\n\tAs a comic book character, Green Lantern has always been pretty silly. <\/p>\n
\n\tAs such, Green Lantern has been famously difficult to adapt into live-action. A 2011 Green Lantern film starring Ryan Reynolds was so notorious that Reynolds himself has repeatedly mocked it. Zack Snyder had Green Lantern briefly appear in a Justice League ancient battle flashback, but Warner Bros. blocked the director from introducing the character into the present day. A film titled Green Lantern Corps was announced for the DC Extended Universe in 2014, but after several top creatives tried to crack the script (including David S. Goyer, Geoff Johns and Christopher McQuarrie), the effort was dropped. The character was beginning to seem like he was destined to be relegated to Six Flags amusement parks and animated titles (where the character has appeared quite often). <\/p>\n
\n\tNow here comes HBO<\/a>\u2018s Lanterns<\/a>, which is taking a very grounded approach to the material. \u201cIt\u2019s a very grounded, real show,\u201d DC Studios co-chief James Gunn said about Lanterns last year. \u201cIt\u2019s taking this outlandish concept of space cops with magic rings and putting it in as close to reality as it can possibly be.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tLanterns is so grounded, in fact, that the teaser trailer was criticized right out of the gate for seemingly like it had little to do with Green Lantern at all. The series features two Green Lantern Corps characters: Kyle Chandler as former U.S. Air Force test pilot\u00a0turned galactic hero Hal Jordan, who is training Aaron Pierre, who plays fan-favorite John Stewart. The trailer shows the duo investigating a murder in\u00a0Nebraska, \u201cwhich leads them to darker mysteries and reckonings.\u201d <\/p>\n \n\tFans griped the footage (below) looked rather dour and lacked, well, any green in it. Some said the show looked more like a True Detective wannabe than a superhero story (the showrunner, Chris Mundy, also worked on True Detective: The Night Country). Given this is merely a teaser trailer, however, and is presumably holding off showing much of what\u2019s to come in the show, and HBO wishes to draw in a broad audience, the choices made sense on paper. Another gripe was that the leads seemed to dislike each other intensely, and therefore didn\u2019t seem particularly likable for the audience, though, again, this is probably also an early-in-the-season creative move. <\/p>\n \n\tThe trailer response has some fans recirculating a year-old comment made by the show\u2019s co-creator and executive producer, Damon Lindelof<\/a> \u2014 who has plenty of experience with receiving online love (Lost, The Leftovers, Watchmen) and online backlash (Prometheus, Lost again). Lindelof said jokingly, on the Lovett or Leave It podcast: \u201cIt\u2019s called Lanterns, because we all agreed that the \u2018Green\u2019 was stupid, so now it\u2019s just Lanterns.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tNow \u2014 and I realize this is burying the lede a bit, but all this context is helpful to have up front \u2014 a Green Lantern comic writer is slamming Lindelof. <\/p>\n