Will Smith: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Green Lanterns Podcast I'm your host as always, Will Smith of sector two, eight one four. And today I am so excited to bring you guys the lanterns official teaser, not the official trailer yet. I think we'll get that at San Diego Comic-Con, but today was a pretty adventure filled day. HBO came out around 11 AM and they posted that the teaser would be out tomorrow. But then it leaked online, basically everywhere. And it was way too much to just try to stop. So they made the correct decision to just drop the entire thing. Now, most teaser trailers for other companies typically go about a minute. Lanterns gave us over two. So I'm to go ahead and play that, probably stop it every 15 to 20 seconds-ish. And let's go over what I think it is that we are seeing. All right. So right out the jump, we basically have a continuation from the 12 second teaser that we had previously where we saw Hal is in the car looking at John. He takes the ring off quickly, puts it on the dash and then dives out of it. And then we see the car kind of go over the ledge and that's when we speculate John would have to put the ring on to save himself. confirmed. exactly what John had to do. Hal did trust that John was going to be able to get the ring on in time. And then we see the aftermath of that, which is kind of like a fun moment. John's walking up a little bit like, Hey dude, you could have killed me doing that. But at the same time, Hal knew John was going to be absolutely a okay. And he's like, Hey kid, you wanted me to train you? This is me training you. And I love that little, what we get of that relationship there. Where Hal seems kind of smug, like he knew what he was doing and he knew that it would work. And it's a good lesson for John. So not too much to break down that would be new there, even though there is a little bit of new footage. But a lot of this we had speculated just based off of the previous 12 second teaser that we got. All right, let's keep it going. So 42 seconds in and we have gotten a little bit of new footage, but this is again, right where we were with the initial 12 second teaser. think we got most of that footage out of the way now, except for John walking across the football field as well. And then the two of them kind of like looking through some curtain type area. are in a VFW town hall type meeting here. can see Sheriff Kerry is next to the podium and Hal and John are walking in. At this point, they probably are already aware that there's a bunch of murders happening in town. And that's why they're having this town hall meeting. And it's probably still a shock to them that two Green Lanterns have shown up. If they already know that Hal is a Green Lantern. I'm not a hundred percent sure at this point. Originally, I did think the person at the podium was William Macon, played by Garrett Dillahunt. I am no longer certain that that is the case. think that that's somebody completely different up there. It does not look like him anymore from where I can see. And that's the first bit we've heard from Sheriff Kerry played by Kelly McDonald. Um, obviously if she's the sheriff of Rushville, she's going to be the one trying to lead the investigation of the murders. And I know it's tropey, but just about any police type show. If you're the lead investigator on a murder or a crime that's happening and you have all these people coming from out of town, kind of hopping onto what is your case. You know, they almost never feel good about that. And there's always some sort of tension there from those type of moments. This shot here above Rushville. did try to look around. mean, a lot, a lot, lot. And what I was just looking for was a couple of things. I wanted to see if in any of the yards we could see like maybe not a green Lantern logo, but if the rumors are true that William Macon might turn into William hand AKA black hand, the black Lantern. then maybe we would see that kind of like maybe in a crop field, you'd see the crops shaped out to be like the black lantern logo or any of the lantern cores. Looking down at this shot, I get none of that. I can't even see like a cemetery from the view that we are getting here. But what it appears to be is this is a great shot to show you that though it is a decent amount of space, this is a very ⁓ Very small, very condensed town with not a lot in it. Okay, here we have our first look at Paul Ben Victor, who is playing the character of Antaan After this teaser drop today, there was a lot of chatter social media that, hey, at least we can put to rest that Paul Ben Victor is not playing Atrocitus. While I will say it seems very likely that he is not playing Atrocitus and that Antaan may just be Antaan. At the end of the day, the description for Paul Ben Victor, even though he looks very human here, is that he is an extraterrestrial and the description for his character does make it sound like he could be From deadline itself, it reads, soon as I get rid of the pop-up, Paul Ben Victor will play Antaan, an extraterrestrial devoted to exposing the truth and exacting against those who wronged his people. Consumed by