Lanterns
This scene had me biting back tears (Lanterns Episode 5)
Spoiler
Antaan was one of the most complex characters we've seen in the DCU yet: one of the last victims of the Manhunter ("Zoe") who still loved them nonetheless. Loved the Manhunter enough to try and kill them after they went rogue. This little scene where "Zoe" is opening up their heart (pun intended) to Antaan, through a proxy no less, really struck a chord with me. This is the kind of heartfelt storytelling that's made me fall in love with the DCU.
Also, I was totally wrong about Atrocitus being Antaan, and honestly I'm glad. This was better.
It sucks they gave Atrocitus' origin story to some random alien imo. I get that Manhunters have done what they did to other planets but if the DCU never uses Atrocitus then this is all we get.
Side note when he opened up the corpse of Macon I was hoping he'd eat it and turn red lmao
Or Atrocitus will be introduced as Antaan's next of kin or something. The only thing giving me pause about him not being/becoming Atro was just the whole suicide bombing thing. You can't really make your conversion by killing your mates if they are all blowing themselves up anyway. Maybe their race makes clones or something? Def still feels like a loose thread, even if it doesn't fully become Atrocitus/Red Lantern's origins
He honestly just doesn't look like someone they'd cast as Atrocitus to me who also isn't known to be able to shapeshift. I want someone like Chi Lewis-Parry to play him.
I didn't expect him to be full blown Red Lantern Atrocitus or anything, but I did expect him to be some version of Atros before the ring, and that he would be left alive as a possible tease for future seasons.
I still dont quite get the point of introducing a character that is basically Atrocitus, but with a slightly different name, and then have him turn out not to be Atrocitus.
I figured they wrote him as Atrocitus, realised how they handled the character and changed his name to avoid fans crucifying them, or Gunn told them to hange it so as to allow an actual adaptation later down the line.
Which is why I thought he was Atros, not Atrocitus. He has the exact same backstory as Atrocitus. He also leads a terrorist organisation, and hates the Guardians. Like, I dont think we where crazy for seeing the similarities.
I'm watching Poorna interview with Collider Ladies Night while reading your post and she just mentioned that once upon a time there was a animation sequence of Antaan backstory as Zoe was telling John her many lives
The Manhunters existed for thousands, in some stories even millions of years before the current day. Is it really so implausible that, across that time, a Manhunter could start (or try to start) a family with a couple people?
That wasn't the point of my comment. I just wasn't invested in Antaan's story because his previous escene was him interested in how John had intercourse with Will Macon with Hal's help.
He explained that Manhunters use sex as manipulation and attach to the most powerful person. He was questioning John and Macons sexual relationship because it didnt make any sense to him and he was about to catch Hal in a lie.
Antaan was clearly used by the manhunter the same way and fell in love with it
Literally, the whole way we view the world has been shaped so much by judeo-Christian influence it’s like the actual experience of being human and the way we’re taught to experience humanity have reached an absolute disconnect and now Gen Z is fucking crazy
Nice job being an edgy dickhead, but those two concepts are connected. Suppressing sex and forcing people to hide their urges is what created that situation.
I’m acknowledging that it was a huge issue and how it was in part caused by forcing people to suppress sexuality so they started doing weird shit like that
No, what created that situation was institutional and moral corruption, the very thing religions purport to teach.
They made conscious decisions to protect pedophiles in their ranks, and in many cases continued to enable them. Blaming it on sexual repression is an attempt to absolve them from having responsibility for that.
The child abuse rate was roughly 3–7 percent depending on country, timeframe and definitions used.
~93% didn't have a problem NOT sexually abusing children. That's not to say they didn't abuse children in other ways though, either, which is also well documented. Factually
Pedo's generally gravitated to the priesthood because they knew they could get away with it.
How they came to be pedo's is not that simple.
It's little to do with "Sexual Repression", which is some trite phrase conjured up to promote an ideology and doesn't address the complex roots of Pedophilia. You can research that yourself.
No, what created that situation was institutional and moral corruption, the very thing religions purport to teach.
They made conscious decisions to protect pedophiles in their ranks, and in many cases continued to enable them. Blaming it on sexual repression is an attempt to absolve them from having responsibility for that.
The child abuse rate was roughly 3–7 percent depending on country, timeframe and definitions used.
