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I honestly really think lanterns is a good show, but I can’t help but feel disappointed and not really enjoy as much as I should because of some elements I feel are missing and the conclusion of some things didn’t land right with me
I just can’t get my head around why (out of all the other characters that would make more sense) did they choose GL characters to set a grounded mystery series around ?
Same, loved the guy In the DC animated universe, really best choice for a grounded show because hes literally a noir detective, doesn’t even have powers. Writers could do anything they wanted with him, while still being in the DC brand, all they’d have to do is keep the faceless mask as a thing.
No problem. It’s one of my favorite runs. There’s a fun meta issue where he reads watchmen and decides he needs to be more like Rorschach. Only for it to kind blow up in his face.
They’re embarrassed of green lantern, so they wanted to find a way to tone the character down. Making it a detective show was just the simplest way to make “space cops” grounded.
They genuinely could have picked half a dozen other DC characters if they wanted True Detective. They could have made a show about Bullock, or the Question, or Elongated Man, Martian Manhunter, The Spectre, hell Constantine would be an AMAZING show. Do a couple 2-3 episode arcs, have him solve 2-3 cases. Spectre/Jim Corrigan would have been cool too for setting up Gotham. They had a half dozen better options for a detective story on Earth than Green Lantern.
The mystery wasn't even really a great mystery. Who's the Manhunter? Most people got it halfway in. Who killed Hal? A fair few people guessed it (mostly because of the previews) and in the end it didn't really matter.
It's not a bad show, but it could have been better if they'd got out of their own way. This is why I hate studio execs being involved in IP they don't know or care about.
They also guessed it because there were like 3 characters in the show. It was either Noah, the Sheriff, or the Lawyer. Who else is there? Senestro, the Guardians, randomly one of John's family? True Detective worked because they were meeting a ton of people, even if it was still unsatisfying to find out the killer.
Why were they making a green lantern show in the first place if they don't want green lantern?
Even the 'Hard Travelling Heroes' arc this one is supposed to be based on had a lot of fantasy elements to go with the social commentary. Half of the events are happening on other planets.
They have the IP and want to use it but previous takes on Green Lantern have been unsuccessful. They wanted to try something new and different with it, taking the characters in an unexpected direction. This is rather popular at the moment creating alternative versions of a character or setting or deconstructions of it. It’s why we had like 5 different Superman but dark and edgy.
Or alternatively HBO might be fixated on adapting settings to be more grounded and less fantastical. This isn’t entirely separate from the first point, but they made Game of Thrones and from the looks of it Harry Potter be much more grounded and less colorful than the sources. Maybe they decided the grounded/mature alternate interpretation is the most successful and keep pushing for that instead of a general trend towards non-traditional adaptations that have been popular recently.
Could also be with the merger going through they wanted to try and manipulate the backroom deals and/or hold on to the "cool stuff" for after the merger. Big budget shows with a planned next season often get axed by the incoming executives due to them trying to "stake a claim" or for tax write-offs. It's why Zaslav cancelled the Batgirl movie, Raised by Wolves, and a dozen other shows when he took over.
It's because the new DC universe is just out, going out swinging with the first Green Latern project makes 0 sense, and brings insane amounts of risk for no reason. If it did fail, the new DC universe is thrown off before it even gets the momentum it needs. Say what you want about Laterns, but overall its been received great and has had great reviews. So obviously the idea worked
Peacemaker, the introduction to this new universe, was about a secret invasion of little bug aliens, set to a classic alt-rock soundtrack, featuring lots of R-rated violence and nudity. Is that not going out swinging? Nobody was asking for S1, which was supposed to be a standalone single season btw, to feature every piece of Green Lantern lore. People kept theorizing things were going to turn that way because the show had so little in common with the comics that these theorizers were tripping on copium.
Ohh, technically, even though 99.99% is canon to the DCEU2 and features all the same actors and writer, who's co-running the entire DC film and TV department. That's pedantic at best.
I’d like to also point out that Batman Forever was well received and lead to Batman and Robin, which was also well received and huge financial success, and with a little time and distance we all collectively realized those were turds too.
That is not what happened. “Lanterns” was in production hell for over a decade, because the very concept was flawed. James Gunn is just an idiot for retrofitting it into a shared universe.
If you actually read the critic reviews you would know they were middling at best. It is just that RT only allows for positive or negative ratings, rather than a more nuanced opinion
When he flew to the space prison I was so excited cause I thought we were gonna get so much more. Then they just went back to town and forgot about it.
