Lanterns
published:
This should could have been good if it wanted to.
I'm not a comic book guy, and I am mildly annoyed at the monoculture takeover that is comic book adaptations in their various forms. So normally I would give zero shits about a Green Lantern HBO show. But there's the Damon Lindelof factor of it all.
I did not watch Lost when it first came out. But I did start watching it near when it was ending, and I have to admit that it is a very good show. In hindsight, it was the last gasp of Western style primetime TV drama, with 20-30 episodes per season consisting of a mix of filler and overarching plotlines. I keep thinking to go back and rewatch it.
Anyway, at the time, I thought the show started out really well. Actually, even if you never intend to watch the show, I think watching the series premiere is worth it: might be one of the most well-executed and gripping premieres of a TV show ever, complete with a perfect mystery cliffhanger at the end to hook you.
But by the time I had caught up and the later seasons were coming out, I reached a point where I realized, "I would rather read the AV Club recap of this than actually watch it." See also, Game of Thrones, Battlestar Galactica, etc. My overall old-man-shakes-fist-at-sky criticism of media in the last twenty years is an obsession with plot and lore taking precedence over art and emotion. It's my grand unified theory that ties together so many threads, from why Star Wars is bad now to why everyone are big crybabies about spoilers these days.[1]
So while I'd given up on watching the show because I'd lost all emotional connection to it, but was curious about what literally happened moment to moment, an AV Club summary was just what the doctor ordered. And, again just like Game of Thrones, when it actually ended and everyone on the planet was losing their shit over it, I just had to laugh. The show creators still thought they had some interesting character and emotion based story to resolve. Nah, man. People want to know how the plot ends.
Anyway, so that is mostly just me smuggling in my Lost take and other assorted sundry rants into this ostensible review of Lanterns, but it is relevant in the following ways:
- Damon Lindelof went on to "make"[2] probably three of my top ten favourite TV shows of the past decade or so: The Leftovers, Watchmen, and Mrs. Davis, and this is the latest show with his name on it
- Lanterns probably succeeds for someone who gives a shit about Green Lanterns but it fails for me in the same way as the above: far too concerned about plot and not enough concerned about whether I care
It's a classic example of how modern TV has impeccable direction, cinematography, and acting, in service of stretching a two hour movie out into an eight hour miniseries. But this one is weird in that it it is explicitly a show about goofy space-traveling super heroes in capes, but it has the visual aesthetic of True Detective. It feels overtly self-conscious. It's kind of embarrassed whenever it has one of its characters wear a goofy super hero costume.
But at the same time, all of its gritty real-world relevance feels muddled and lost to me. Especially like. I hate to comment on this kind of stuff because I feel like I'm way outside of my jurisdiction. But like, the story around John Stewart and race feels so half-assed to me. Especially in contrast to Watchmen which was such a great study on modern racial politics in the context of a comic book world (to the extent that such an exercize is even worth doing in the first place.)
But like I said, the cinematography and acting is so good that it's easy enough to watch regardless. I imagine if I was a comic book fan, I'd be super happy with it. I have dipped my toe into the online discourse to find out that, maybe not, because there was some bullshit about how this and that was different than how it was in the comic books, because of course that's what the discourse is like and nobody on this Earth deserves nice things. But I will say that Kyle Chandler's performance is so damn good that I now want to go back and watch Friday Night Lights, the show he's famous for and a show I had zero interest in the subject matter before now.
Two Stars.
Lanterns is the:
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Look, I'm not out here trying to deliberately ruin anyone's day. But there are Discords out there with more rigorous enforcement of their spoiler policies than most corporations enforce their sexual harassment policies, but Rosebud was a sled and yet Citizen Kane is still probably the best movie you've seen this year in any given year you happen to watch it in. ↩
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OK I know nobody likes "auteur theory" anymore and there are many different creative voices etc. etc. etc. yada yada yada, get on with it. ↩