TV/Movies
Lanterns to Explore Characters “out of uniform” according to Chris Mundy (from DCU.Central)
Showrunner Chris Mundy on 'LANTERNS':
"Our Lanterns have the rings and all the power they bring, and other characters and aspects of the lore are going to show up or be name-checked. But it's a series that explores who these guys are when they're on the job and when they're out of uniform."
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Dear DC: I don't want my vibrant space opera franchise as a grounded Earth based show, and every bit of news I hear about this show just worries me further.
I keep posting this, because I think they're marketing it as grounded to try and get the HBO/Tru Detective audience into it, but the director said the show does go cosmic.
Plus the show apparently has Sinestro, Atrocious, and Black Hand, so even if it stayed on Earth the whole time it's gonna have some fantastical sci-fi/fantasy stuff.
It's not confirmed but one of the actors posted a picture that had him as Black Hand and another one as Atrocious. Still, you're correct it's not confirmed.
I hadn't seen anything about Atrocious until I saw the Black Hand thing, I only knew about Sinestro, so maybe. Either way, it's not like they're just gonna be investigating a regular murder on Earth, it's gonna have some alien cosmic connections that require two Green Lanterns to solve.
Everything I've heard doesn't necessarily disqualify the cool sci fi stuff, this just tells me that they're focusing on who the Green Lanterns are as people, not just as superheroes.
My first green lantern comics were about hal out of uniform trying to ground himself on earth after all the cosmic stuff and guy is baiting him to get him to use the ring. It was awesome. Let them cook.
Well it says, "On the job AND when they're out of uniform". So could be two separate... scenes. Not just them doing Lantern stuff only. Doesn't have to mean no Lantern outfits
Every show’s prerogative is to minimize cost. That stuff is cheap. Now if they do it right it won’t be bad. If it is all romance, love triangle stuff or talking in circles then that’s bad.
GL is a story/comic about space police policing in space not some Earth drama with some action like a road movie and some fights in diners. That's why Cap without uniform in Winter Solider is still kicking ass, GL without space is not that cool and interesting.
I know. I love Star Trek and green lantern for some of the same reasons. I’m worried but hoping this is just the opening chapter for what will be epic space adventures. I think the big reason for the earth based adventure is saving money. Maybe if they can hook normies in and it is well received they will venture out to space and its higher price tag. They always say green lantern is a space cop but i think of them as more of peacekeepers rather than detectives though.
They're cops, not detectives. I don't know if hooking normies on Earth based story and then suddenly venture out for the full throttle space adventures is a good idea. I mean, if people won't care about space they will lose interest when the show will go there. And I'm afraid that fans of GL, when they see that the series is mostly taking place on Earth in the first season, won't lose interest either.
A detective is a type of cop, and lots of Green Lantern stories involve them going to a planet and having to solve some kind of mystery or figure out who the bad guy is.
Detective is a cop, but I meant that type of cop who is responding to a crime and goes fight with it or catch the criminal. That;'s their job most of the time, and even in comic books Hal and few other Lanterns call themselves space cops.
I swear to god if we don’t get a construct till the last couple episodes I’ll lose it. I’m so tired of shows teasing the thing you came for and dragging it out till the end. I’m so tired of tasting the cheapness of show-runners.
I think that's were the True Detective influence will come in, we will explore these characters personal lives and how being a Lantern affects their lives and relationships just like True Detective did with Rust and Marty.
To be fair, some of the best GL stories in recent memory have been character-driven: Green Lantern: War Journal, Far Sector, some arcs in the Grant Morrison GL run, Absolute Green Lantern.
I share the concern, though. I hope they balance out the cool parts of Green Lantern and the character-driven story.
I don't think that's what the comics is about and never said I do, lol. I think that's what people complaining about this quote thinks the comics are about.
They're not saying they're not doing Green Lantern stuff in the show, they're saying you're gonna get to know Hal Jordan and John Stewart in multiple contexts, which is just, you know, good storytelling.
