‘Lanterns’ Is The Green Lantern Story We’ve (Mostly) Been Waiting For
Every now and then, the 2011 Green Lantern movie pops up on cable and I watch some of it thinking, well, how bad could it have been? I wouldn’t call it “unwatchable,” but I certainly can’t watch it. Just everything is wrong, starting with Ryan Reynolds' jovial, silly performance as Hal Jordan. Hal Jordan has been many things over the years, but not that. And I could live with a jovial, nice guy Hal if he were at least interesting. Alas.
Another problem is, in the second act, it jams in the Green Lantern Corps. Look, this movie is trying to introduce Green Lantern to “the masses,” and a guy who has a power ring that can make whatever he can think of is already a tougher sell to audiences who just want to watch Batman punch criminals. Batman is easy to explain. “Angry independently wealthy man dresses up as a bat to punch criminals in an effort to numb the pain of his parents‘ murder.” We’ve all been there. But Green Lantern, a space cop, is weird to begin with. Let alone introducing the whole galactic team.
It’s too much! Even thought it was too much and I already understood how the whole thing worked. I started to accept maybe there was just no good way to adapt Green Lantern for live action.
When I interviewed both Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre — who play Hal Jordan and John Stewart, respectively, in HBO’s Lanterns — Pierre asked me about my relationship to Green Lantern. Oh, a chance to talk about myself? Well, twist my arm…
But what I love about Green Lantern is the petty strifes between Hal Jordan, John Stewart, and Guy Gardner. And Lanterns, is all about this dynamic. (Well, mostly Hal and John.) Maybe even a tiny bit to a fault (hold that thought)…
When I was a little kid, I kind of hated Super Friends. I thought it was stupid. But every now and then reruns of Challenge of the Superfriends would air and this I liked. It only lasted one season, but in the opening credits we’d hear “It’s the Justice League of America versus the Legion of Doom.” There were no cutesy side characters for ”the kids” like the Wonder Twins, or Wendy, Marvin, and Wonder Dog.
What else was cool about Challenge of the Superfriends is it greatly expanded the team — most Super Friends episodes only used Superman, Batman and Robin, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman — which now included a whole host of new characters, which. included The Flash and Green Lantern. (Also on the team now is Apache Chief, who we also see here in this gif, who I really don’t fully know how to address, so I won’t.)
Based on Green Lantern’s appearances on Challenge of the Superfriends, I wanted more. I wanted to read about Hal Jordan’s adventures in the comics. I asked my dad to buy me a Green Lantern comic, so we drove to the Eldon, Missouri drug store and he bought me one. This was the cover:
I actually still own that very comic. When Aaron Pierre asked me about my relationship with Green Lantern over Zoom, I had this copy ready to go right next to me just in case I was asked something along these lines. There‘s John Stewart on the cover, calling Hal Jordan a “has-been.” Kyle Chandler’s eyes lit up, “That just about sums up the show!”
I’ve seen seven of the first eight episodes and Kyle Chandler is 100 percent correct...
(This is a free post for "free tier" subscribers. But, The Hard Pass truly only exists because of paying subscribers who can read the story I was told about Tom Cruise that is now my favorite Tom Cruise story, risking humiliation by approaching Philip Seymour Hoffman to ask him about Along Came Polly, and asking cast members from Ocean's 12 if their characters all know they look like famous people since Tess knows she looks like Julia Roberts.)