a deep and unrelenting hatred for the law. He is determined to deliver justice on his own terms. Now again, I'm just me, but that does read like that could be atrocities. When you look at this man, you do not see an extra terrestrial. So what is going on here based on the description of this character and then the description of Chris Coy, who's playing a character named Waylon Sanders. believe that. We know in universe Superman has glasses that when he wears them, it makes those around him not view him as Superman. They see Clark Kent as a completely different person. I think that maybe there is some technology at play here, some alien technology that is cloaking the town in a way that Paul Ben Victor and Waylon Sanders appear human and maybe the same will be true for Sinestro. but we know that they are not human. And maybe part of the plot is getting to the point where we get something that breaks up that signal, or at least for our Lantern Heroes, is able to show them the light of who these characters really are. This is kind of an intimidating open. It looks like Hal Jordan is here and he is surrounded in this restaurant by Paul Ben Victor Antaan and his goons. You can see that there are other dead bodies here. There's a dead body on the ground. Not all the food's been eaten, so that sucks. That's very wasteful. The blinds are messed up in the background and just back here, there is blood splattered all over the wall, probably from somebody getting headshot or something else. Who knows? Either way, it's a cool intro that makes me feel like when, when Paul Ben Victor is introduced as Antaan, he's, he's a baddie right away. Like you're supposed to feel intimidated by him. And it kind of seems like he's got at least this part of town locked down and under his control. Let's continue. Okay. Just gonna, ⁓ perfect. It jumped exactly where I wanted it to go. So at Rushville High School here, it looks like there has been multiple, I don't know if you want to call them murders, but there's multiple dead bodies. There can't be an imminent threat or something around like a shooting or an evil character like Sinestro or Atrocitus. raining down hellfire on these people because you would not see the students kneeling and praying. You wouldn't see fans in the stands. These people would be running away. We've had enough time to get some ambulances out here and if you look while out here, somebody's already being loaded into this one over here. We've got a gurney over here and it looks like there's one, two, three characters laying on the ground in body bags already. And then this paramedic is over another person, young person laying on the ground. So there, looks like there's at least, you know, three murdered and potentially two more injured here. It's hard for me to imagine that this is from like a football play, you know, to get one injury on a play. common to get two injuries on a play. I wouldn't say uncommon, but it's not super common to have multiple people die from a play in football. It's, it's unheard of. So something else has happened here with these kids, unfortunately, that we're not getting the full story. Also the dialogue where John says, I think she hates your guts and Hal is like, it's, it's how he hates my guts. Like. I don't know, just something about that, that relationship that we're going to get between Sheriff Carey and Hal Jordan. I'm very interested to see how that plays out. To me, makes Sheriff Carey sound like a cooler character, honestly, when stuff like this is said. I'll see if I can turn off the closed captioning. Boom. And y'all see that at the bottom? I hope you can. You have Hal Jordan wearing the ring on his right hand and it's looking pretty good. That's really all I want to say about that shot. I was just happy to see more of the ring and in the daylight. Okay. So this shot right here is obviously the Macon facility. I say that because if you look at the gates, you see the large Ms, the Macons. I believe that they're one of those type of families that has their hand in a bunch of businesses in like everything that's going on in Rushville. Like they're the mayor without being the mayor. That is my interpretation of the Macons. I don't know if that's true, but they obviously have money. That's a little bit crazy to see a giant crater in the ground. All this is torn up. This post that had study the past on it is obviously torn up as well. Then you even have a car flipped upside down due to all this damage. To me, it would appear that this is not something like guns aren't doing this. Would a grenade do this? I don't know. I honestly don't know. feeling though. is that this would have to come from an Atrocitus type character, a Sinestro type character, or potentially whatever Waylon Sanders is going to be. I went a little bit too far back, but we'll just focus on Aaron Pierre here with a toothpick in his mouth. I should have got one for the video. I didn't. I apologize. I know I'm letting you guys down. I let myself down by not having a toothpick, but even if I had one, that dude is handsome and there's no way I would have been able to compete with that. Now, as I hit play here, I