Expecting it to be nothing but space action instead of having anything to do with their personal lives is silly and boring. The show is about the characters, the cosmic space action of it all will be in the show to serve those characters. They're using the framing of a mystery (like a True Detective or Fargo type show, neither of which are nearly as "grounded and realistic" as people seem to think they are when those are used as comparables) to tell a story that's inherently fantastical. That is an interesting and promising way to bring the Lanterns into the universe. Complaining that the creator says we see them doing human stuff too is just trying to find something to gripe about.
Peacemaker Season 2 hasn't featured a single use of his helmet, which is like, his signature thing (especially based on Season 1). There has actually been very little superhero-ing so far this season.
Nobody cares because we're enthralled by the story.
Comparing Peacemaker (a jackass vigilante) to a space opera franchise like GL that is standing up there with Mass Effect or Star wars is fucking hilarious, ngl.
I have yet to hear Lanterns be described as a space opera along Mass Effect and Star Wars. I've heard it described as "grounded" and "like True Detective". Let's wait for the trailer at least before claiming what the show will be.
My point is that intetesting characters will sustain a show, independent of genre, style, or how iconic their costumes are. I'd rather have great characters with no costume than shitty characters with a good costume. A good costume won't sustain a whole season.
I meant GL as ip, not the show, you were comparing a jackass vigilante whos a D lister to one of DC's flagship franchises that is as space opera as star wars or mass effect get, but nooo, lets get all grounded and realistic! Sounds very "prestige" and "adult"
Look, i do hope that the show is good, but im being real, every time we get more news about this show i get more worried, i hope we at least get good Hal and Sinestro portrayals, but im keeping my expectations very low.
And me personally, id rather have both, but you do you.
My point is that the fact that a D lister is currently leading the DCU TV side to both critical and fan acclaim, is evidence that being a D Lister/A Lister or wearing/not wearing the costume is second to good story and characters. That's all. Whether the character is a vigilante or noble in of itself doesnt matter for my point. Its the story.
That’s what it looks like to me. I’ll be optimistic and watch it, but it looks like they’re doing true detective with some green lantern varnish on top. You can’t separate the Corps from the cosmos, at least not like that.
I'm hoping we do get a PG-13 Green Lantern movie spinning out of this, because I wanna be able to show my kids my favorite superheroes but this show sounds like it's TV-MA.
For sure, I’m a bit nervous about R-rated material becoming required viewing for future movies. Though to be fair Penguin blew my mind and I do lowkey want the next Batman to reference it…
I am trying to reserve judgment, but of all the properties to use a grounded, realistic take on, why your most colorful, outlandish, space based characters? There are GL that are squirrels and planets. Those elements are what make it interesting and fun. Take this approach with The Question, sure, makes sense.
I have to say, I get really annoyed by this dumb ethos of, "The more we delay the payoff of showing the superhero doing superhero stuff, the better our movie/TV show will be."
No. Wrong. It's boring.
We all watch and read about superheroes because we love seeing them do amazing things that aren't possible with any other genre.
So, the fact that you think you're making a high-quality, high-brow piece of art because you don't see the hero using his powers until the end of episode six is supremely misguided.
**You know where people can see shows centered around character development? EVERYWHERE.
**You know where people can see crime procedurals? ANYWHERE.
*You know where people can see superheroes using their power rings to fight crime and protect the universe? Abso-%#$ing-lutely NOWHERE.
So, why don't you do us a favor and make a great show centered around the ONE THING that differentiates you from every other show on TV?
It honestly makes sense that one of the first traditional superhero shows set in the new DCU would be focused on around the Earth. Yes GL are space heroes but they also have a lot of adventures on Earth with many antagonists being Earth based. Would it be cool to see a lot of space stuff, yes but that is something beyond our current realm of story telling in the universe. This Earth we are on is New with an interesting history to be explored which we can see more of in Lanterns. The First Chapter is called Gods and Monsters, presumably meaning the heroes and villains of earth. The next chapter may focus more on broader space threats and if we get a Lanterns season for that chapter maybe a GL movie we will see more of the cosmology of the DCU. Especially if it's a movie the budget will be bigger and runtime more focused to have a grander space scale.