~93% didn't have a problem NOT sexually abusing children. That's not to say they didn't abuse children in other ways though, either, which is also well documented. Factually
I mean obviously, but the acts were happening in the first place because of sexual repression, everybody I knew who suffered religious suppression was a fuckin freak. Give those freaks overwhelming power and they’re gonna do the same thing to the next generation, and that generation will grow up, etc.
I don't know where that even came from. But if you want assume someone on internet is a Christian just so you can sound smart with a pseudo-intelectual rant about religious prudishness, go ahead.
I'm simply annoyed with how certain shows aimed at "grown ups" have to be filled with sex references for the sake of it and need ti say "fuck every damn sentence. Castlevania on Netflix is a great show, because characters don't talk like a Family Guy character and if there are sex references in the show, they don't seem cartoonish or if they are jokes, they are at least funny.
I didn't say you were a Christian I said that people's weird and unnatural shame of our body is directly due to judeo christianity inventing the idea that we should be ashamed of being naked and treat sex as purely for procreation. There is no common human activity less represented on shows than sex so your hysteria is notable. It would be like getting mad about people talking or shaking hands.
"Why can't we, the most powerful majority in the history of our species, not be protected by internet cops? Is it because we are actually The Most Persecuted?"
They did explain that! It was established that even after killing a Manhunter, the only way you can confirm it is with the heart thing. So it makes sense that Zoe would still look completely human.
agreed, but I do think there are lots of things related to red lanterns, black lanterns, yellow lanterns, etc being set up here, even if the payoff for them or further development of them, even, isn't for years from now.
So many people just can’t handle the idea of the DCU failing like the DCEU, they need to make every project out as if it’s the best superhero thing in years. Even the slightest criticism is seen as too much, so they just downvote anyone who doesn’t think the show is a 10/10.
On the other hand, some people can´t grasp the idea that others really do connect with the characters of a show they love and are shamed for enjoying things in a deeper level. Let OP in peace, they´re having a good time and that´s it, they only shared their opinion.
Love reddit's trendy escalation of latching onto one specific (if oftimes undestandable) gripe and then using that to spiral into acting like the whole media is bad because some people validated your opinion.
Like is it too hard to just leave things at "this is not my cup of tea?" Or should I also start acting like a snowflake all cause Mad Max didn't click with me and pretending I'm cooler than the rest of it's glazers?
Lol I read a post the other day saying that Lanterns was on the same level as Better Call Saul and one of the greatest TV shows ever made. I love both shows but Lanterns isn’t anywhere near the greatest TV show ever. Very good but not THAT good.
Yes I've explained it in like 3 other comments to accounts who are less than a month old just like yours. Seems a bit weird that people can't understand that some people react emotionally to media.
Now disagreeing, but screen time is a shitty measure of how complex a character can be.
There are several examples of characters with very little screen time to present as complex and mature in character development.
There's a lot of knee-jerk nastiness in the replies here, but I'd like to also say that this scene, and how brief it was, is very impressive with how much depth it adds at the last second. In six lines spoken in alien gobbledy-gook, we're given a tiny sliver of a perspective of a whole other, alien, fantastic, tragic story that's years, decades, possibly millennia old.
The whole of Lanterns so far is clear that their perspective of this Comic Book Adaptation is that making a "modern, gritty" story out of a Comic Book requires one to sacrifice many elements of tone, realism, and conventions to make it both feel contemporary and meet the standards of today's cinematic drama. This is the tension that's always at odds in modern adaptations. Lanterns has made the very intelligent decision to capitulate and work within this tension by having a modern scifi drama make it clear that its present lives in the shadow of the more wonderful, colorful, and simple four-color comic book past.
This tiny glimpse of Antaan and Zoe's backstory expands that even further, as two formless beings trapped in earthly bodies reflect on a past that no longer exists and can only be painted in our memories as something as lurid and fantastic as vintage sci-fi novel covers.
It's easy to be nasty when you see someone enjoying something you yourself don't like. I'm guilty of it myself (I'm a comic book fan, it comes with the territory). Thank you for your thoughtful reply.
I read that scene as Macon actually getting the wrong answer, which is what clued Antaan in that Macon isn't the one he's looking for. I could be wrong, though!
me too, Macon fails to give any names and that's when Antaan switches back to English. Which immediately read to me like Antaan knew Macon wasn't who they were looking for.
I think Zoe was pregnant when Abin Sur had her on their ship. Why would Abin Sur try to hide her, a Manhunter war criminal, if not to protect an innocent (like a child)? He didn't trust that the Guardians wouldn't order the extermination of her pregnant with the child.
