I started reading comic books in the mid-1950s–Batman and Superman mostly. But by 1960, my favorite DC comic series was The Flash. Not far behind was Green Lantern. We all know about the Ryan Reynolds movie version of Green Lantern that bombed. Now we have a new series, Lanterns, on HBO MAX.
Kyle Chandler’s Hal Jordan, the first of the intergalactic cops known as Green Lanterns recruited from Earth, is paired with John Stewart (Cairo Cash Lee) into plots that seem more like True Detective than a superhero series.
“Created by crime drama specialist Chris Mundy (True Detective, Ozark), TV eminence Damon Lindelof (Lost, The Leftovers), and Eisner-winning comics writer Tom King, it juggles their different strengths and points of view with mixed success.” Those audiences craving something like Spider-Man are going to be disappointed with this Buddies series with a dash of CGI. GRADE: Incomplete but trending towards a B-
I bet Jackie likes it more than you did. Of course, she’s a big Kyle Chandler fan. And neither of us are Spider-Man fans, so…we’ll see.
Jeff, there’s a huge difference between DC superhero TV shows and movies and MARVEL.
I’m not a comic book guy but I have a basic knowledge of them from childhood and I used to catch the occasional movie through the early aughts before they got franchised to hell. I will never understand the trend of putting them in the hands of joyless people who don’t like them and bend over backwards to take the comic book out of them.
Byron, it’s all about the money. I saw SPIDER-MAN: BRAND NEW DAY a couple weeks ago and considered it mediocre. It’s made $2 billion. Marketing rules…
So-so on the first episode.
Patti, according to the reviews of LANTERNS online, Episode 5 is supposed to have a lot of action. I wonder how many viewers will hang around that long…
I’ve always liked Green Lantern. We’ll probably watch the first episode of that tonight (along with the second new Chelsea Detective).
Last night we watched an episode of the German police series Tatort. This is a series in which a dozen or so production companies in different areas of Germany each make their own episodes with their specific police detectives, a couple a year, and German tv airs one a week. It’s been going on since 1970, so there are thousands of episodes, but only a couple hundred have English subtitles. We watched one at random, and it was well done. We watched it on Prime through MHz.
And Ann and I loved Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
When I was seeing them, a decade or so back, TATORT was a fine series…glad they’ve kept up the good work (back then, MHz Worldview was a small public broadcasting network. and I was amused to be taking care of them for TV GUIDE scheduling, particularly after all the grief the boss there, a guy named Fred, then running public access cable services in Fairfax County, VA, had given those of us who were doing public access radio programming. Fred is, I believe, still in charge of MHz Passport, the streaming service.
Nope, Fred has moved on, apparently, from MHz Networks.
Jeff, the Big Question in Spider-Man fandom is: Will Spider-Man be in the AVENGERS movie at Christmastime???
I’ll give it a try. We watched and really enjoyed the first 3 episodes of the new Reacher season.
Maggie, even with the differences between GONE TOMORROW and REACHER, SEASON 4, Reacher is still compelling!
PBS World is running the series BIG CATS 24/7 in the overnights…our elder cat, in repose on the bed, was riveted by all these 2-dimensional little felines and their cohabitants on my laptop screen…
Todd. my cat allergies refrain me from commenting on BIG CATS.