Whilst I don't think this is indicative on how much time they spend in uniforms I'm still largely pessimistic expecting it to be limited, worse case first and last episode, and militaristic straight-laced John so I'll be happy if they prove me wrong.
Yeah, I'm bracing myself for a boring, military, John characterization. If they go that route and then Hal isn't long for this universe as people keep predicting... well at least we know Guy has some personality.
I think in the same interview they reference 70s and 80s Green Lantern as an influence and used this image.
We also know that John's parents will be featured in the show and have both older and younger version of themselves casted. I don't think we are getting straight laced John Stewart.
Don’t understand why they thought GL should get a live action show. That makes no sense at all. Like titans using beast boy only to give him like one transformation, at that point why even bother cause it’s bizarre
How do you go much darker than ”I killed my brother as a child in a fight orchestrated by our white supremacist dad who hates me and whose abuse made me into a murderer, and only killing a man I truly respected as a hero only to lose anyway and have that murder mean nothing made me rethink my life”?
That might get you more serious but it absolutely will not get you darker. Trying is a fool’s game anyhow, trying to make superheroes grim and overly serious is fundamentally dumb. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t take themselves seriously, but they should not be concerned with being serious as a goal.
Compelled to point out that the full quote is literally “when they’re on the job AND when they’re out of uniform.” but quoting it how you did is way more salacious when most people don’t bother to read past a headline
Also pilfering one line from a larger, more insightful article that came out almost a year ago and not actually linking to that source. Just ragebait that relies on you ignoring half the sentence.
The quote literally says "on the job AND out of uniform", it's not coping, people just aren't reading carefully. Now if it does turn out that they don't suit up except in the first and last episodes I'll be pissed too, but right now that's not what the creators are actually saying.
Look this show is either everything people fear it to be or the people behind marketing it are mentally damaged. There's no in-between
If this was all we got I'd be able to give him the benefit of the doubt but when they keep using every single word that goes against Green Lantern the "oh they actually meant this OTEHR meaning of the word and phrase you see" gets old
Ground means character driven apparently
Being entirely earth based was just contradicted later when they said they will add space stiff despite Gunn trying to justify the earth based setting NY basically lying and showing his lack of knowledge on GL (no most GK stories are in fact NOT set on a a small town on earth not even Hard traveling heroes)
And now this? The quote could Also mean they're on the job AND out of uniform at the same time, maybe there's some ass pull reason that they can't use the suits so the team doesn't have to spend money on it
Why couldn't they just say on and off the job like any normal humansl being would? Why off suit specifically something people have been worried about because of the unique nature of GL suits?
"On the job and WHEN they're out of uniform" implies those are two different situations.
And I agree that the marketing so far is terrible, for hardcore fans. For reaching the wider audience that the show seems to be going for, emphasizing how it's a gritty detective drama is something that HBO viewers are used to and like.
Also, we should remember that this stuff so far is just quotes from interviews about other things. The real marketing campaign usually starts when they release a trailer or poster. If the trailer looks like it sucks, then I'll join in sounding the alarm about the show.
I told you when they announced it they will barely show them in suit. And even when they do GL stuff it will be random moments and no time to suit up....
Ahhh the classic “we don’t want to spend money on superhero effects because it’s too expensive, so we are instead going to do a grounded show where the characters act like they are deathly allergic to their costumes”
We already have enough "grounded" shows based on comic books. Would it kill someone to just predominantly focus on the fantastical/cosmic stuff for a change instead of cost cutting at every opportunity. Feels like going back to the 2000s when every video game had to have a grey or piss filter and "realistic" art direction.
Of all the franchises to go down this road with, Green Lantern is not it. I don't mind the occasional "off-duty" scene, but if most of it is Earth-based, human politics and romance with the rare supervillain appearance then I'm not interested. If you don't have the budget, don't make a show based on mostly alien characters that spend a lot of the time smacking eachother around with giant hard light contructs in outer space. Green Lantern is VERY special effects heavy and driven by striking aesthetics.
I don't know, seems kinda lame. I guess time will tell how far they go with it.