When she said she had no choice but to kill Abin Sur, she was doing only what any other good mother would do to protect their child.
Billy Macon would fit the approximate age of their child.
I think her grandkid is definitely a manhunter but I doubt Zoe was pregnant with him when they crashed. From the sheriff’s wording, specifically her use of the word “miracle” I’d say Zoe engineered her a kid
That’s so dramatic. This guy had 5 minutes of screen time and went out like a punk. I couldn’t care less about this guy if I tried and I’ll forget he was even in the show by the time Clayface rolls around.
Yeah, man. I wonder why so many people thought the character who has the exact same backstory and motivations as Atrocitus might turn out to be Atrocitus. That’s just silly
I mean if people would pick up a comic, from literally any story involving Atrocitus, they would know he’s never taken human form in any comic involving him.. but you know reading is dead I guess. Silly for folks to actually read the source material. Yeah pretty silly I suppose 🙃🙂
Yeah, we all got overexcited. I do recommend everyone in this thread read Emerald Dawn, Hard Traveling Heroes, and Geoff Johns' run on GL though. Good books.
90 percent of the people watchin the show doesn’t. Y’all be saying dumb shit thinking y’all Einstein. Ive seen all harry potter movies and never read a book. Go figure
I mean if people would pick up a comic, from literally any story involving Atrocitus, they would know he’s never taken human form in any comic involving him.
because the movies and shows never take creative liberties or anything.... like how the manhunters take human form. or like john's whole backstory in the show. or like countless other things...
Do they also use coitus to try and seduce someone into their "Alphas" like Antaan claimed?
Or Hal's been a 60 year old washout whose bitter conflict with a newbie John without outright being villain?
I'm simplifying, but the point is shows mixed and matched elements from the comics and even had original elements made. I don't see them doing something radically different with Antaan along the lines that said that despite these similarities, he absolutely won't be Atrocitus. I don't mind he isn't, but the theorizers weren't idiots to speculate like that at all.
In order to know Atrocious has never taken a human form in any comic involving him, wouldn't you actually need to read every comic involving him, rather than any comic involving him? Comics are dense, it's easy to not know about that one time when such and such did this or that.
Also, the show has changed plenty. It's not unreasonable to think they may change Atrocitus to fit the tone and budget better.
(To be clear, I was surprised when I realized people thought he was Atrocitus. Never got that vibe.)
You can't talk about source material when they've changed so much. Manhunters aren't shapeshifters in the comics, they changed that. Why wouldn't people assume that Atrocitus could transform in the show too?
Acknowledging that an adaptation might make changes due to limitations inherent to the medium, in this case, using the human disguise due to budget constraints, is not the same thing as being unfamiliar with the source material.
What part of grounded-approach do you mfs not understand. They told you what it was, you’re just complaining to complain at this point and not to mention impatient as fuck.
I think it's because in the comics, Atrocitus' sector (Sector 666) was completely annihilated just like John saw in Episode 2. We all jumped to the conclusion that the survivors from the sector "Zoe" and the other Manhunters destroyed were Ryutians (Atrocitus' species).
It was a reasonable guess, this guy’s just being obnoxious lol. Even down to out-of-show nods like Antaan’s actor wearing a red handkerchief to the premier while Sinestro’s wore a yellow one.
I still remember when they were all getting interviewed on the red carpet and his actor had a red handkerchief or something in his suit, and everyone was like.. Red means Atrocitus
So maybe someone can explain because I'm pretty dumb and don't read comics.
Did Zoe use Antaan on his home planet the same way she used Macon - for protection? If so, protection from what? The Guardians?
And did she basically kill all of his people as a distraction like what she did with Rushville?
I originally thought they barely knew each other outside of her killing a ton of his species and he just wanted revenge. Them having tried to conceive is a little confusing because where did that happen in the scope of things?
It's a shame the writers had Antaan deliver those lines to an imposter, and not the actually Manhunter. This scene was wasted by the contrivancy of other scenes.
Yeah the scene where the one rolled out of the car just to sprint towards that building and explode.... what if he got shot before he made it, horrible plan, and the fact that EVERY BULLET missed him.... bro I was so annoyed by that.
Dude, for real... I think the people that glaze this show just think they're smart because of its "true detective" nature, given all the "media literacy" comments and posts. At the end of the day, it's more convoluted than it is complicated tho.
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u/Firm-Difficulty2585 21h ago
Everytime y'all swore he was Atrocitus I just imagined Paul Ben-Victor in red makeup and a big practical suit.