want you to pay attention. I don't know if I'll be able to stop it in time, but as we get to the green lantern uniform, which has caused it. a ruckus on the internet. Let's see if I can stop it on time. Boom. ⁓ I got it. It's such a G. So before I hit play and we get to the uniform that's in the back, I do want you to see there's one, two, and then three different green lantern. I don't want to say that they're different, but I mean individual costumes in this closet and two look like they have been dry clean. Again, you can see the green lantern logo right here. is even though it's dark on the screen, it is clear as day. If you watch the trailer yourself. So when you get to this one in the back, you kind of see how they look. But it is my belief that this one is dirtier, muddier, grittier than the other two because it is the one Hal has used in the past. I would also like to believe that he's not been ⁓ like green-lanternning recently. And that's why it's sitting here, you know, for a long time. A lot of people have been very upset. Not just at, they think that this is brown. I'm partially colorblind, so that could play a role into it. But to me, this looks more like a gold. And if it's green and gold, then that would kind of match the green and gold on his ring. So that would check out. But it's like a dirtied up gold because it's been used a bunch. know, Green Lantern uniform shouldn't just sit around. The other part that seems to have caused a ruckus is the fact that This is a uniform hanging up in a closet. I'll say two things to that effect. One, or I'll say three, but the first is if you don't like it, that's fair. You don't have to like it. I don't think the uniform is beautiful. It's not what I would have picked. I would have liked to see a more, you know, construct based out of the ring, but In universe, like in the actual universe that this takes place in, there's already another Green Lantern. And his uniform does not come from his ring either. His uniform comes from the fact that it's like physically made. Guy Gardner has a Green Lantern uniform with Green Lantern logos all over it. He wears it in the Superman movie. So I don't know why it would be very different for Guy to have a physical uniform that he wears and Hal to have one. I don't, it would be weird to me if one is from the ring and the other one is physically made, cause then it's, why wouldn't they both? I think the practical aspect of it is if it's physical, then you don't have to CGI it. So that could save you money there over the longterm. The other part is, if you go back many moons ago, there's comics where Hal Jordan has a physical uniform. He's sitting on a chair and he even has it hanging up in a closet behind him. Like it's, there's a lore based reason that this is possible to do. And then there's a invert in universe reason why this also makes sense. Cause it matches exactly what Guy Gardner would have to do for his uniform. So they would be hung up in a closet. Or maybe if you're a guy, they'd be like laying on the bed, not fully put away. I'm just pausing here for one second to just say, I think that it's funny that they have cable HBO listed here on this motel, which makes HBO, you know, Canon to the DCU. But this shot shows me that this building has been hit with something from up above, not from straight on forward, because if it comes down and destroys part of the motel sign, and then it hits the ground, that's where you see all that cracking and cratering over there as well. So that's. Another example between this and the Macon facility or the Macon plantation, I don't know what it is. There's something big hitting things from above. We don't know what it is yet. Here we've got Garrett Dillahunt looking like a cowboy outlaw with a couple gents around him. I do not know who the gentleman is in the back. He does carry a weapon on him. When I look at Dillahunt here, I did look to see if he had a ring on his finger, you know, to try to get that black hand going. But that ring just looks like a wedding ring. I think in the show he is married to the character named Zoe, played by Pornichag and Nathan. And they have a son named... Billy Macon, who is played by Jason Ritter. I tried to study this scene for a little bit as well earlier today, just to look at, you can see some lines in the field. And I was trying to see if any of these lines made any sort of lantern logo or a shape or an object. But I have no idea. Like there's nothing there that would lead me to believe anything is going on with those in the ground. The only thing I could think that's happening here is that these two or I think there might be a gentleman behind ⁓ Garrett Dillahunt. And I think that they would just be rolling up to their plantation gate opening scene that is destroyed for the first time maybe. ⁓ that's what's going on here. Not 100 % sure, don't want to promise. Those two scenes that we just saw. are connected. If you look, that is John Stewart's jacket. That is his shirt for sure. These are some goons pulling them into a warehouse and then he's getting, you know, like tortured or questioned. I don't want to say he's being tortured. Who is this