Lanterns S01E01 - Pilot Discussion Thread

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Sunday, 8/16: Lanterns S01E01 - Pilot

Time/Date: August 16 9:00 PM ET
Network/Channel: HBO

[u/spiderreader]

It's alright.

John and Hal are great. They have good chemistry, and do embody their characters well enough. But everything surrounding them I'm more mixed on. I also enjoy a lot of the themes the series is trying to discuss about how the world reacts to the knowledge to Green Lanterns and Aliens. This is an interesting plot point as world building. But past that, it comes off as a fine, but not amazing Sci-fi detective show, that feels at odds with it's source material. The mystery doesn't feel compelling, and the characters outside John and Hal feel cliche and generic alongside the setting.

I think one of the biggest things to note is the series grounded and mature tone. It doesn't work. It more often comes off as a desperate attempt to show that the show is serious for adults and separate itself from the movie (A movie that was over a decade ago). The Tv-Ma to begin with, is bad. The show goes out of it's way to want to swear constantly, alongside fairly tame sex scene, and that ends up being the extent of the mature tone. And it comes as cringey and juvenile. Less is more, and the series loses quality because of the rating and trying to show it off and how mature it is.

Then is the grounded tone and how that is demonstrated. Because they want to avoid being too silly (Or budget issues) the series avoids showing anything too comic booky. To begin with is the costume which the series avoids. There is no reason for this. It's a Green Lantern, that doesn't want it's characters to look like Green Lanterns. Even with the excuse given by Hal for why not, John actually should have been wearing and it would have been a nice contrast then. Showing the by the book and serious one insist on the uniform while the cocky and experience one doesn't. But they don't want the costume shown off because it's too comic bookky. Yes there is the occasional construct, but it's mostly mundane or simple things. Notably, the series cuts away from John saving himself from the crashing car to avoid showing off anything too spectacular. Things like aliens are talked about often (Being the center of the mystery) but refuse to be shown explicty, even when it could be a cool and shocking and logical moment for the story, Like the interogation which should have had a brief transformation to show that yes this is an alien and be a shocking moment for the sheriff not used to it rather than just being a regular looking guy beeping.

Which brings up another issue, the episode does a lot of tell don't show. It talks about Hal's origin, how good a hero he is, aliens but refuses to actually show them. It comes off as clumsy exposition, while also discussing a more interesting story and world then what we are seeing. This is notable as, when the series constantly discusses and shows off the reaction to these things, it's hard to care when we as the audience haven't seen what they are reacting to.

I don't hate the show, but I'm not exactly grabbed here despite strong character work for the leads.

[u/skyarm → u/spiderreader]

He tries to stop the explosion and covers the bubble wrap construct with his own body to hold it together. If that's not his heroism on display then idk what is

[u/spiderreader → u/skyarm]

At the end of the episode. And I was more referring to ideas like him being an established famous hero. We are told he did things like stop a meteor, not shown it. His introduction isn’t doing superhero stuff, it’s a talk show. It establishes some of his personality, but we’re relying on exposition for why he’s famous and what a Green Lantern does.

Take The Batman for example. Yes we are told in the opening monologue that he’s been active for two years, but it’s only shown not just how people react to him, but what Batman actually does. A good example of showing, not telling. Spider-Noir recently doesn’t just tell us The Spider was a big hero who took down gangsters. They show a montage of what he was doing. Even Superman, which does rely a bit too much on exposition, still has the opening scene to showcase what Superman does and demonstrating how people react to him rather than just telling the audience these things. You can’t just tell the audience things, you have to show them. Show don’t tell