The Reel Rejects - LANTERNS EPISODE 3 REVIEW – JOHN STEWART’S ORIGIN CHANGES EVERYTHING! - DC STUDIOS

Starting point is 00:00:00 Citizens of the Reject Nation, we are back for episode three of us wearing green because lanterns. We have all really enjoyed this show thus far. Each episode has ended with quite the cliffhanger. I'm very excited to see where we are today with Sinestro. But before we do, how are you? Good sir. I am feeling brightest day at the moment.

Starting point is 00:00:24 Feeling happy to be with you guys. Excited for more quality home box office entertainment. Gee, how are you doing? Dude, I'm how Nice. Nice. I'm going to steward us into this introduction. We're going to watch our introduction. Three, two, one.

Starting point is 00:00:46 I think that's my favorite episode of the show. That was fucking amazing. There was so much going on in every scene and the casting of this show, immaculate. Holy shit. John started last time. Greg wants to go last. I'll start.

Starting point is 00:01:03 this show. I plug into Patreon. By doing the housekeeping. This show is available on patreon.com slash real rejects. In its entirety, if you sync up with your own copy, you can experience all of the extra F words that HBO ensures they include.

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Starting point is 00:01:41 keeping us safe in Blackest Night, in Brightest, holy shit. I am so excited to talk about this episode because I think it is very much akin to the thing I loved about Watchman, in that it really knows that complex subjects

Starting point is 00:01:58 are complex enough to warrant time. It took its time. It had, incredible deft pacing and use of language that sometimes counteracted the emotion

Starting point is 00:02:13 on display and to act when what's on the page is saying one thing, what's on your face is saying the other thing and then there's also an arc that needs to say a third thing is why I think Watchman is one of the great pieces of art about not just comics but

Starting point is 00:02:29 humanity and I thought you know this show was going to be an incredible representation of maybe dealing with the consequences of what it was to be a cop and the scale being space or what it is to be a black man training under a white man that has this, you know, gung-ho attitude and you're straightened up and how that relationship goes in a very surface way. That is how I've always seen the two of them, but I knew the show would go much deeper, I didn't expect it to recontextualize John Stewart's origin in a way that I in three episodes prefer this John Stewart to, I think, everything except Mosaic, which is my favorite

Starting point is 00:03:16 John Stewart story. And this could easily pass that by the end because it is so terrifying to me to think about the consequences of each and every one of my actions as someone recently married looking to have kids soon. And I've been thinking as someone just like, how do I get off my phone so my kids don't see me as a glowing face? And how do I make certain language choices so that they hear these words and know that, you know, not to use them? And I'm trying to put those things in myself now because I know it's only going to get harder when I'm stressed and raising a baby and all those things. So I'm already in the cocoon. And there's so much about this that I had never even considered in John Stewart's backstory of his being raised

Starting point is 00:04:06 in an environment that was so loving and full of violence in order to squeeze out fear and the fear that everyone would have to feel all around the family unit. Like the brothers would know so much fear. The people around them that knew their family would know fear. They would know they're ostracizing themselves. They would have to have such force of will to commit to this mission. And you read that and it obviously translates as, wow, I'd be hard. But like, that's about, you know, the extent of it. And there are different origins and there are different journeys with John Stewart. but you know unless you really sit with the page and resonate with it for me as a consumer of art i connect to actors more it's why a lot of people get bothered by my not connecting to animation

Starting point is 00:05:06 is i personally coy jondro loved to look in the eyes of an actor that is just killing the game giving me something from the page that i didn't see and i don't get that as often from drawing and that's i know ironic considering my love of comics. What Watchman did was contextualized things in the original comic for the modern day that brought me new depth to both the comic and the story in real time. What this just did was recontextualized John Stewart in a way that I thought about my future children and thought about how the environment they'll inherently be in is something I'm already curating and that element of pushing it to an 11 and

Starting point is 00:05:49 what genre content can do is make these most extraordinary circumstances affect you and that just that just made me love John Stewart in a brand new way and that was fucking amazing that was that was a perfect episode of TV for me agree that was that was quite good

Starting point is 00:06:05 it made me I started to appreciate I like when you're watching a show like this and you can start to this feels like a classically conceived show in a sense that Like every episode thus far of these three we've seen has felt like kind of functionally distinct. And like they chose, okay, so the first episode, obviously we're going to get, you know, your odd couple chemistry down and do some place setting. Second episode, we're going to establish these characters more on their own individual terms as well as continuing the growth of the story.