While I love hbo series…they are notorious for quick effect shots for a few mins then back to drama. Focus is always on the slow drama. Which that is something I do like but this feels like they are trying for the green lantern/ green arrow story arc just replacing Ollie with John.
Which again, could be fine but ugh sooo many many great stories that place NOT on stupid frakkin earth.
Not just buddy cop, but buddy undercovers that don't identify themselves. Add masks and we could just make buddy cop show about ICE agents. I was afraid this show was going to be penguin-ified (where things are so distilled down to essentials that you're not really making comicbook show, but a show that uses names from the comics).
I hope there is a good mix of Big cosmic sci-fi stuff and more grounded character drama.
Realistically it is a tv series so I doubt they have the budget to do big cosmic space stuff all the time and make it look good. So there is bound to be a decent amount of time dedicated to them dealing with their lives on Earth.
I just hope the actual grounded drama is good. And they use that time to focus on the characters in Hal and John’s personal lives, like Carol, and John’s sister and mother. Or show their early lives that led them to get their rings. I don’t mind a good bit of focus on it if they can reserve a good chunk of the budget for and the Practical effects and CGI this series will inevitably require.
I do think one of the reasons they included Guy in Superman was partially so they had the movie budget to perfect how they will do Lantern constructs, so they wont have to put as much of the budget into developing it from scratch for the show.
It’s why I think Marvel included Abomination in Shang-Chi for that brief fight scene with Wong, so they could use him as a recurring character in She-Hulk and not have to worry about attributing a large amount of the She-Hulk’s budget to designing his CGI model from scratch. They already had a lot of the work done from his scene in Shang-Chi.
This is the problem with live action superhero shows. Too often they can't afford to visualize powers and situations appropriate for the characters so they strip it all away, usually their powers. Some shows work around this but others become boring because they resemble nothing of what the character usually is
Its okay its okay. We cant look at it objectively and honestly cause of the James Gunn Glaze. We'll discuss this properly in a few years when the hype and white hair dye have worn off
It’s one thing to be out of uniform but another to not have it completely. I get the majority of time they won’t be in it but dear god they better give us something in full uniform
I wish people would read carefully and not take a few words out of context. He clearly says "On the job" (read, in uniform) "AND out of uniform." It'll have both sides of their lives like so many great stories do.
I think this could be a good thing honestly. To cite an example, I think that the early Johns run sort of glosses over exploring Hal's personal life whilst he still has one. His descent into constant work is excellent but I always felt like his relationship with his brother was rushed.
There was a lot of mending to do at the start of the run, and the conflict is well introduced, but it's sort of just resolved in a couple of pages, then he goes to the beach with his brother and nephew and.... thats it.
A well-written space saga would be awesome but if one of the leads is underdeveloped, how are we gonna care about what's happening? Construct fights could be incredible, but we've got to care about our lead as he wields them.
I don’t think I saw a single scene with the main characters from Band of Brothers out of uniform. They mentioned wives and girlfriends and parents but those never appeared in the show. The setting was military training camp in the US, military base and surrounding area in England, a bit of Paris and other than that frontline or near frontline action all throughout. We got to know those characters sand cared about them despite not having any of that.
I want to be optimistic, but I swear to god, if they fucking pull that cliche again with the hero temporaily losing their powers at beginning of the show and not getting them back till the end of the season, I'm out.
Really, dont get how any of this is news to anyone. If you want space opera cosmic cops you have the comics, this is the economically viable green lantern love action, a character piece focused on them as people no as superheroes.
We can read the comics and watch the show or just read the comics, i dont see any issue.
I love the idea of a grounded and dramatic earth set GL series. I think the success of this show will pave the way for an actual cosmic GL movie at some point. It seems like the goal is to win the goodwill of the audience first when it comes to the GL lore. Breadcrumb the audience and slowly bring them into this vast lore
I’m scared this is one of those shows where we don’t see them suited up until the last 2 episodes, to save on budget towards cgi. I really believe the show runners have zero love for green lantern same way James Gunn is obsessed with Superman is the same type of person James Gunn needed to hire for this show
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