The most recent episode of Lanterns lastly teased a season-spanning risk that had been alluded to within the HBO present’s trailers: The Manhunters. Having appeared in Inexperienced Lantern comics for the reason that Nineteen Seventies, these shapeshifters are the precursors to the Inexperienced Lantern Corps, however had been changed after they rebelled in opposition to the Guardians of the Universe. With overarching themes of substitute and succession permeating Lanterns, the Manhunters are a genius match for an antagonist.
However what if I advised you Ryan Reynolds’ Inexperienced Lantern beat Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre to the punch? Sure, that notorious rendition of Hal Jordan did sq. off in opposition to the Manhunters as soon as in a narrative about succession. No, you’re not misremembering the plot of the 2011 film; its tie-in online game featured the Manhunters as its main risk.
Per week earlier than the ill-fated Inexperienced Lantern hit theaters in 2011, Double Helix Video games and WB Video games launched Inexperienced Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It’s a fairly shameless God of Conflict clone, that includes less-than-stellar voice work from Reynolds and different actors from the film to shepherd gamers by an journey that may be accomplished in only a few hours. On the time, Rise of the Manhunters got here off as boring and uninspired. Looking back, the perfect factor this recreation did was tease us with the Manhunters, 15 years earlier than Lanterns did.
Remembering Inexperienced Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters
Rise of the Manhunters kicks off with the funeral of Abin Sur, the Lantern who beforehand wore Hal Jordan’s energy ring, on the Corps’ residence planet of Oa. Amon Sur, the son of Abin, is in attendance alongside Hal, Kilowog, and a still-good Sinestro, however they’re all blindsided by an assault from the Manhunters. A number of Inexperienced Lanterns die in the course of the siege, and it seems the Manhunters had been in search of out a yellow lantern battery supply that the Guardians had been preserving hidden deep inside Oa.
This units Reynolds’ Hal Jordan off on a quest to a few totally different planets to cease the Manhunters and be taught who betrayed the Corps to disclose the hidden yellow battery. After plenty of pretty repetitive button-mashing fights, Hal connects the dots to find that Amon Sur was behind the plot, as he was offended to not be chosen as Abin Sur’s successor. Hal finally defeats them, cementing himself because the premier Inexperienced Lantern on this ill-fated universe.
It’s not essentially the most complicated plot, and genuinely the Manhunters function little greater than enemy fodder moderately than the body-snatcher sort risk they’re in Lanterns. Nonetheless, I can respect that Double Helix understood that the Manhunters work greatest in Inexperienced Lantern tales about succession, birthright, and the anxieties that encompass that. Licensed video games like Rise of the Manhunters are sometimes missed and forgotten over time, however can retrospectively be prescient or incisive in ways in which individuals could not count on.
Rise of the Manhunters is actually extra fascinating than the horrible film it’s based mostly on, and shockingly beat Lanterns to the punch with a thematically becoming Manhunter risk by over a decade and a half. Nobody remembers Rise of the Manhunters as a result of it’s in any other case an exasperatingly uninteresting recreation, however it’s going to at all times have that.
It’s not likely price monitoring down a PS3 or Xbox 360 copy of Inexperienced Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters to play by the sport, however you may need a better-than-expected time watching a compilation of the sport’s cutscenes. For those who aren’t already watching Lanterns on HBO or HBO Max every Sunday, that’s actually what’s price tuning into as we await to see how the Manhunters risk unfolds.