Starting point is 00:06:35 And then the third, we're going to deep dive into John's perspective, his backstory, his, you know, answer all the questions of like how he got here. And I think, yeah, the way they depicted this was really lovely in its nuance because you could easily fuck up a kid like that a million ways. And they managed for me, anyway, for my taste, to draw a plausible scenario in which you're like, this is so beyond the pale of what you'd ever have to consider. It's kind of messed up. But I can see how he wound up this way, given what they've shown us. I like that you get, you know, these cultural ruminations, obviously, from not only, you. just a regular Earth perspective, but cosmically too, you know, and watching this family unit. It's nice to, like, I think they've chosen some nice ways to avoid getting too melodramatic or too, like,

Starting point is 00:07:24 oh, this tearing our family apart. Like, you know, it's happening. But, you know, there's still love and fear kind of percolating all around. You know, we don't know a ton about what his relationship is like with his brothers these days. But, like, you know, to get to the present and be like, oh, shit, both parents are still here, you know, and it seems like the brothers are around. Like it just paints what felt like a living family story rather than like a bunch of tropes.

Starting point is 00:07:49 And it, you know, presented this like strange impossible situation and, you know, brought you further and further into the reality of it. And I like the sort of loopy, timey whymishness and the whole awkward like, so we are kind of adjacently responsible for your dishonorable discharge in the first place. You know, like, there's some fun, like, your bureaucratic stuff around the edges.

Starting point is 00:08:15 And, yeah, this just constantly took emotional opportunities to surprise me. And I like that, you know. I also love how the two endings tie together. Yeah. I really love Sinestro saying, like, you know, the thing you have to fear second most. And then the first being John Stewart. And that's getting an hour to explain that one line and how we now have so much more John Stewart. Like, that context of who he is is so much richer.

Starting point is 00:08:35 And you can think ahead, like, okay, I can see how maybe the two of them will get pitted against the you know powers that be in some way or another ethically but gee how you feeling feel like they should have come out all at once yeah yeah if we were talking about all eight hours i'd have way less problems with it yeah yeah oh it's just so weird how they have that question posed about like the difference between programming and being raised and i'm like he has no awareness that he was like programmed that's the entire like it's kind of like the thesis of this episode because it's like yes this fucking lantern shows up and says there's a lot of potential and what your child can be and then from

Starting point is 00:09:28 that moment on they literally like created a program to manufacture him into mr fearless guy so that way lanterns would be like hey you'll be the next lantern a lot of it is also embedded in personal reasons of cultural aspects I can never truly grasp however from the character's perspective

Starting point is 00:09:54 of the parents like of being black people at this point in time and then them also feeling like they've had to just rise above certain occasions and then to take the idea of like this white man took our opportunity and he wasn't afraid

Starting point is 00:10:08 naturally because of the fuck he got to grow as a white boy out of here and they've like grown up in a society where they were taught it you have to survive off of being afraid it's such a cool way to do it and i love that the show is not afraid to go there and not afraid to lean there it's like you can either completely be scared of doing it or go all the way but when you go halfway you're not making anybody happy yeah you're just upsetting all the people that are going to be upsetting and then you're disappointing the people who wish from one more you know yeah so it's like might as well just upset all the right people you want to upset anyway yeah and then go all the way and then uh the people who recognize this as a commitment to the character psychology uh let them see it and i found this to be a great character deconstruction of of him that also then makes the previous two episodes even a cooler and better and the and it makes the dynamics between them richer and you understand it that much more even even from like howell's perspective to a certain extent of that little

Starting point is 00:11:13 bud in there of how like he's aware of like i know what the fuck's going on here like i'm not stupid yeah like if there's one thing i love about this show is like the characters are not ever stupid whenever they think they have like a will being pulled over them or they're being lied to in some way they they call it out and right down and then the start of their dynamic is like oh yeah it's bullshit i know what's really going on here and i love that that is like the root of their training session and also how what they included of him because it's like it's what the way the show pitched it at the beginning is if you remember that opening scene is is like oh he must have admired hal jordan and maybe loved him yeah like i want to be a green lantern the very

Starting point is 00:11:58 opening is him watching the show and that is a different scene now and like there's no mom and it just seems like this dad was kind of a fucked up guy and did all this shit to condition him. Yeah. And the whole, it's like the irony that all this stemmed because they were afraid. Like all their actions that the mom and dad have done in their life has been

