After the massive success of Superman, DC fans have been eagerly awaiting the next addition to the James Gunn canon. Despite the excitement of Peacemaker Season 2, the recent release of the trailer for HBO Max’s Green Lantern show has fans wondering if he’s going to beat the live-action Green Lantern curse.
Fans have known about the main characters for a while, but the new trailer gives them a first look into the actual tone and plot of the show, and let’s just say nobody is super excited.
The opening scene of the trailer reads like an episode of network TV’s cop drama of the week and really cements the setting of the story, which, for a show about an intergalactic superhero group, being stuck on Earth seems kind of boring.
In the first scene, Hal Jordan, played by Kyle Chandler, is driving down what seems to be a dusty highway with John Stewart, played by Aaron Pierre, while they discuss when the actual Green Lantern-ing can start. I gathered that we may have to wait a while to see any cool space stuff, since the dynamic is serving less Green Lantern and more “Green Intern.”
The trailer continues and brings them to a backwater town run by a female sheriff whom they immediately have beef with. The primary villain for this part seems to be a gang of gun-toting humans that terrorize the town, instead of, you know, space aliens.
Lanterns appears to be an origin story for John Stewart as a replacement for Hal Jordan in the “Gunnverse” and generally follows his canon comic origin, with maybe one major shift in tone.
The primary plot centers around a crime on Earth and throws the titular characters in as detectives, taking inspiration from True Detective. The show also takes a grittier, darker tone that fans haven’t seen since the Zack Snyder movies, which makes it probably the exact tonal opposite of Gunn’s other creations.
Gunn says that Nathan Fillion will reprise his role as Guy Gardner in Lanterns, but I’m curious as to how they’ll combine these highly contrasting characters.
Lanterns will be the first live-action Green Lantern-centered media since the infamous 2011 box office disaster that was Ryan Reynolds’s Green Lantern. Fans are excited that DC is giving it another shot, and I do think that choosing to focus on a different Lantern than Hal Jordan will give the show some depth it may have lacked otherwise.
From a comic perspective, John Stewart is one of the lesser-known Lanterns. He was introduced in the ’70s as a rookie for Hal Jordan to train, and after a gap where DC didn’t really know what to do with him, he was introduced as a Justice League regular closer to the 2000s.
The character has had some major adventures since, like Justice League TV appearances, solo comic runs, an animated movie, and several comic books that strip him down to his history as a U.S. Marine and who he was before getting powers.
It looks like Lanterns is planning to just be a live-action retelling of his ’70s canon origin story without any of that comic book hope and humor we’ve enjoyed in Gunn’s previous projects and the source content.
DC’s new trailer hasn’t had a spectacular response from fans since it really does seem to just be about the Green Lanterns in name only, but people are excited about the planned crossover with the Superman universe since Nathan Fillion is slated to make an appearance.
If Green Lantern is your favorite, I’d say be cautiously optimistic. An appearance from noted Green Lantern villain Sinestro, played by Ulrich Thomsen, promises galactic superhero activity at some point within the show, but you may have to wait for them to be done with the buddy-cop plot first.
Lanterns will release in August on HBO Max, and is a must-see for anyone invested in the next installment of the James Gunn DC universe.
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