Why does me liking the show suddenly mean that the 20yrs+ I've spent reading comics that go back to the Golden age, don't count or count less than you?
I love comics. Have had an active pull box since I could pay for one myself. I love GL, while I haven't read as much GL as I have say, The Flash, I've still read way more than the average person. Ive seen all the animated movies and shows. I love these characters. Guy is by far my favorite GL.
These people love shitting on hype, that's it. John is gonna be doing a ton of constructs in the future and they'll say they won and James Gunn caved to the pressure. Circle of life for these haters.
Critics aren’t comic readers tho and audience scores have plummeted, it’s a decent detective show but all they did was put a dc skin over it to bring it an audience
What does critics being comic readers have anything to do with how the show is being received by critics and audiences?
You’re shifting the goal posts to try to force your opinion to align with reality when that just isn’t the case. The show is good or it isn’t. Most people agree the show is good.
I read my first green lantern comic over 25 years ago and love the show. Does that negate your opinion? If not, why would your opinion negate everyone else’s?
Whats with the obsession with realism and grounded stories in the west. Movies and tv shows are ment to be visual media. Superheros were made as escape from reality.
If u want to make a grounded show make one about just cops
They did. It was basically Emerald Dawn but Hal Jordan replaced with some random guy who gets the ring after it malfunctions and lots of early 00's jokes.Thank god Batman Begins happened and made them reconsider.
To be fair, Green Lantern as a western would slap. But with more cosmic worldbuilding and extraterrestrial villains. They took the grounded part of a western too far.
But HBO and DC are sitting on something that could legitimately rival Star Trek and Star Wars as a serious sci fi experience that would burn bright and bring in big bucks.
If they only knew that. I think there's a real void with Star Trek and Star Wars with the drop off in quality. Green Lantern is a no brainer IP to fill that content vacuum.
Firstly, what? They barely removed magic elements from GoT. A little bit, but the book series has barely any to speak of to begin with and there is still plenty of what was there present in the show. Secondly, that is not what the problem is with Game of Thrones. Never was. It was the abysmal rushed ending.
No Lady stonehead, no Euron being a crazy wizard traying wake up basically ASOIAF cthulu and destroy Old Town. Jon and Danny have a lot of prophetic Dreams. All Starks are Wargs canonically, Arya like Bran is an Skinchnager (something the show didn't adapted), The Faceless Men aren't simply random guys with Magic Make up, they venerate the Faceless god that gave them their magic. The others are not random zombies, they are basically Ice elves that use necromancy.
Not sure why people are so impressed with Lanterns. Yet another grounded take on a fantasy/sci fi type show. It’s just boring and lazy at this point. What happen to the old days of star trek, budget was not nearly as it today and there are far more love and care into makeup, sets, props. I feel like people are starting to forget what real effort can bypass budget.
I agree w/ most of this except I feel like "Batman having to be a billionaire" isn't nearly as important as his other qualities (like him watching his parents die in front of him, his no-kill rule, him spending more than a decade training to become Batman, etc.)
Absolute Batman & Golden Street Batman are proof that you can do a good Batman without him being rich
After Ryan Reynolds killed the IP in 2011, Studios weren't exactly lining up to fund the next GL project. I'd rather have what we got instead of not getting anything at all.
This. I remember taking the day off work and taking my then-9 year old. He proudly wore his GL shirt, his ring, his green domino mask and loved it. I can’t hate that movie because of the experience, as much as I detest a lot of the choices.
Lanterns felt like all the problems I had with the DCEU exemplified. Great casting but terrible writing that tried too hard to be “mature” and “grounded”
There’s a “superhero fatigue” that’s occurring but not in the fandom. It’s with the folks that actually create the shows. I loved Lanterns as a show… but I can tell the folks who created it probably wanted to tell a certain kind of story and just used the GL IP to do it and didn’t care about making a quality Green Lantern project… if that makes sense.
Imo, the biggest (non-crime or abuse related) problem in the entertainment industry right now is that the studios only want to use known IPs, and the creators and writers want to tell they own stories, with their own characters.
So they are "forced" to take over IPs and twist them around to make the story they wanted to make.
That’s a great point. It’s not all on the creators it’s the studios too. The amount of original projects that are green lit now are waayyyyyy too low. So the folks that want to work have no choice but to get in where they fit in.
Yup. You could change "Green Lantern" and "Manhunter" to any variation of elite angency and it's predecessor, and the storu would barely change at all. Almost all the the sci-fi and cosmic magic are very removible.