person that is sitting in front of him? ⁓ the gentleman doesn't look like he's got much hair. If he's got any hair looking at the other guys around him, I'm assuming this could be Paul Ben Victor playing Antaan and they are grilling and questioning John as to what he's really doing in Rushville. Why would multiple green lanterns be in Rushville? Why not just What's really going on? you look, John does not have a ring on any of his fingers that you can see. Usually it's the middle finger. So it's not like he's powered up here and his face is a little bit messed up in this. So I think they have been roughhousing him pretty good here. I think maybe this comes from that scene that we got at the very end of the 12 second teaser where John is just hauling butt through the road trying to get away from somebody. I think this is them catching him and then bringing him in for some questioning. It's weird because this scene that comes now is after... This scene and I wish I could slow it down enough on YouTube to show you But I think this building here that they're rolling past is the building where Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan is out in front of like in this area here This part is on fire. It's busted open. It's got bricks laying all around And then like, this is the aftermath here. And what I find interesting in the shot is how looks startled here. And again, he's looking up and we've had this continuation of things from the sky, something high up doing lots of damage to something down low. It makes me feel like even though we didn't see him in this, he's looking up right now at Sinestro who has finally found Hal Jordan on earth. Probably had been looking for him for a while. I don't know for sure. Like what are the other options? Atrocitus or whoever Waylon Sanders is would be the other two potential suspects. Unless they're in a helicopter or something, Garrett Dillahunt and those guys wouldn't be anything where he'd be looking up, where he looks concerned. Whoever this gent is here on the plane, I've got no idea. I mean, people have thrown out that this could be John Stewart. This could be Antaan. This could be Waylon Sanders. This could be Garrett Dillahunt. There's nothing about any of this. It's so dark and shot in a cinematic way. It is so hard to tell any sort of clues from this. I can't even tell is this person like white or black to try to narrow it down. What they're wearing, doesn't look like anything else anybody else has been wearing so far in any of the teasers or the images we've seen. It's like a completely different shot than everything that we've had so far. So it's just a cool shot of somebody diving down to the earth for whatever reason. This is obviously the before. When the Macon plantation, I'm gonna keep calling it that, ⁓ is getting blown up. This is it getting blown up now. You can see, study the past signage that was up top. This little outpost building thing over here is destroyed earlier. It's not now. So they wanted it to make it look like they were shooting this. But there's no way they were shooting anything that made this kind of like mark on the ground. This shot flying has also caused the stir. The only thing that is weird to me about this shot is that Hal now has the ring on his left hand instead of his right hand. Earlier he had it on the right hand. It seems like he just puts the ring on whatever hand he wants, but usually lanterns have like a dominant hand that they put their green lantern ring on. ⁓ The thing people have been upset about, it's that he doesn't have a green glow around his body. which there's plenty of comics where a lantern takes off in flight and there is no green glow around his body so there's a lower reason why it's not needed and then again I keep going back to the in-universe reasons the in-universe reason is if you go watch the Superman movie and you watch Guy Gardner fly he also does not have any sort of aura or constructs around him as he's flying Now, where is Hal taking off to? This looks like he's taking off after he was having that lunch meetup with John earlier. So I'm not sure at all where he's going on this. All right, two things here. Right after this shot. Looking at that lunch shot that they're having, that's a different shot. Cause the first lunch that they had that we saw earlier, there was multiple people around. And in that one, it looked like they were the only people outside. This shot here is my favorite shot in the entire trailer. I think that this Lantern isn't getting talked about enough. I think this power battery is the coolest thing that I have seen for this show so far. I know Lanterns has a merch website. This thing needs to be on it. I will buy this in a heartbeat. 