Brief Story Line
In the year 2016, Hal Jordan aka Green Lantern (Kyle Chandler - Back in Action, Godzilla II: King of the Monsters etc) had been training John Stewart (Aaron Pierre - Mufasa: The Lion King, The Underground Railroad mini series etc) as future Lantern, although Hal never properly teach John anything and mostly gave him instructions. When Hal found out about a mass shooting in small town of Rushville, he immediately rushed there convinced it involved extra terrestrial element. The Sheriff Kerry (Kelly Macdonald - Dept. Q TV series, Trainspotting etc) was adamant that Hal and John not to be involved, though it went on deaf ears.
As they looked into the matter, Hal met with local rancher Will Macon (Garret Dillahunt - Ambulance, Braven etc) who seemed to know a lot about extra terrestrials, while John met and was briefly involved with Zoe (Poorna Jagannathan - Wolfs, Deli Boys TV series etc). Things got more complicated when an alien race leader Antaan (Paul Ben-Victor - Flight Risk, In Plain Sight TV series etc) was also looking into the Rushville incident and willing to destroy the town until they got what they were looking for. With Hal and John own personal issues, they had to find ways to resolve the danger.
So what would happen to them? You could find out in this series.
End of Brief Story Line
Well that was interesting. I read that this series was praised because of its grounded nature and the premise was similar to True Detective but extra terestrial. I guess it probably fit the description at first, but after two episodes, I thought it was quite different. In the first episode, we were introduced to Hal and John and were shown how their relationship was distant and certainly not the proper master and apprentice kind. It was fun looking at the cynical and the don't-play-by-the-rule attitude of Hal combined with the more serious, ambitious and intelligent John. The thing that made me really excited was the way that pilot episode ended as it really blew my mind.
When I reached the third episode though, I felt it was a complete change of pace that I did not fully enjoy even though I could understand the importance. I think I would have liked it better if it was not a full episode but just some minutes. Although I was able to see the reason for doing so once I watched the finale. Anyway, things got interesting again in the fourth and that truly amazing fifth episode. I believed that was the most entertaining for me (and it seems audience were of the same opinion with me). Beyond that, the pace slowed down again and it felt like a different story as they focused on another matter. In general the remaining episodes were OK with nice appearance of a guest star and that shocking twist in the eighth episode. The ending though, was really not what I expected in a superhero series, but not surprising considering how the story developed.
This series consisted of 8 episodes with mostly 50+ minutes (except for episode 7 that was shorter than the rest). There was no mid or post end credit scenes in all of them, so no brief teaser of what could come next. By the time I wrote this post, there was no info on if the series was renewed, but I did find out there would be small connection in next Superman movie Man of Tomorrow coming up in 2027. The series itself was created by Chris Mundy (producer of hit series like Ozark, Criminal Minds etc), Damon Lindelof (creator of Watchmen, Lost TV series etc) and Tom King (writer of Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, The Vision comics etc). Obviously there were also the names of James Gunn and Peter Safran as co-executive producers. In case you are not aware, the Green Lantern were characters from DC comics and Hal's origin story was already made in that infamous 2011 Green Lantern movie starring Ryan Reynolds (though sadly it was unsuccessful, but I remember it was actually pretty fun and enjoyable).
The cast I thought did awesome job here, particularly Kyle Chandler who I thought really fit the character. His chemistry with Aaron Pierre was fun to see too. In addition to the names above, there were other important characters such as former Green Lantern Thaal Sinestro (Ulrich Thomsen - Banshee TV series, The Commune etc), one of the Guardians Lianna (Laura Linney - Sully, The Savages etc), lawyer Billy Macon (Jason Ritter - Raising Dion TV series, The Tale etc), John's parents John Stewart Sr. (J. Alphonse Nicholson - P-Valley TV series etc) and Bernadette (Jasmine Chepas Jones - Hamilton, Blindspotting TV series etc) and several others. There were few support cast in minor roles, including the special appearance that I said earlier (I'll let you see who it was for yourself).
For a series about superhero, this one certainly did not have strong feeling about it. It took different route by focusing on the investigation and also quite character driven. Usually I am not that happy with such take but in this case I was still pretty entertained. I guess it's because the characters were fun to watch even if it also felt pretty dark (and bleak). Frankly though, I would prefer if the Green Lantern part was dived more giving us better understanding of the Corps itself. This series felt more like a brief story of two of their members which meant that audience who are not familiar with Green Lantern corps like myself are not having much better knowledge after seeing this, except just to get to know those two in depth. I think DC comics hard core fans also expressed this opinion with their comments of this series did not feel like Green Lantern.
In any case, this series was interesting and enjoyable if you look at it from the angle of Buddy Cop mystery solving with extraterrestrial and a bit of superhero element. The pace might be a bit inconsistent, like the overly detail part in 3rd episode and the drama moments, plus the mystery was not exactly that complicated/multi layered like the critically acclaimed True Detective series. However it did provide the joy of seeing Kyle Chandler did wonderful job portraying the aging Hal Jordan fighting against the surprisingly ruthless enemy. So if you want to see the series with attributes above, then you can give this a try. It was critically acclaimed and got good ratings by most audience as well. But if your preference is a major superhero action series with lots of story on Green Lantern, then you might less enjoy it. I myself had good time watching this and loved that fifth episode, and the sweet ending involving one of the main character, though I would have loved it even better if there were a bit more action and a more intricate mystery.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars
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