Summary — A polished but frustrating premiere that looks expensive and has good acting, but makes Green Lantern feel powerless and treats the ring far too casually.
I thought the first episode of Lanterns was pretty bad. I get what they’re going for with the whole darker, down-on-his-luck superhero thing, but it just doesn’t work for Green Lantern.
The problem is that Green Lantern’s powers are ridiculously strong. He’s one of the most powerful superheroes in basically any superhero universe, so watching him get stuck in situations he could solve with incredibly simple uses of his powers made the whole thing feel dumb. It’s not just a different interpretation from the comics — it feels like the show is ignoring what makes the character work.
I also didn’t like how wishy-washy they were with the ring itself. They take it off, hand it to each other, put it down on a table, look away from it, and generally treat it like some disposable object. But as far as they know, this is one of the most powerful things in the universe. Anyone could take it at any point. There’s only one of them, as far as I understand, so the casualness around it made no sense to me.
There are good things here. It looks expensive, the acting is good, the dialogue is solid, and it clearly has real money behind it. But the main issue is too big to ignore: this just doesn’t feel like Green Lantern.
I’ll watch the second episode and see if it gets any better, but this premiere did not make a great case for itself.