It is no novel observation that the superhero genre has grown
creatively exhausted. There are still films that find compelling
iterations of the formula ? the recent ?Spider-Man? among them ? but
they remain variations on a theme. DC?s ?Supergirl,? by contrast, was a
much more conventional iteration. Which makes HBO?s ?Lanterns? all the
more refreshing.

?Lanterns? wears superhero trappings while operating as an eerie,
deadpan detective mystery. A mass shooting at a high-school football
game in Rushville, Nebraska, draws veteran Green Lantern Hal Jordan
(Kyle Chandler) and his trainee, John Stewart (Aaron Pierre), into an investigation that Hal suspects involves aliens (not the sort from MS-
13). From there, the series unfolds across 2016 and 2026 in Faulknerian fashion, its fractured chronology conveying how the past haunts and
shapes the present.

There is a distinct merit to this narrative inaccessibility. Where the
broader MCU has spent years sanding down its storytelling for
frictionless mass consumption, ?Lanterns? is comfortable being
withholding and occasionally confusing. I know virtually nothing of the
comics on which it is based, but as standalone noir detective
television, it is as good as anything DC has done in years ? at least
since ?The Penguin.?

Chandler and Pierre are superbly cast and share an infectious
chemistry. Jordan is a weathered veteran; Stewart is his trainee and,
much to Jordan?s chagrin, eventual replacement. Jordan is also
something of a prick, but what senior associate being forced into
retirement after training his own replacement wouldn?t be? He
condescendingly calls Stewart ?Junior? and dispenses wisdom such as,
?This ring is a dangerous weapon. When and if to use it, that?s the
whole ballgame.?

The show?s greatest asset is its restraint. ?Lanterns? allows Rushville
to feel quaint and inhabited before it unfurls any real action. The cinematography lingers on empty highways, dive bars, football fields,
motels, and the vast Midwestern landscape, imbuing the series with an
eerie atmosphere before revealing its supernatural elements. Its humor
is sparse and character-driven, a welcome reprieve from the goofball
cadence of ?Creature Commandos? and ?Peacemaker.?

The series occasionally loses that restraint while exploring Stewart?s childhood. His father was considered for the Green Lantern ring before
Hal but answered honestly when asked whether he was afraid. His mother, Bernadette, responds by lecturing a blue extraterrestrial on American
racial politics. ?Do you understand how unfair it is to ask a black man
in America if he?s afraid?? she demands. ?We are terrified daily of persecution.? Later, she insists Hal was ?privileged enough in this
life that he didn?t have to know fear.?

Bernadette makes Jemele Hill sound like Thomas Sowell. Unsurprisingly,
scenes like these fed complaints that ?Lanterns? had succumbed to the
usual woke sermonizing. (Subsequent interviews from one of the writers, Vanessa Baden Kelly, where she ranted about racism and sexism did not
help dispel these notions). But I never read John himself that way.
After being nearly burned alive in one scene, he jokes to his doctor,
?If you make me white, I?ll kill you.? Race exists in his life without consuming his personality.

More interesting are the consequences of his parents? worldview.
Convinced their infant son can succeed where his father failed, they effectively turn John into a sociological experiment. Displaying the
sort of deranged disregard for a child?s wellbeing that would elate
Nikole Hannah-Jones, John?s parents condition him against fear (by
shooting apples off his head with a 9mm), isolate him, and occasionally deposit him in crime-ridden neighborhoods to make him walk home alone
at night (but you didn?t see them bragging in the pages of the New York Times). Their abusive obsession explains John?s discipline and
emotional detachment while making his eventual rebellion against
everyone who has planned his life for him feel earned.

That rebellion collides with the Manhunter mystery in the season?s
strongest stretch. The Manhunters are an ancient race of dangerous
androids, and Hal and John spend much of the investigation trying to
identify one hiding in Rushville, like Harrison Ford hunting replicants
in ?Blade Runner.? Their quarry has spent years cultivating the town?s
loyalty through miraculous healings and favors, giving the mystery an increasingly sinister dimension as the extent of its influence becomes
clear.

Despite the protestations of pacifist naysayers, Hal Jordan?s case for military engagement with the Manhunter is far stronger than the show
allows. The Guardians (the Green Lanterns? management) really had sent
John to replace him, vindicating the paranoia that everyone treated as
vanity. His instinct that the Manhunter represented an intolerable
threat was also plainly correct. It possessed alien weaponry, had
embedded itself inside an American town, and had cultivated enough
local loyalty to complicate any attempt to confront it. Hal?s gambit contributes to the catastrophe that befalls the locals in the ensuing
battle, but once extraterrestrial ordnance enters the equation, even
Donald Rumsfeld could have classified the threat as a known known. Hal
Jordan did nothing wrong.

That is where ?Lanterns? succeeds. It uses Green Lantern mythology to
tell a mature story about fear, duty, legacy, and institutional
authority while keeping its characters entertaining company. DC should
take the hint: build superheroes around story, character, and
atmosphere. The universe will survive without another formulaic
apocalypse.

--
Democrats and the liberal media hate President Trump more than they
love this country.


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