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Remember that Simpsons episode where they go on a tour of the Duff Brewery and you find out that every flavor is just the same crap piped into different containers? Well, that's basically James Gunn's DCU. At this point, no matter what
Critical Drinker reviews Lanterns, a DCU show, criticizing its slow plot, political messaging, and unlikable characters.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
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Key Takeaways
- Lanterns fails to deliver engaging superhero content, focusing instead on slow, tedious police procedural elements.
- The show’s political allegories are heavy-handed and detract from storytelling.
- Most characters lack appeal, making it difficult to stay invested.
- Modern Hollywood clichés and poor writing undermine the show's potential.
- The reviewer does not recommend continuing to watch the series.
What the video covers
- The video critiques Lanterns, a DCU show produced under James Gunn's direction, comparing it to repetitive and cynical content.
- The show is described as a slow, tedious police procedural with weak superhero elements and overly explicit political allegories.
- The reviewer highlights poor writing, including telegraphed plot points and lack of subtlety in addressing race and immigration issues.
- Characters are mostly unlikable, with Kyle Chandler doing his best and Aaron Pierre criticized for lack of charisma.
- The plot involves a mass shooting investigation, alien imposters, and a middle-aged Hal Jordan character arc ending in death.
- The show is seen as a failed attempt to blend True Detective-style bleakness with superhero lore, resulting in a dull experience.
- The reviewer expresses frustration with modern Hollywood tropes such as the 'drunk, disabled loser' male character stereotype.
- Political messaging is seen as heavy-handed and predictable, targeting safe topics like Republicans and small-town America.
- The reviewer is dismissive of Damon Lindelof's involvement, citing previous failures and lack of creativity.
- Overall, the show is considered a chore to watch and not worth further time investment.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and comparison to James Gunn's DCU
- 00:39Renaming to Lanterns and initial impressions
- 01:20Critique of plot pacing and political messaging
- 01:56Early character introduction and backstory
- 02:33Mass shooting investigation begins
- 03:02Prison interrogation and character conflicts
- 03:30Political allegory and antagonist introduction
- 03:56Plot developments and character dynamics
- 04:37Show’s tone, writing style, and character analysis
- 05:22Final thoughts and overall verdict
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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movie or show you find yourself watching, it's all just slightly different flavors of the same cynical, wannabe, edgy, unfunny deconstructionist James Gunn slop. In this case, seasoned with a little bit of Damon Lindelof's mildly bad answer to True
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Detective, but with all of the intelligence and creativity replaced by his thinly disguised race bait and political fetishes to produce Green Lanterns.
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Sorry, it's just Lanterns now because green isn't cool enough for a show about intergalactic space cops with magical rings that allow them to manifest anything they can imagine. I guess, sigh, I'm so tired, man. Watching a DC project
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at this point is a bit like spinning a wheel of fortune to decide the method of your own demise. You know it's ultimately going to be messy and unpleasant. It's just a question of degrees. And having slogged through all
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57 minutes of the pilot episode, I can confidently tell you this show is an absolute chore. Combining the worst aspects of modern Hollywood character assassination with a tediously slow plot that takes forever to get moving and dialogue that literally spells out every
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single thing that just happened. Telegraphs what's about to happen so the audience is usually 10 minutes ahead of the writers and lays out his political allegories for modern-day American immigration and race issues with all the subtlety of a thermobaric weapon.
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Let's get this over quickly. Consider it done, Simon Phoenix. The show picks up in 1996 with a young John Stewart. No, not that one. Watching Hal Jordan being interviewed on TV about how he became the Green Lantern until his
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dad shows up and shoots at him to see if he's scared or not. Are you afraid?
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No, sir. You know, funny story. I actually tried that once with a crossbow, but it didn't work out quite so well.
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Well, we should probably edit that out later. Anyway, flash forward 20 years or so, and Jon's now being trained by Hal as a kind of backup Lantern just in case anything happens to him. Oh, yeah, and Hal's a drunk middle-aged loser now who
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doesn't actually teach him anything useful because the rules of modern writing dictate that any man over the age of 50 has to be a drunk, disabled loser. My God, it's just so creative. I can't get over it. Anyway, when a mass
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shooting happens at a football game in small-town Nebraska, the boys are deployed to find out what happened.
