OK, I will admit it. Lanterns has me intrigued. Of course, this is Hollywood, with Chris Mundy (True Detective: Night Country) as showrunner, Damon Lindelof as another writer, and Tom King (Supergirl) also onboard. So, realistically, disappointment could well be imminent.
But I am fascinated to see how they attempt this, and which different directions they could take this in. With a gritty detective story set in Nebraska at its heart, it at least has potential.
The question is, will I watch it with the cold detachment of somebody about to undergo a medical procedure watching surgery videos on YouTube, or will it manage to grab me as a piece of entertainment?
Lanterns follows experienced Hal Jordan, and less experienced John Stewart, as they investigate a murder in Rushville, Nebraska, which Jordan believes is an extraterrestrial incident and leads them to darker mysteries and reckonings.
It is set within James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DC Universe, but is clearly a drastic side quest with a very different tone. This is, at least, exactly the kind of thing a cinematic universe should be doing when it has television in its toolkit. As always, the question is if they are brave enough to really pull it off?
Now HBO Max has premiered the first five minutes from the show. The clip begins in the mid 1990s and sees a young John Stewart watching an interview with a younger version of Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan. Then we meet the grown-up John in 2016 as he gets into a car with the older Hal Jordan.
Along with Chandler and Pierre, the series also stars Ulrich Thomsen as Sinestro, Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardener, Kelly Macdonald, Garret Dillahunt, Poorna Jagannathan, Nicole Ari Parker, Jason Ritter, J. Alphonse Nicholson, and Jasmine Cephas Jones.
So is it any good, or is it another Supergirl? We will find out when Lanterns releases on HBO this Sunday.
