Nolan Should Make DC’s Green Lantern (What It Would Look Like)

Even though the chances of Christopher Nolan directing another film for DC Comics is slim to none, his vision for the Green Lantern franchise would be absolutely incredible to see. The filmmaker made a name for himself in Hollywood with small-scale neo-noir mysteries such as Memento and Insomnia, before eventually being catapulted into wide popularity after directing Batman Begins in 2005. Alongside his work on The Dark Knight Trilogy, many of Nolan’s films post-2008 have a distinct focus on massive scale as well as existentialist themes, usually wrapped in a veneer of hard conceptual science-fiction.

The last time the character of Green Lantern was seen in a feature film (not counting a brief cameo in 2017’s Justice League) was in 2011, with the release of Green Lantern, starring Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan. The movie was unfortunately a massive critical and commercial flop, with specific criticisms about the movie’s tone, special effects, and overall writing coming from both critics and fans of the character alike. Since then, Warner Bros. has generally toyed back and forth with how to reintroduce the character into their current DCEU multiverse, with the most recent development being the reveal of a live-action Green Lantern TV series on HBO Max.

Green Lantern is universally beloved by comic book fans due to the uniqueness of his power set as well as the heavy science-fiction elements present in the character’s mythos. Both of these traits proved to be too much for the 2011 film to handle, but for an experienced director like Christopher Nolan, the concepts behind Green Lantern would be a massive interstellar playground.

DCEU Green Lantern Needs To Be Different (For The Franchise’s Sake)

The maligned Green Lantern movie failed for a variety of different reasons, and for a new reboot to succeed, it has to take careful steps to avoid those same pitfalls. One of the biggest problems with the original movie was that it didn’t have a good grasp on the villains, because the villains the movie chose to use felt one-dimensional and cliched. Parallax is one of the most terrifying villains in the DC Comics pantheon; the decision to turn an intergalactic fear entity into a dirty yellow storm cloud is almost as bad as Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer‘s puzzling interpretation of Galactus. The movie also failed to properly acclimate audiences to the world and mythology of the universe, making for a generally unenjoyable experience.

However, a Green Lantern reboot needs to be unique in comparison to all of DC’s current films, not just the failed original. Superhero films have arguably been dominating the public consciousness since the early 2000s with the release of the X-Men and Spider-Man trilogies, as well as The Dark Knight, Iron Man, and more – and now audiences are moving into another decade that seems to be populated by superhero films. DC has recently found their footing and now seem to be more comfortable adapting their properties in exciting ways, which means that a new Green Lantern film would have to stand out in order to avoid being homogenized into the DCEU aesthetic.

Nolan Is More Suited Now To Green Lantern Than Batman

Batman Begins felt incredibly similar to the atmosphere of Nolan’s earlier films because it also operated within that realm of neo-noir realism. While the movie is certainly a superhero blockbuster, there’s an obvious degree of real-world authenticity that grounds his Batman and therefore makes events feel more plausible. However, Nolan has recently moved away from movies in that style, and while his films still certainly have an attention to authenticity that makes them accessible to anyone, his more recent work has been hyper-focused on theoretical scientific concepts and how they intersect with personal and emotional stories.

Movies like Inception, Interstellar, and Tenet all play around with science-fiction tropes in a way that feels grounded and intellectually challenging in a way that lots of sci-fi doesn’t. Green Lantern is a character with a mythos firmly rooted in existentialist science-fiction, and while a lot of it is certainly less scientifically plausible than Nolan’s material (things like the emotional color spectrum spring to mind), it certainly has the same level of scale and worldbuilding. The massive scope of the universe is something that Christopher Nolan has already dived into before, and Green Lantern would provide him with another avenue to explore those very same big ideas.

Warner Bros. Should Cast John David Washington As Green Lantern

Casting wasn’t necessarily a miss for the original Green Lantern film, as Ryan Reynolds certainly captures that hot-headed recklessness that’s become synonymous with Hal Jordan’s characterization. The problem was that his performance was undone by a poorly-written screenplay that didn’t give him much of an engaging character arc. However, a big portion of the general audience was also confused by the decision to center Hal Jordan as the main character, considering most of the movie’s viewers grew up watching the animated shows Justice League and Justice League Unlimited, in which the central Green Lantern is actually John Stewart. While comic book fans understand that there are multiple Green Lanterns from Earth, many people in the general audience didn’t even know who Hal Jordan was as a character.

A Nolan-directed Green Lantern film could capitalize on John Stewart’s inherent brand recognition, and Nolan himself has already said that John David Washington would be the perfect choice to play him. He’s already proven that he has the charisma and likeability to play a leading man, and the intense physical training and fight choreography he mastered behind-the-scenes for Tenet proves he has the dedication to play a superhero like Green Lantern. Plus, centering the focus on John Stewart in live-action would be a great opportunity for Warner Bros. to give some more much needed diversity to a genre that has lacked it for quite some time.

What Nolan’s Green Lantern Could Look Like

With just how unique and expansive Green Lantern is as a property, it’s absolutely necessary that it feels totally unique from any other superhero film out currently. It’s a difficult balancing act trying to make a film that feels respectful and accurate to the legacy of the comics while also delivering a wholly unique experience, but this is something that Nolan has already done with The Dark Knight Trilogy. Those Batman movies took a realistic approach to the character, while also being inspired by decades worth of comic book storylines used to build the framework for the narrative of the trilogy. There’s so many years worth of comic book lore for Nolan to use in a Green Lantern film, and so much of it plays directly into his style as a storyteller.

One particular approach to the character that would be incredibly on-brand for Nolan is Green Lantern: Earth One, which was published in 2018. The Earth One series was a line of graphic novels published by DC starting in 2009, in which they radically re-contextualized the origins and mythos of many of their most popular characters. In Green Lantern’s case, Hal Jordan is no longer a pilot but a deep space mining worker employed by the Ferris Galactic megacorporation. During one of his mining operations, Hal discovers a Power Ring on the corpse of a dead alien, which sends him on a reluctant journey to reforge the extinct Green Lantern corps and liberate the galaxy from the iron grip of the Manhunters. Volume 2 of the graphic novel introduced a new incarnation of John Stewart, but if Nolan were to direct and John David Washington were to star, the premise for Volume 1 could easily be swapped to replace Stewart with Jordan.

A premise like this could be a perfect Green Lantern film for the DCEU, as it would explain why the Green Lanterns have been missing from most of the action on Earth. Earth One explains that the GLC was nearly annihilated long ago by the Manhunters, driving any survivors into hiding. In terms of aesthetic and premise, however, this is something that would be visually perfect for Nolan: the idea of a space mining corporation searching for minerals feels very similar to the search for resources that jumpstarts Interstellar, and the questions raised by the creation of the Manhunters and their subjugation of sentient life is filled with the kinds of existential questions that Nolan loves to ask. While a Nolan-directed Green Lantern film is certainly less probable than a pipe dream, it’s still exciting for fans to think about the possibility and speculate on just what he could bring to the character.