Starting point is 00:12:20 because they're afraid. And then they were afraid for his future. So everything about making him fearless was built out of being afraid and that got projected onto him. So it's like sometimes they're stating like especially the mom who i love the way they did there there was so much nuance there i love that she would sometimes make like incredible points that you can't argue with

Starting point is 00:12:45 and like just pure logic and facts of what they grow up in and the society that they're and embedded in at this moment then you look at the action like but yeah you know there's still like his kid didn't have a choice though like you did you robbed him of choice and even when you're like now that we've programmed you you have a choice which way you want to be it's like we fucking programmed him to like what other choices you're going to make at this moment in time all all choices have led to i got to make mom and dad happy and it's so it's just such a fascinating thing and then to cut to like john stewart in the interview and you see the spots where he's even blinded to a lot of the psychological conditioning because he's been blocked off from feeling like fear teaches a lot and then when you rob someone from feeling fear, a lot of that comes with like a detachment process that can occur. And you're completely rob me. Like, I understand. I know, like, you know, I don't like being around people who are way too living their life

Starting point is 00:13:44 by fear. I can't stand out on a personal level. But at the same time, when you're just trying to, like, when you're doing it this way, you're like, you just, like, isolated this kid. He's completely isolated. All he's got is you two. Like, he's got only YouTube to talk to. And also, like, you put him in a fantasy world where everyone's going to feel like this kid's

Starting point is 00:14:01 crazy if he says this shit. you know even though he's not so it's it's just a fascinating depiction and it's like i i admittedly being totally honest when it comes to green lantern i've only really paid attention to like hal jordan right i've always seen john sir's like ah yeah he's second fiddle second place guy but it's like hal jordan's the main guy and i'm and additionally i've never really been like a huge green lantern fan or some shit like that i was like hell jordan fucking greenlander that's the one and then eventually this guy takes over so when i came into the show it was mainly like hal jordan that i'm most interested in and then this episode made um john stewart much more interesting to me than hal jordan now and i didn't think the show

Starting point is 00:14:50 was actually going to do that that was part of my concern with man of tomorrow was like am i going to end this with like wishing Hal Jordan was in Man of Tomorrow. Yeah. You know? And this got me very excited at him being in Man of Tomorrow now. And instead of feel like I'm going to be missing out on Hal Jordan because I was like, I didn't even notice. It got to the point where we got so accustomed.

Starting point is 00:15:12 I was so engrossed. And when he shows up at the end, it's like, kind of a surprise. Like, oh, yeah, Hell Jordan. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good sign when you're like, oh, shit, I haven't thought about him at all. Yeah. Hardly.

Starting point is 00:15:22 Yeah. Yeah, I thought, I thought this was great. I agree. the editor of the three so far it's definitely like kind of like not even by a not even close it's like definitely the best one so forth I think they've each gotten better for me personally

Starting point is 00:15:34 and this one is a good step even above two for me yeah that was that was really special that that reminded me of the writing and watchmen that I remember watching watchmen and just being bold over by certain lines of dialogue but they weren't so good that it made the rest of the episode feel poorly written like it would just be like and then we'd go back

Starting point is 00:15:51 to like great writing and then every so often to be like that's a crazy concept and this felt like that. Yeah. Coy watches the watch. I do watch the Watchman. Man, I love that show. And this is, uh, this is, this is right there, guys.

Starting point is 00:16:04 Uh, I, I'm gonna say it. We're, we're at episode three. If this stays as good through weight, might be thrown Superman for me for the DC, the new era because this, this is hitting all the things I want DC to do. I'm really happy. So, uh, yeah,

Starting point is 00:16:18 that is gonna do it for this week. We'll be back with episode four next week. Let us know in the comments, which of these episodes. you've been vibing with. Let us know some of the themes and ideas and concepts that resonated with you in this episode.

Starting point is 00:16:31 Check out the Patreon for all sorts of goodness that we'd appreciate very much. And go be a good person that doesn't instill fear, but also be fearless adjacent. Just left it, just a little bit. Jason.

Starting point is 00:16:46 All right, we appreciate it. We'll see you soon. Bye, rejection.

The Reel Rejects - LANTERNS EPISODE 3 REVIEW – JOHN STEWART’S ORIGIN CHANGES EVERYTHING! - DC STUDIOS

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