Lanterns review – Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre’s alien-hunting superhero caper is a bust

It is my personal belief that you are starting off on the back foot whenever you’re given a superhero who draws their powers from an extrinsic item. Captain America is nothing without his shield. Elon Musk could build a metal suit and proto-heart and become Iron Man, which tells you everything you need to know about the problem. And, most pertinently, as we’re about to discuss the latest iteration of the Green Lantern legend, there’s the Green Lantern and his big green ring. It grants the wearer mighty powers but periodically needs recharging from a big green power pack. Plus, Green Lanterns themselves are ultimately employees of Green Lantern Corps, a cosmic law enforcement agency run by the Guardians. They are a race of immortals who live on the planet Oa, but by that point there’s a lot of meh to cut your way through.

Lanterns, the new televisual venture into the DC Comics universe, keeps all of the above elements and adds a mentor-mentee buddy-cop spine that plays out across two timelines – 2016 and 2026. The ever-dependable Kyle Chandler plays Earth’s current Green Lantern, Hal Jordan. Rising star and mesmerising screen presence Aaron Pierre plays his trainee John Stewart (one of DC’s first African American superheroes, who made his debut in 1971). In 2016, Hal is weary and lazy when it comes to teaching John to be – as he sees it – his backup. He has no intention of retiring or being killed (which is an enormous amount of trust to place in a piece of jewellery that comes with a battery worse than your phone’s). The 2016 John, a well-disciplined son of a marine, and a former sniper and architect (and vegan), is a model of quiet endurance, retaining his poise and respecting the chain of command.

But by 2026, Hal isn’t looking quite so confident about his immortality prospects and it’s John’s time to shine. This is where the story begins, with Hal sending a hologram-Hal to himself with a mysterious message that sees him immediately flying off to Nebraska. John must follow via car and plane. He arrives to find four people dead in a shooting at Rushville’s football stadium. They were all visiting fans and – Hal claims – aliens. Rushville’s sheriff, Kerry Cane (a miscast Kelly Macdonald, who gives us a whiny rather than capable officer of the law, perpetually on the verge of tears), says not and would quite like him to leave. But Hal knows an alien crashed a spaceship in Nebraska years ago and he is going nowhere.

The local big man, William Macon (Garret Dillahunt), who works for an even bigger but anonymous man, gets involved. He is Kerry’s father-in-law (she is married to his weaselly lawyer son Billy, played by Jason Ritter) and takes care of a large ranch patrolled by a band of militia-type men. He is very keen to help anyone repel aliens who may be seeking to take control of his land and/or the US. It’s possible he is a metaphor of some kind. We’ll have to wait and see.

Lanterns is the kind of reboot that gives you roughly one set piece per episode. The opener’s comes when Hal interviews a suspected alien from the stadium, trying to expose his extraterrestriality with questions about Harry Potter’s school and probing his reactions to Barack Obama’s name (some very heavy-handed exposition has informed us that medical tests are no good because alien technology can emulate the human form too well). Eventually, the suspect cracks, revealing that he is not just an alien but that he has a biometric neutron device woven in to his skeleton! Hal’s ring throws a giant green bubble around him just as the alien detonates and Hal saves the town from annihilation. But now we have to hunt aliens and uncover their dastardly plans for seven more episodes that are never really in danger of catching fire.

Lanterns is following the trend for setting fantastical IP in as gritty and realistic a world as possible. This can work brilliantly – look at The Penguin and Watchmen – but when it doesn’t, it can be a real bust. Lanterns works hard and has its moments, but it always feels slightly dull and flat. You long for more, either in terms of spectacle or in a Penguin-style reckoning with the human condition. It may be enough to please fans, but I’ll be surprised if it delights them. For the rest of us, there are better options out there.