I have to give it more time, but I think Lanterns might be the worst DC TV series ever made.
And I’ve seen Peacemaker.
There are so many problems with this show that it is difficult to know where to start. I wrote in my review of the first episode that the darker tone could work if the story went to interesting and satisfying places.
It did not.
As it got worse, a friend of mine asked, “Why are you still watching it? Is it self-torture?” I think it’s because at heart I am a Blue Lantern: I hold onto hope for as long as I can.
But hope for this show died along with Hal Jordan.
I cannot review why this how is so bad without spoilers so be warned:
SPOILERS FOR THE REMAINING REVIEW.
It is difficult to say anything about this show that hasn’t already been said, so if any of my ideas are parallel to what others are saying, my apologies.
The most obvious problem is that the show is morally abhorrent. This should not surprise based on Peacemaker and the work of Tom King. The “hero” of the story is John Stewart, who essentially becomes a villain. In fact, everyone in this story is horrible. The least horrible person is Hal Jordan, who you are supposed to hate. Hal is presented as retrograde and out of touch. But just like Archie Bunker, he is the only one who resonates with the audience. This is in no small part due to Kyle Chandler’s fantastic performance. But the show goes out of its way to tear Hal down so that it can build John up.
I wrote in my review for the movie Turning Red that the entire movie was written backwards from the punchline. This means that instead of letting the natural and logical characters grow out of the story, everything is shoehorned into an essential message or point. You find this at the end of the last episode where Hal’s hologram says to John, “My gut tells me you’re gonna be better at this job than I ever was.”
And there it is.
The whole point of the show was to tell (not SHOW) the audience that John is better than Hal.
This is a problem because many people love Hal Jordan. Hal Jordan means something to people. To the writers, Hal Jordan is just a vehicle that can trauma dump and use as a stepping stone. Tom King did the same thing to Wally West in the comics in the single worst issue of any comic book I have ever read. And now he has done the same thing to Hal.
To sum up the story:
A manhunter (a shapeshifting violent alien) was brought to Earth by the previous Green Lantern of Sector 2814, Abin Sur. In mercy, Abin spared the manhunters life and the manhuner murdered him. The manhunter set up in a small town called Rushville where she made the inhabitants follow her like a cult leader because she could cure all their diseases. A fugitve named Kate Kane came to Rushville and was saved by the manhunter who made her sheriff and impregnated her with a manhunter baby. When Hal finds out there are aliens in Rushville, he investigates and his trainee John comes with him. They find out that the manhunter has a giant stockpile of weapons that work against Green Lanterns. Meanwhile some other aliens want revenge on the manhunter for killing their planet. Also, the Guardians of the Universe want John to take away Hal’s ring because he was trained by Sinestro. Hal decides he can’t trust John and abandons him in a crashed car which later catches fire. The manhunter (who in an earlier episode had sex with John) saves his life. The manhunter begins killing the people of Rushville indiscriminately as Hal tries to save them. When his ring runs out of charge, John tries to take the ring from him. When the manhunter shows up, John assassinates her with a sniper rifle, takes the ring, but chooses not to be a Green Lantern.
Hal Jordan goes to prison because of the death and destruction in Rushville. When he gets out, he starts a romance with Kate Kane, who is still sheriff. He moves back to Rushville where the people blame Hal for all of the destruction and try to kill him. Kate’s teenage son saves Hal and Hal discovers that he is a manhunter who has broken Sinestro out of prison so that Sinestro could make him a power battery that could kill a Guardian. When Hal tells Kate, he says that he wants to protect her and her son by leaving Rushville and laying low until they can find a place safe from the Guardians.
Her response to this is to shoot him in the head.
She then calls John Stewart who comes to investigate and discovers everything. He digs up Hal’s corpse and takes his ring. We also learn along the way that Hal’s father and grandfather committed suicide, so Hal is broken. John finds Sinestro, tortures him and takes the power battery. Kate’s son finds John and beats him up but then tells John to kill him so that he doesn’t turn evil. John then finds Kate tells her he figured out she murdered Hal, but he doesn’t turn her in because “Hal wouldn’t want that.” He then tells Guy Gardner to leave Earth and that he is the only lantern for the planet. And top it off, he decides that the Green Lantern oath is stupid so he comes up with his own (which sounds a lot more like the Sinestro Corps oath).