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That's when they run into annoying girl boss number one, who seems to exist purely to fuck talk Hal and delay his investigation for as long as possible to stretch the 20 minutes of actual plot into a 60-minute episode. But despite
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her best efforts, Hal uncovers the shooter, and he suspects that he's an alien in disguise. But annoying girl boss number one won't let him interrogate the guy even when he gets himself arrested to be sent to the same
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jail as him. I mean, Jesus Christ. I'm no expert on the Green Lantern powers or anything, but couldn't Hal just force his way into the prison if it's that urgent? It's not like a small-town sheriff is going to be able to stop him
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no matter how much of a girl boss she is. Ah, whatever. So, the two lads eventually get summoned to evil redneck man's house. I know he's evil because he's a white man who lives on a
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ranch and immediately starts talking about wanting to protect the planet from anyone who wasn't born there.
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How about we both want to protect the planet from anybody not born on it?
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Are you getting the subtle messaging yet, dear viewer? Anyway, evil redneck man pulls some strings to get Hal to interrogate the shooter, which is something that should have happened like 20 minutes ago, but fuck it. We need to
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make this episode an hour long somehow. And even though annoying girl boss number one is absolutely convinced that he's barking up the wrong tree, Hal's actually proven right and the man really is an alien pretending to be human. Then
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he blows himself up, but Hal saves the day with his ring powers and she's still pissed at him somehow. Seriously, fuck off. Flash forward another 10 years and Jon returns to the place where it all happened. Reunites with annoying girl
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boss number one, who somehow hasn't aged a day in 10 years, and together they find Hal's frozen body at the football stadium, having completed his middle-aged white man character arc by dying and stepping aside to make way for
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someone more diverse. Now, what can I say about this show except I can't think of many projects where the influences and intentions of the writers are more glaringly obvious than Lanterns. Instead of making a show about intergalactic space cops going on cosmic adventures
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and battling all manners of weird and wonderful alien threats, they instead decided to make a true version of True Detective, complete with bleak, cynical, and mostly unlikable characters who constantly have to swear to prove just how edgy they are. Patched together with
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all the tedious tropes of modern Hollywood writing and the usual laundry list of safe, predictable political targets like Republicans, small-town America, and immigration policy. And holy fuck balls is it tedious. It's nothing but a standard police procedural
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with some vague superhero elements mixed in made by people with no understanding of police procedures and no affection for superheroes. Not only is it crushingly slow and dull, stretching out the runtime with pointless side quests and putting characters into holding
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patterns while the plot catches up with them, but it also literally spells out everything that's happening just in case you weren't paying attention, which to be fair, you probably weren't. Like at one point when Jon goes to a barbecue at
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evil redneck guy's house only to discover the old lady that he fucked in a parking lot the night before, oh yeah, that's a thing which happens, is the guy's wife. And the dude says this to him as he leaves.
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Nothing better than eating off another man's grill. I mean, okay, it's a bit cringy, but at least it gives you a bit of a hint about how much the man really knows. Then fuck Hal has to immediately jump in
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with this absolute clanger. I definitely slept with his wife and he knows, apparently. I mean, it's like the writers have never even heard of the idea of subtext.
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Honestly, Damon Lindelof should have been banned from ever writing anything again ever after the absolute embarrassment of Watchmen. But somehow this bald, pretentious fuck just keeps failing upwards in Hollywood. Let that be a lesson to you kids. It's not what
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you know or even who you know, it's what you say that matters in that industry.
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In terms of character work, pretty much everyone except Hal is an unlikable fuck in this show. And most of that comes down to Kyle Chandler doing his best with some pretty shocking material.
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Aaron Pierre, on the other hand, is an absolute block of wood with all the personality and charisma of a love child between Sam Worthington and Sophie Turner. Jesus, how is this guy supposed to carry the entire show? I was bored of
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him after like one episode. Ultimately, Lanterns is pretty much exactly what I expected when you take the political obsessions of Damon Lindelof and try to plant them in the creative wasteland of James Gunn's DCU by James Gunn. It's a
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show that combines the worst of every world, and I don't imagine I'm going to be wasting much more time on it. Not when there's much better things I could be doing.
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[music] Anyway, that's all I've got for today. Go away now.
Topics:LanternsGreen LanternDCUJames GunnDamon Lindelofsuperhero showTV reviewpolice proceduralpolitical allegorycharacter critique
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