Is this the kind of hero you should want to be?
The Guardians of Oa could have avoided a lot of misunderstandings if they had watched the Disney/Pixar movie Inside Out, where we all learned that it’s very unhealthy for humans to try to ignore one of our basic emotions. In order to become a Green Lantern, you must be fearless. I don’t know how other species in the galaxy deal with that requisite, but it’s easy to imagine how it wouldn’t sit well with humans. We need the information that fear gives us. When balanced with the rest of our emotions, fear protects us. It helps us prepare for the unknown. It motivates us to care for one another. It keeps us humble.
So when the first Green Lantern from Earth is selected, and the same rule of fearlessness is imposed on a species that needs fear to survive, what can you expect, other than terribly messed up people being chosen for the job? The TV miniseries Lanterns dares to question a fundamental rule of its own lore, a view of heroism that breaks something precious in the hero’s soul. You shouldn’t have to renounce the fullness of your humanity in order to be heroic. Fear can be heroic. And pretending to be fearless makes you a danger to those you want to protect.
Lanterns integrates these abstract preoccupations with the specificity of its characters: Hal Jordan, a white Boomer who embodies the “men will join the space police rather than go to therapy” meme, and John Stewart, a Black Millennial who was raised to be the perfect poster boy for respectability politics. The show uses extensive flashbacks, which usually is a problem for pacing, but somehow these flashbacks are thematically coherent with what is happening in the present plot.
Learning what makes these men tick reveals the inadvertent cruelty of the Green Lantern Corps. Hal qualifies to become a Green Lantern because of unexamined toxic masculinity. He has a family history of suicidal depression that he suppresses beneath a mask of toughness. As for John, he qualifies to become a Green Lantern because his parents committed years of severe emotional abuse to purge him of fear. He experienced the equivalent of growing up in a cult that indoctrinated him for an otherworldy mission he never asked for.
john’s case is even more complicated by the fact that a Black man in the US has countless daily reasons to exist in a perpetual state of fear. John‘s parents aren’t innocent of the horrific way they raised him, but they were pushed into that choice by the unequal circumstances that allow an average shmoe to declare he’s fearless just because he lucked into playing the game of life on Easy Mode.
With all these heavy themes dominating the story, the actual events seem almost secondary. Setting aside the flashbacks, the plot consists of a hunt for an alien assassin hiding in a town in Nebraska, followed ten years later by the mystery of who has just killed Hal Jordan. In the first part of the plot, John has been appointed by the Guardians of Oa as Hal’s apprentice, which Hal resents at every step. In the second part, John has been trying to build a life that isn’t defined by the purpose his parents chose for him, and ends up finding his own reasons to become a hero.
This would suffice for an interesting setup even if it didn’t also include tons of delightful banter between its two main characters. Matching Hal’s smug, entitled condescension with John’s obsessive adherence to rules creates a volatile friction that soon enough explodes in satisfying manner. The show plays with this dynamic by reversing it in the scenes set ten years later, when John has outgrown his ingrained urge to obey and has to team up with a less jaded version of Hal.
Some viewers have complained that this plot is too mundane and doesn’t do justice to the colorful variety of alien weirdness that is typical of Green Lantern adventures. That may be so, but it’s not a point against the show. This is the type of science fiction that considers the inner space of the human mind as vast and fascinating as outer space. Planet-hopping romps can wait. This story is about the mismatch between the Guardians’ idea of heroism and the basic facts of human nature. It’s about what being a Green Lantern does to you. I’ll take such deep analysis over flashy pew pew any day.
This is the kind of reexamination of core assumptions that legacy franchises need from time to time to avoid feeling stagnant. Green Lantern has existed since 1940. It didn’t always center on John Stewart, or on Hal Jordan. It didn’t always feature space cops. It didn’t always associate superpowers with emotions. This new take on Lantern lore may not necessarily lead to a complete reinvention, but if it does, it should be welcomed.
Nerd Coefficient: 9/10.
POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.