Can HBO’s Grounded Green Lantern Take Flight?

In 2011, Green Lantern introduced its titular superhero in a live-action feature film for the first time in the DC Comics character’s then-71-year history. The movie starred Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan, a test pilot who inherits a powerful green ring that thrusts him into the service of an intergalactic police force that defends the universe: the Green Lantern Corps. Green Lantern fully embraced all of the grand, cosmic elements that are essential to the title character, from Hal’s training on an alien planet with a hulking space pig to his clash with an ancient entity that embodies the yellow energy of fear.