DC Fans Are Already Incredibly Divided Over 'Lanterns'

You might remember Green Lantern from the terrible 2011 film starring Ryan Reynolds. The CGI nightmare directed by Martin Campbell was so criticized and mocked that there’s near zero chance the DC Comics superhero film will ever see a cult reappraisal. But even worse, it might’ve ruined one of DC’s best superheroes on screen forever. That is, until the debut of HBO’s Lanterns.

Reimagined by the creative trio of Damon Lindelof (Watchmen), Chris Mundy (Ozark), and celebrated comic-book writer Tom King, the new TV series is a stark departure from the 2011 film. The grittier tale follows Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) and his reluctant protégé John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), as they investigate an extraterrestrial murder in Nebraska. (For the uninitiated: Green Lanterns are kind of like space cops, but with magical rings.) There are just a couple issues with the series, which premiered its first episode on Sunday night. From the first reactions so far, it seems like the new direction wasn’t comic-book-y enough for the comic fans, and the mystery wasn’t engrossing enough for those drawn to its new True Detective aesthetics.

“I enjoyed it but I'm afraid this show is going for the whole ‘take away the superhero aspect from this superhero show and [hope] its still good’ route,” one fan wrote on the r/Television subreddit. “I actually want Green Lantern fun in my Green Lantern show.”

“The lack of glitzy CGI is heading towards the other end of the spectrum,” another fan added, questioning if it was “a response to [superhero] fatigue?”

They’re probably right. Lanterns is likely overcompensating to make sure you really feel the discrepancy between the new series and the 2011 film. Much like with Guardians of the Galaxy, new DCU head James Gunn made his name in the superhero space by taking relatively unknown and wacky characters and turning them into one of Marvel’s most beloved properties. For a superhero to excel on TV, they likely thought their green and glowing alien detectives needed to be more grounded in the beginning.

Still, the detective story often throws the comic-book heroism out the window entirely. As The New York Times described it in its early review, “What the show does not lean into, until late in the season, are the simple, fantastical pleasures that the Green Lantern mythos offers.”

Esquire’s own review agreed, though critic Eric Francisco noted that “the leading men have swagger and a sense of humor—and not in the corny way Marvel movies ground their comic-book zaniness in insincerity.”

Lindelof responded to the potential fan backlash ahead of the premiere, stating that there were concerns in the writers room about doing away with fan service while trying to make a show for everyone. “The one thing that fans hate more than being listened to is fan service and that sort of idea of doing something just to placate them,” he told Variety. “Fandom is not a monolith. There are some fans who want more risky, edgy sort of revisionist storytelling inside of these adaptations, and some fans who are just basically like, ‘Give me what I love.'”

“You can’t go out of bounds in terms of storylines that James [Gunn] wants to do,” Lindelof continued. “But artistically, they’re giving us a lot of freedom to tell the story how we want.”

Despite a pair of great performances from Chandler and Pierre, sadly, it seems that Lanterns is butting heads with every kind of fandom they set out to please.

This story originally appeared on Esquire.com.

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