This article contains spoilers for Lanterns Episode 4.
Lanterns has received a certain amount of flak online for being a bold, revisionist take on the Green Lantern mythos, when all the DC fandom has been asking for the past 15 years is to see the GL Corps treated faithfully on screen. However, in defense of the show’s creators, it’s easy to see why they thought they had to go down the gritty, grounded route. The last time the franchise tried to do an accurate adaptation of the source material, it ended up as one of the most notorious superhero movies of all time.
2011’s Green Lantern almost has an element of nostalgia to it at this point, but for years, it was held up as a perfect example of how not to make a comic book blockbuster, with star Ryan Reynolds himself making the movie the butt of a running joke in his Deadpool films. With its darker tone, minimal CGI, and Earthbound setting, Lanterns could not be more different from its misfire of a predecessor if it tried. And yet, although it may seem keen to erase Green Lantern from fans' memories, Lanterns' fourth episode includes a new, subversive take on the film's most ridiculous character.
In Lanterns Episode 4, "The Weenie," Hal Jordan and John Stewart finally make strides with their hunt for the alien Manhunter hiding in Rushville, Nebraska. After a run-in with local militia leader Will Macon, John has another ill-judged romantic rendezvous with Macon’s mysterious wife, Zoe. The tryst ends in tragedy, however, when Zoe leaves John's motel room only to be blown up by a space laser (!).
Along with Sheriff Kerry Kane’s help, the Lanterns discover that the satellite that did the deed belongs to a man named Hector Hammond, a slaughterhouse magnate with a sideline in seriously advanced tech, mostly of the surveillance kind. John and Hal track Hammond down to one of his abattoirs — which utilizes extraterrestrial tech to slaughter livestock with grisly efficiency — and Hammond admits to everything, claiming that he is the Manhunter they are looking for.
Hammond even threatens to murder John’s parents like he did Zoe unless the Lanterns back off, but Hal proves that his fearlessness and will power really are second to none when he intimidates Hammond into calling off the attack. Cowed into submission by Jordan, Hammond admits his real name is Hector Gutierrez and that he was given his advanced tech by the real Manhunter. By the end of the episode, the Lanterns agree for once on whom this must be — Zoe, who presumably only faked her death to throw them off the scent.
Plot-wise, this episode's biggest revelation concerns the truth about Zoe (assuming the Lanterns are correct in their hypothesis), and its biggest bit of fan service is the larger role for Sinestro, as wonderfully played by Ulrich Thomsen. However, the inclusion of Hector Hammond's subplot is the most curious element of the episode, as it feels like a deliberate callback to Hal Jordan's last live-action appearance.
Hector Hammond is a name that will be familiar to comic book fans, as he is one of Hal’s more prominent and oldest foes. First appearing on the page in 1961, Hammond is typically depicted as an evil genius who possesses an enlarged cranium. The Green Lantern movie made the courageous choice to directly adapt his look for live-action, with Peter Sarsgaard serving up all the ham beneath a ludicrous prosthetic as the film’s main villain. In this version, the character was reimagined to be an avatar of Parallax, the fear entity.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://gamerant.com/lanterns-officially-connects-ryan-reynolds-green-lantern-movie/
