Grant Morrison has watched Lanterns, and the verdict on Kyle Chandler is that he’s giving a terrific performance, as somebody who isn’t Hal Jordan.
The writer of DC’s The Green Lantern with artist Liam Sharp reviewed the premiere in the latest edition of the Xanaduum Substack, after blasting Damon Lindelof’s Green Lantern comments — the ones Lindelof apologized for and called “dumb”.
Morrison writes that after all that, watching the show felt like an obligation.
The positives first: Aaron Pierre’s reserved, wound-tight John Stewart works, and Chandler anchors the whole series.
The problem: the character Chandler is anchoring it as reads like Star Trek‘s Doctor McCoy — a cranky, boozy country doctor — rather than any version of Hal Jordan Morrison recognizes.
“Willpower and booze don’t mix for a start,” Morrison writes.
That’s the entire concept of a Green Lantern in one sentence. The ring runs on willpower. The show’s Hal runs on whiskey.
A Cop Who Leaves The Badge At Home
The review zeroes in on the premiere’s tie scene, where Hal shrugs off the missing uniform as something you age out of, like neckwear.
Morrison’s counter: the Lantern uniform was never a costume or a personal fashion call.
It’s the uniform of the organization Hal works for — the space equivalent of a police officer’s blues — and it exists to signal authority and affiliation.
Beat cops don’t get to leave the badge at home because it bores them, no matter how long they’ve been on the job.
Morrison also found the premiere heavy on exposition and light on actually showing anything, and argues the True Detective Season 1 comparisons — the ones baked into the show’s own pitch — only invite a matchup Lanterns loses.
The missing costumes and ring effects? Morrison chalks those up to budget, plus a desire to put distance between this and the Ryan Reynolds movie.
Why Make Green Lantern On A Budget At All?
Which sets up the bigger question in the review: why bother?
Morrison points out DC has a deep bench of street-level characters built for cheap, grounded television, while Green Lantern is the franchise that should be going toe-to-toe with Star Trek and Star Wars.
Taking the low-fi route defeats the point of using it.
Still, Morrison concedes the approach appears to be working, with mainstream critics mostly positive — and 9.3 million premiere viewers backing that up — and plans to keep watching for Chandler and for whenever the actual science fiction shows up (spoiler: it does for 2 minutes at the end of episode 2).
One more nugget from the newsletter: DC has an omnibus of Morrison and Sharp’s The Green Lantern run on the way.
The review lands as Geoff Johns offered a far warmer take on the show, with Rob Liefeld arguing Johns deserves more credit for the franchise Lanterns is mining.
Two of the writers who defined modern Green Lantern have now weighed in. Johns is excited. Morrison is sticking around for Doctor McCoy.