100 % It is so unique and just so out there and different from everything we are used to seeing that I would love to own something like this. I don't know who created this or was the inspiration behind it, but I think that they knocked this one out of the park. Now over at Lanterns Live has this fun theory that the ⁓ Murder investigation that the lanterns are there to check out is a another Green Lantern has been killed. His belief is that this could be Green Lantern Alan Scott. If Alan Scott were murdered, maybe this is the lantern that he has left behind. On top of that, it would change the scene that we saw earlier where it looked like Howl was going through his closet. Maybe that closet that he was going through Was Alan Scott's closet, seeing the multiple different green lantern outfits that he had sitting in there. The one that was real messed up and dirty. And maybe he was trying to find the costumes so that he can get some sort of clues off of it. If it could tell him anything. But again, it's just a fun theory. That's not confirmed, but if it is true, it would be cool to have that be Alan Scott's stuff and this be Alan Scott's power battery whenever they need to charge up their ring again. That your time is up conversation. think based on how this teaser has gone, they want you to think that this is a conversation between Hal Jordan and Jon Stewart. I think that this is a conversation between Jon Stewart and Waylon Sanders played by Chris Coy. And the reason I think that is because if I look up Chris Coy lanterns, and again, he just looks like a human in the show. But so does Paul Ben Victor and we know that he's an extraterrestrial. The deadline article for Chris Coy says that in a guest starring role, Coy will play the new character of Waylon Sanders, an intelligent survivor or a nervous truck driver. Age and real name unknown, he is unbound by the laws of nature. We don't know what his real name is. We don't know his real age and he's unbound by the laws of nature. That sounds obviously like a super powered being, but it sounds of something not of this earth. I think that at some point during the show, John is somehow awakened to the point where he can now see Paul Ben Victor for his character Antaan for who that really is, the alien, not the human that we're currently seeing in the teaser. I think that when he looks at Chris Coy, he sees this very old, aged, alien-type creature as well. And I think that he's having that conversation with Chris Coy. And I'll point out when we get to Chris Coy's character later, who's having a little chit chat with Hal Jordan, who he is. Okay, before we get to this Chris Coy chit chat. This is Zoe played by porno, Jag and Nathan, the wife of William Macon in the show. And she's at a hospital checking in on somebody who almost looks like they are you know, like mummified. They are wrapped up really, really good right here. Like their entire head is wrapped. Is it from a gunshot wound? Is it from that football related injury? Is she checking in on a child or is she potentially checking in on William Macon or Billy Macon? The point where They might die. And then the other one that's alive becomes William hand because both, I mean, William obviously is a name for William, but Billy is a nickname for William. So either one of them could become William hand black hand. If the opportunity presented itself and maybe if the father died or if the son died, they would use the power of the black ring. Got to bring them back from the dead. This other shot here, John running with his backpack on. am 100 % convinced now. that he has that very green lantern, the power battery in his backpack that he's trying to run away with. And that, I'll try to get to that spot. This shot is meant to look like they're doing damage and they are hurting John Stewart. If this was really something bad, he's one of our heroes. I think he would find a way to get out of it. I think that while the Green Lanterns are here to investigate this murder, they find that this very small town of Rushville has a faction war going on. I think that there's the group of Makins, who are basically like the mayors and the governors and they run the entire city. Then I think there's another faction of people here like Antaan, who is out here looking for answers for something that is going on. And then there's like Waylon Sanders and maybe he's got a group of people too. I think that this is one of those three groups who's trying to tell John like, You think we're the bad guys, but we're fighting actual aliens. And I think they've got some sort of chip or something that they're injecting into his head so that he can somehow block out whatever this transmitter is that is making the aliens look human. And then the next time he sees Chris Coy's character or the next time that he sees Paul Ben Victor's character, he sees them as Antaan slash maybe atrocities. And he sees Waylon Sanders for who he is, the old alien. That's what I think is happening here. And I think that the teasers are always shot very deceptively to get conversation going about the show, but without trying to let you really know what's going on in the show. So that is your Chris Coy, who is sitting across from Hal Jordan. And that guy is supposed to be somebody that is not bound by the laws of nature, yet Hal's able to throw him around. Which makes me feel like he was okay with being arrested and interrogated. Like maybe he wanted to meet Hal Jordan and see who else is after him or something. Obviously I don't know for sure. But if you're unbound by the laws of nature, I don't see