And that’s Lanterns.
As you can see, John is pretty much evil. He becomes an accessory after the fact to murder, steals Sinestro’s power battery and bullies away the actual Green Lantern of Earth because he can. He assassinated the manhunter because he says, without evidence she wanted to die. He tries to steal Hal’s ring while he is trying stop people from getting killed.
Going back to this point, the manhunter was the one indiscriminately murdering the people of Rushville, but Hal is the one who is blamed even though is the ONLY ONE trying to save them. When he returns to the town they try to murder him, but that is all swept under the rug until he is actually murdered.
His murder also makes no sense. If he was saying that he was going to expose Kate’s son to put him in danger, making some kind of threat, then there would be some logic. But he was literally telling her his plan to save them. But she was so upset at the idea of having to leave her stupid, violent community that she put a bullet in his brain. This was not an accident, like the gun just went off. She pulled it out of the holster, took off the safety, pointed it at his face, and pulled the trigger.
And because we are not supposed to like Hal, she shouldn’t go to jail.
The writers think they are incredibly clever, but the plot holes are so numerous that the story cannot hold water. It is even more infuriating because it is clear that the writers think that they are high-minded and sophisticated. It’s like Prometheus where you had supposedly smart characters constantly doing stupid things.
Why would the murderer bring to town the one man who could figure out you are the killer? If the manhunter did want to die, why did it go out of the way to use its husband as a decoy to save its own life? If the Kerry’s son didn’t want Hal to know who saved him, why didn’t he just not show himself to Hal? If the power ring can cross interstellar distances like nothing, why can’t it take out the handful of satellites that are killing the townsfolk? Why can’t Sinestro forge a power ring if he can make a power battery, which is much harder to make?
Also, Sinestro is trapped on an island where you can’t swim across the water. He complains about not being able to leave. So to be clear, he can forge a lantern power battery, but he can’t cobble together a canoe? I could go on and on, but this article is already too long.
All of this is so wasteful. Hal Jordan and John Stewart are fantastic characters in the comics. They don’t always agree or get along, but they are both heroes. Nothing about Lanterns is heroic.
I'm not saying that Hal and John are paragons of virtue in the comics. But the moral relativism that is spread throughout this entire series is so repellant to me as a Catholic. I could put up with the language issues, though to bizarre incorporation of nudity and sexuality is baffling. But above all, the show feels like an inversion of morals.
Going back to Hal, the writers definitely have John Walker Syndrome with him: they want you to hate him, but they are so morally out of touch that he is the only one who makes some kind of sense. For me, the most outrageous scene was during the mass murder in Rushville, Hal looked completely out of his depths and overwhelmed. Hal may be reckless, but they wrote him in this scene as incompetent. He also left John to die in the wrecked car,which makes Hal an attempted murderer.
Honestly, the treatment of John isn't better. The writers mean to elevate him, but instead, his morally compromised view of the world is so bleak that none of the heroism of the comic book version of the character can be found.
The main problem from this show is that the writers don’t care about these characters. They mean nothing to them.
But even if they had used completely original characters, the show would still be morally repugnant. That’s what makes this so much worse. It would be like someone beating you to death with your favorite childhood toy. There is a deep-seated level of hatred for the DC heroes and their fans that I cannot fathom. That hate the Green Lanterns, joking how “Green” is stupid so the show is just called Lanterns. They tried to excuse it as a stupid joke, but it clearly wasn’t. They disdain everything about the Green Lanterns and want to strip it away and reforge it in their own broken image, even rewriting the Green Lantern Oath.
It is supposed to be “In Brightest Day, in Blackest Night, no evil shall escape my sight…”
But in Lanterns, Day is NIght and evil is seen as right.
These lanterns cast only darkness instead of light.
