedly compelling mystery that's more True Detective than Star Wars. Putting a new spin on iconic characters isn't a bad thing; heck, it's what made the aforementioned Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow comic so damn great. With Lanterns, though, Hal Jordan and John Stewart are reimagined in a way that leaves them almost unrecognisable.
The most glaring issue with the series is how poor the writing is. It desperately wants to earn its place on HBO and be considered a "prestige" series, so it does so with heavy-handed themes about race. While it would have been wrong to tell John's story without exploring his identity as a black man in today's America, Lanterns does so in an inorganic way that feels like an obvious attempt to chase the kind of prestige-TV recognition that rightly earned Damon Lindelof's Watchmen so much acclaim. By the time the finale rolls around, the central mystery at Lanterns' core proves wholly predictable—fans called it several weeks ago—and the series, so ashamed of its roots, goes out of its way to hint at concepts like the Sinestro Corps and Guardians of the Universe, without embracing or showing them.
The writing may have been on the wall for Lanterns when one of the show's writers is giddily talking in interviews about how fans watching lack the "nuance" to understand a man in his 60s like Hal Jordan is almost certainly a closet racist. That, unfortunately, speaks to a much larger problem within the show: it tears Hal down to build John up. He's a selfish, reckless, washed-up superhero undeserving of his ring and only Green Lantern because the original choice had too much fear about being a black man in America (that's the official explanation). Vilified and eventually killed off, Hal's story has ended before it could ever really begin. As for John, he's stoic and not particularly likeable, and becomes the ultimate Surf Dracula until taking flight in the final scene.
It was said from the start that Lanterns would be a grounded, True Detective-style tale. Despite that, the lack of Green Lantern constructs becomes almost comical throughout the series. The most exciting it gets is a drill and a shield, while a dollar bill and bottle opener are among the lowlights. The series wants us to believe the Green Lantern ring is one of the most powerful weapons in the universe, but expects you to buy into that with, well, a lot of the shields we just mentioned. Again, this series' shame at being associated with the very notion of "Green Lantern" is clear to see, making it harder than ever to buy into Gunn's repeated professions of love for the DC Universe.
Where Lanterns does shine bright is with its two leads. Aaron Pierre and Kyle Chandler are superb and do their best with the material they're working with. Chandler, in particular, is superb as Hal, and it's hard not to wish he'd been playing this character for the last 10 or 15 years, not unlike the MCU's Robert Downey Jr., who starred as Iron Man for 11 years across several movies. Pierre, meanwhile, has heaps of potential to be a great John, especially as we've still not seen what he can do as Green Lantern over the course of an eight-episode TV series (he made a bird and used the ring as a lighter that one time, though). Elsewhere, the cast is only okay, with serviceable turns from Kelly Macdonald and Ulrich Thomsen.
It's hard to fathom where it all went wrong for Lanterns. Like Jor-El becoming a fascist who sent his son to Earth to form a harem, perhaps we just need to accept that Gunn is putting his own radically different spin on these characters, which he may consider a necessity after the abject failure that was the DCEU. Even so, it's hard to reconcile with what a let-down this series is. The idea of Hal and John being paired up to investigate a murder on Earth with links to the cosmos is brilliant. Heck, the idea of a reluctant Hal training his successor—which admittedly goes against the entire notion of the ring choosing its bearer—is pretty clever. The execution is massively flawed. Not helping matters is a low-budget feel that makes every alien look like a regular human, and even space is a bland set that could be any quarry in America.
Ultimately, Lanterns fails to deliver on that promise and is instead as poor an adaptation of the comics as Madame Web or Secret Invasion. It hides it well behind that prestige HBO feel and two superb leads, but when all is said and done, Lanterns is yet another swing and a miss for the DCU. If this is indicative of what to expect from the "GunnVerse," then we're in for another rough few years for a franchise that deserves better.
Lanterns' leads shine bright, but even they can't save this abysmal adaptation of the comics that, embarrassed by the source material it's based on, delivers a woefully bland and uninspired take on Green Lantern that's another miss for the DCU. ⭐⭐