HBO is releasing its own answer to Amazon’s Spider-Noir in less than three months’ time, as James Gunn doubles down on the new trend that’s currently redefining superhero spinoffs on the small screen. This gritty eight-episode detective drama featuring Firefly’s Nathan Fillion will mirror many of the tropes we see in Nicolas Cage’s new interpretation of Spider-Man.
Alongside Fillion, Kyle Chandler, Aaron Pierre, and Kelly Macdonald lead the cast of HBO’s Lanterns, which has already polarized fans of the DC franchise that spawned it. Many reactions to the show’s trailers have questioned its aesthetic choices. The lack of the color green has been a specific complaint, given that the series is adapted from DC’s Green Lantern comics.
However, anyone who’s watched Spider-Noir on Prime Video will immediately notice the stylistic similarities between what this TV show has done to Spider-Man and what Lanterns is doing to the Green Lantern Corps. In both cases, there’s a concerted effort to synthesize superhero lore with stylized homages to noir and neo-noir cinema.
While Spider-Noir is already being ranked among the best neo-noir detective shows of the past decade, the comparisons between Lanterns and the Coen Brothers’ neo-Western noir classic No Country for Old Men have begun, months ahead of its release. We’ll have to wait and see whether the HBO series can match the stellar reception of its Prime Video counterpart.
Lanterns Is HBO’s Dark And Gritty Adaptation Of The Green Lantern Corps
With its initial trailer release earlier this year, Lanterns invoked the Zack Snyder era of the DCEU with its distinctive visual style. But it also did much more than that, by recalling the neo-Western aesthetics of Justified and Breaking Bad, at the same time as leaning into the caustic humor of Kyle Chandler’s hard-boiled and haggard version of Hal Jordan.
The show’s developers Chris Mundy, Tom King, and Watchmen creator Damon Lindelof have deliberately jumped forward to the end of Jordan’s superhero career, by which point disillusionment with his higher calling has long since set in. At the same time, this premise allows them to ground Lanterns in the barren scrubland of rural Nebraska.
Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart is taken under Jordan’s wing in a setting that’s just as chaotic and corrupt as the faraway planet known to the Green Lanterns as the Forbidden Sector. It’s the last outpost of fleeing outlaw Saul Goodman, and the post-apocalyptic wilderness of Stephen King’s The Stand. This HBO series is far from an intergalactic superhero epic, then.
Instead, it turns the story of the Green Lanterns Corps into a dark and gritty noir detective saga set in the new Wild West, in which a cynical old head shepherds reveals the true ways of the world to a wide-eyed, unassuming young pretender. Thematically, the show gets to the very heart of the noir genre.
This Noir Aesthetic Explains Why Fans Found The First Lanterns Trailer So “Gray”
Trailer previews of Lanterns have caused controversy over the color of the series, since many fans expected it to adopt the bright and peppy approach of James Gunn’s 2025 movie Superman, in both thematic and aesthetic terms. Many are now worried that the show will simply be a new iteration of last decade’s Snyderverse.
Yet, the self-conscious Western noir tropes of Lanterns are only superficially similar to Zack Snyder’s brooding DC adaptations, which lacked the sharp edges and relish for wrongdoing that characterize true neo-noir releases. This new HBO series will be funnier, more cynical, more genre-conscious, and more self-aware than any of Snyder’s works, and therefore, ironically, even darker.
If Lanterns is a little too gray for the liking of some comic book fans, it’s perhaps because a noir reimagining of their favorite characters isn’t for them. Likewise, Spider-Noir has shocked a lot of Spider-Man fans, but the show is unapologetic about its purpose. HBO appears to have the same attitude in promoting its latest DC series.
This story originally appeared on Screenrant