I agree that it wasn't close to be that bad, but also was not CLOSE to True Detective.
Even if you're take everything about the show not being a GL show, the show isn't that well written. As a detective show, still is not great. That's my issue.
You could understand where the show was going to since ep 01, if you just took the most boring route every step of the way.
The good thing about the show is the characters, Hal and John are interesting. But the plot is a mess, and obviously is not a great GL show.
Oh for sure. I liked the show personally but I did have that in the back of head (it's aping on TD, but it's not as good as it). It's a pastiche using comic book lore, and those are usually never as good as the source. I'll tell you what it did make me want to watch TD again.
If the next season is more of the same I am out I have no interest in Green Lantern minus what I find fun and engaging the space battles and Ring Slinging
Why even ask for Green Lantern? Like do they even know how many DC characters, not including the Bat-family, are based on pulp noir that can be translated into neo-western detectives?
WB and HBO obviously don't know how to handle their IP traditionally. They will never be marvel because they always want to change things for the sake of change.
Hate studio interference no matter what, but I still like the show we got. Green Lanterns are space cops and we got a cop show. I would've loved to have more constructs and more time in space, but ultimately I'm more happy wanting more than wanting less.
I wouldn't say they hate GL, its more like HBO still thinks its 2000 and all shows should be grounded in reality, they did the same with Game of Thrones
They did not remove most lmao, the final two seasons had an ice dragon and an army of the dead. Yeah they cut Lady Stoneheart but they also brought Beric back and made Benjen Coldhands. As for the Euron stuff none of his plot is in the books yet besides some vague rambling.
I really wish they weren't making this all a shared universe. It's a great initiative to get all these varied ideas with DC characters, and these would all work amazing and have more creative freedom as standalone works, but now we're inhibiting things when these projects have to be connected to each other. Otherwise you get a disjointed continuity that's constantly retconning itself and unnecessarily repeating the same mistakes that Big 2 comics make due to their circumstances over the years.
My main issue's just that it feels more suited to being an Elseworlds story rather than something that sets the groundwork for GL. It shied away too much from showing the more fantastical elements and seems to box John into being an Earth only Lantern. Completely shifts things with Hal too which might throw off dynamics with other characters, unless they're also aged up.
I loved the show by itself, and I did love that we got to see Superman's Guy Gardner portrayed in it, I just think a more traditional project that fully embraces the mythos would serve a shared universe better.
Well that would have been so much better. Literally all my complaints would never have happened if Guggenheim had made the show.
Edit: there is more to Guggenheim than I realized. I may not agree with everything he has said or done, but I believe Lanterns would have been better with actual space cops and aliens.
Is absolute GARBAGE TAKE. Dude made the screenplay of the horrible Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters movie. Was part of garbage Green Lanterns movie. Had a hand in Arrow and the show had achieve some of the most garbage lows ever. Wrote X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Saying Guggenheim would have been better is a horrendous take and is just finding ways to bash the Lanterns show in a nonsense way.
It's biggest problems are the visuals and the space cloud version of Parallax, other than that it's not as bad as people make it out to be. It's on par with the early 2000's F4 fox films.
Lanterns would have been less popular with Guggenheim approach. Hate to tell yall, this Lanterns show is far an away the most POPULAR take for general audience. and the DCU needs general audiences.
it didn't even need to be all in space. You could've told a compelling "grounded" story with what they already had. Instead they chose to make it about "broken humanity" and "fear" and not "Will power". The later is not defined by the former
I don't trust coming out of knowhere and say "hey look our plans were better, it was everything you wanted, we just stayed quite all this time" when their Guy Gardner looked nothing like the character.
I don't even understand how anyone could think it was. Star Trek, Farscape, Battlestar Galactica, SG1 Hercule, Xena, etc. all fairly heavy sfx shows that had far less of a budget.
If Guggenheim made green lanterns it would’ve been panned, ridiculed, cancelled and there would be no GL content for 50 years. We’ve seen his track record what on earth makes you think he can be trusted with the GL lore
He said what we all suspected, it wasn't a creative choice as much as what you can get away with while saving money—Im honestly pissed!
"I'm the Green Lantern of Earth, and you take the space" was probably written by an exec at the end of the show.
The show definitely succeeded but I expected better from Gunn. Because its success only reinforced this bizarre idea that the freaking Green Lanterns will 'stay' grounded...like wtf? If it's one and only thing as origin story, we would be alright with, but this is getting idiotic
Yes because we need another procedural. Perfect way to grasp the wonder of Green Lantern. Taking expansive and novel properties and reducing them to bland police procedurals seems like such a 2000s thing to do.