any reason that you would be able to be arrested easily. I'm not going to be able to stop it on time. I don't think I'll try to scrub. Close. You can start to see the sparkle on Hal's ring here. ⁓ Every single time they are about to show us what the green energy would look like in a construct. ⁓ great stop by me. They'll do this. They'll get real close and then they'll take it away from us because these are just teasers and I think that they want to save how the suits look on the heroes. And I think they want to save how the constructs look for a big Official trailer reveal at San Diego Comic Con in July. because as we get to this little portion of the clip here, can see down at the bottom, Lanterns officially will be launching in August. We don't have the exact Sunday that it's coming out in August yet. I'm sure as a community, we could do our homework and go, what show, what is the big Sunday show that finishes just before or around August? But to me, I've been predicting that August will be the release date for a long time for a multitude of reasons. But one of them was Supergirl, I believe comes out in June. And if this came out in August, that would give them all of July to have DC promote Supergirl for a bit. And then at San Diego Comic-Con and the whole back half of July, they can promote Lanterns. There would be nothing bigger for the show than to be something that DC and HBO are proud to show off at Hall H. Where maybe there'll be a Q &A with Aaron Pierre and Kyle Chandler and some of the other main cast. Or maybe they'll show footage or maybe like they do every now and again, maybe it'll show an entire episode to the folks who show up at Hall H and just say, please don't record. Either way, feel like August was a pretty easy prediction. Let's see if there is anything else left to play. because we do have some time left on the clock. John asking how have you talked with the other lanterns? How makes the comment that he's the only human the rest are aliens and one of them is a friggin squirrel This is also upset people on the internet because they're like that's not how the ring works the ring would translate for you so you can understand the aliens the teaser ⁓ ended there, but I don't the scene ends there. think the scene probably goes on for another 10-15 seconds, at which point, once they are done laughing, because they were both chuckling at that time, Hal could then explain to John that, we know Guy Gardner is around, but we don't like him, so we don't count him as one of the human lanterns. When it comes to the alien lanterns, the ring translates for you, so if you ever meet up with any of them, you can talk to them just fine. I do not think for even a moment that that scene is Hal Jordan being serious and pretending that he is the only human Green Lantern. We know Guy Gardner is going to be in the show. Hal is also training John, who is another human. So there's three human lanterns right there. That being said, I understand why some people aren't happy with the costume. I am blown away by the lantern. think if you look at this ⁓ from an intrigue standpoint, what are we getting in terms of story or mystery that would make you want to tune in? I think that that is excellent. I think if you were looking for, you know, hardcore lantern bits, you didn't get that in this and you probably don't feel as fulfilled. But I'm excited because I knew going into this that this is kind of like the deal for how it was going to be. It's a true detective show. And then we have green lantern elements in it. I'd never thought that this was going to be just a green lantern space adventure. With two buddy cops. in the mold of like trying to tell a true detective story. They have said from the beginning that this is going to be pretty grounded. I think that they were trying to set that expectation on early that like, yes, there will be constructs. Yes, there will be green things, but like those are going to be sprinkled in. It's not going to be the dinner. It's going to be the dessert more or less. me know what you guys think. ⁓ I crazy for my theory that that little gun thing that's hitting John on the head ⁓ like gonna show him ⁓ the aliens really are? What did you think of the suit? ⁓ did you think of the lantern? Please tell me that you like the lantern too because I feel like that's one thing if they make merch of it is gonna sell like hotcakes. That thing looks so cool. Let me know what you thought of the teaser itself in the comments below ⁓ ⁓ if you could please just take a moment. If I could get to like 300 views on the video, if I could get to like 30 likes, and let's say 50 comments total. I think I've got some stuff in this little closet that I have over here that we can do a pretty decent giveaway. Maybe I give away one of these cool power batteries that I got over here. Maybe I give away some Green Lantern masks. I've got a whole bunch of rings I can give away. Let me know what you would want to see in a giveaway, but more importantly, let me know what you thought of the teaser trailer in the comments below and I'll comment back. I promise you. Until then, I'll catch you guys on the next one. Peace.