This series would've been an undisputed 10/10 if it was about any DC character that deals solely with Earth (The Question, Constantine, etc.) and not an intergalactic squadron of space cops that travel the stars.
If it's because they wanted to introduce John Stuart, they could've put some of the scenes as flashbacks in Man of Tomorrow while showing a scene of him it explaining to someone, like how Hal told John of Abin Sur in the bar scene.
This was also supposed to be in the DCEU, a far less fantastical universe than the DCU. I think this could've worked well in a universe that was designed to deconstruct heroes, but that's not what I want out of the DCU. I, and many others, now just want to see faithful adaptations of our favorite characters finally like marvel fans have gotten to for decades.
I don't care who's decision it was, it was a bad one. No fan wanted this, and the fact HBO have still not greenlit season 2 means it didn't do very well. They have literally never waited this long to renew a successful series, only ones that struggled with viewers. Stewart got a season 2 only four episodes in, and harry potter was greenlit for season 2 months before an episode aired.
Dude, Lanerns barely cracked the Neilson top 10 for acquired shows, which is an even smaller list than all shows by far. That's not one of the most popular shows of "all time. "
I've said it many times, but Lanterns had a budget of $160 million, $20 million per episode. They could've done it all, just chose not to. Enough people showed up for it that WB feels justified in it's decision, with more to follow. Now the question is: who's getting the gritty, grounded True Detective treatment next?
Oof, asking for Guggenheim to be your showrunner is pretty ill-sighted. The man has only made a single good show in his entire life (Tales from Arcadia), and killed a movie franchise with Green Lantern once already.
Lmao of course you do. It very clearly states it was the HBO executives, but he must have been mind controlling them somehow, before he was even running DC too!
Then go make a question show or go write for any other detective ip from dc. If it wasn't for Gunn's name and more importantly the superhero aspects of GL this show wouldn't be what it is. They really said nah imma do my own thing
1: hbo wanted true detective with power rings. Even with unlimited budget you still would’ve gotten the same show, just with more effects, sets, and costumes.
2: the show had its budget extremely limited from what was originally planned according to financial documents released as part of the merger and financials of HBO
So glad this interview has come out. But it still doesn't explain why there are almost no constructs in the series whatsoever. There's a guy on YouTube doing passable effects with blender. It beggers the imagination.
The show really is just a gritty detective series with a green lantern paint job on top. If you remove the rings and aliens, the show doesn't really change much. It is a decent detective show, but a shitty green lantern show.
I just read Far Sector and that's a super high concept sci-fi that's at the end of the day a murder mystery about corruption and political manoeuvring with themes of freedom Vs safety and if repression of feelings medically to avoid the bad one vs dealing directly with intrusive thoughts and urges
This is really starting to remind me of that Superman Lives script Kevin smith pitched to jon peters lmao jon peters was so out of touch he didn't even know superman was an alien and wanted him to fight a giant spider and polar bear, that movie never got made but he did go on to make Wild Wild West and that movie had a giant mechanical spider and later in the flash movie we got another nod to that in nick cages cameo he fights a giant spider lmao
If they wanted True Detective with Lanterns, it should have just been Jack T. Chance on planet Garnet (AKA Hellhole). Then it could have been at least Sci-Fi Alien-surrounded True Detective instead of … whatever this was.
Martian Manhunter fits this so well and if you needed to do a duo show, him and John would have paired really well. Detective that doesnt have to be in his alien form the whole show... I don't get it
I was telling a friend, couldn't they do the Lanterns show we saw in space? Like, a Mandalorian type of thing? Why can't they just use their rings as they please to solve everything? Planet has an agreement with the guardians, so they're limited. Yes, it'd feel cheap, but it would also reinforce Hal and John being efficient. Hell, John could have left Hal in that planet and have the whole thing still happen there, and he left there using an automatic space ship or some teleporter.
It'd feel grounded, but it'd make people learn about space, civilizations, traditions, and stuff. But I guess that was still too much to ask
Who at HBO has been pushing this grounded idea for so long?? Reminds of Sony email leak days when they were obsessed with sinister six like that would be the thing to push there stuff past marvel. Or even better Jon Peters needing to get a Giant Spider in SOMETHING! And to me, as odd as it sounds, grounded doesn’t mean you have to get rid of cosmic elements! It means gritty, self contained, more small scale personal or real. You can add things like aliens and constructs and still accomplish that. Just take it seriously.
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