We've seen one trailer so far, and lack of promo and production images have been blamed on a lengthy post-production process, basically the high amount of CG in the film.
For this update we get a few looks at the upcoming film, as well as a few interviews with the cast. We'll finish off the update with 4 minutes of footage that was released at WonderCon. So let's get started.
For this update we get a few looks at the upcoming film, as well as a few interviews with the cast. We'll finish off the update with 4 minutes of footage that was released at WonderCon. So let's get started.
Mark Strong, who plays Sinestro, talks to Splashpage about his part in filming:
"It's like trying to make a jigsaw puzzle with two thirds of the pieces missing," he added, "so I can't wait to see it myself."
That wasn't all for Strong's talk on "Green Lantern" this past weekend however. The actor also chatted with UK film site Hey U Guys. Asked about how he gets into the Sinestro character, Strong glibly replied, "With a lot of make-up and a lot of CGI."
He also spoke a little about the small number of promotional images released so far for the movie "They’ve released something, but it’s all going to be coming out in June. I think that stuff takes a while to get right, they don’t want to release it before it’s ready."
You can check out the video at the link above. There's also a few more interviews from WonderCon with the leads of the film from Cinema Blend.
The first is Ryan Reynolds/ Hal Jordan:
You said you weren't too familiar with the character of Green Lantern going in. As you got familiar with Hal Jordan, what was it about him that made him stand out to you as opposed to Clark Kent or Bruce Wayne?
Never heard of those other guys! [laughs] But for me, it was that transformation. It was having this guy who is arrogant, cocky and reckless and could be given a higher calling and really rise to that purpose and, in that process, find it humbling. I thought that was really, really interesting. That transformation that happens early on in the film is really great. This guy that really has to make the effort. He has to do something with his life in a huge way and, in turn, saves countless other people's lives.
The film relies heavily on CGI. How much pressure does that add on-set, not knowing exactly what everything is going to look like?
Well, it's never good to get in a plane unless you know that you've got a good pilot. Part of that challenge is just having Martin Campbell. Look, I've got enough miles under me to be savvy about those things. To say, "Who did Warner Bros. hire? Who did they hire to do the production design? Who did they hire to do the costumes? Who did they hire to shoot the movie?" Those are all really important questions that you don't think about when you're starting your career. We're in good hands. They're spending the money on the right people to do this the right way. At some point, you've just got to surrender. You say, "I'm going to take care of my end of the bargain and they're going to take care of theirs." Then you see the end result. Or the 90% finished result, as I saw today, and you go, "Okay. They're doing it. They're creating that world." It's exciting. You hear he audience roar with applause you realize that this is what we do this for. People bitch and whine and moan on-set because it's 180 degrees and you're wearing a lycra costume that you'd much rather just light on fire and never see again, but you're here. You're seeing it in front of its core audience. It's pretty exciting.
Have you seen anything in the film that has really blown you away with what they've done in post?
I've been in South Africa for the past two-and-a-half months. In Green Lanternmonths, that's like 30 years in terms of post-production. Things happen in leaps and bounds in that amount of time. I saw that a day and half ago and I just now got rid of my drool cup. The footage has just incredible. But nothing as far along as what we just saw now.
So it's sort of like seeing the film for the first time?
It's all seeing it for the first time. It's amazing. You go from a soundstage that's four walls and a blue screen and you're in a totally different world.
This isn't your first time playing a superhero on the big screen. Did those past works help you prepare for this one?
Not really. I never really played a superhero before. I was Deadpool in Wolverine, but I wouldn't really classify that guy as a superhero. Years and years and years ago, I was in Blade, but that was as a human being as well. This is all kind of new for me. None of it really informed me. Most of it was just finding the character's voice early on. That was always a trick. You approach it like every other film.
Can you talk about the balance of comedy with the more serious elements?
In terms of the overall film, I would say that Hal is far more aggressive in the movie than he is funny. Once we get in to the middle of that second act, everything is pretty serious. It's just tough, when you're dealing with so much exposition of an origin story, to service an audience with it in a very analytical way. It's sort of dangerous. You have to find a way to make that entertaining and palatable. They did such a great job with doing that and allowing the movie to start in the first act instead of it starting in the third act like it does in a lot of origin stories. That will often times leave an audience unsatisfied. But that's all in there. You feel this guy's rage and purpose halfway through the second act. That's what drew me to the movie to begin with.
How dark is it?
It never goes super dark or anything like that. But it has its moments. I would say that it sort of walks that tight-rope in terms of maybe The Dark Knight tones and some of the other recent iterations of stories from the comic book world. Tony Stark and those kind of things. It sort of walks that tight-rope somewhere in the middle of those things.
There's a lot of talk of CGI as a hindrance, but it's interesting that it's the story of a guy whose world is built out of willpower and imagination and the film literally does just that. Did having to imagine this world help you click into that mindset?
Yeah. I mean, some actors just can't do it. They need to have that world in front of them in order to do it. But I would have felt like an asshole asking them to build a lifesize version of Oa with an 18-story power battery in the middle of it. And there's the budget. So you really have to embrace the make-believe and pretend. It's really like being a kid again and actually having that power manifest itself is really pretty exciting and would be for anybody. We get to experience that through Hal. Working with a green-screen stage for six months, you're literally in the world of make-believe and pretend. In a typical drama movie where you have all this elements right in front of you, all you're doing is believing. In this, you're having to do both. You're having to believe and you're having to pretend. It's like a muscle that has atrophied and once it's back, it's there and it's exciting and fun. You invent things. When you invent things -- when I turn my head and look at something – Martin [Campbell] doesn't question what I'm doing. When I watch the film, suddenly the character Bzzt is cruising by. It's so great to see that.
If the film spawns sequels, is there anything specific from the mythology that you'd like to see? Would you want to explore the dark side of Hal?
Yeah, I'm game for that. If we were to do a second film, I know where that's going. But a third, I have no idea. That would be very exciting. I'd love to maybe hand it over to one of the others. Guy Gardner or John Stewart or something.
There's a lot more to the interview at the link, but let's move on to Reynolds co-star, Blake Lively/ Carol Ferris:
Were you aware of the comics before this all came around?
No, I actually knew nothing about Green Lantern, and I imagined that nobody else in the world knew anything about Green Lantern and as soon as I got the role I was quickly humbled about how naïve I was. Because people just came out of the woodwork, people I would never even imagine, you know? I'm on a set with a ton of New Yorkers, very serious dudes who don't geek out often, just very tough. Here they were like grilling me about Star Sapphire, and Hector Hammond, and Parallax, and who's gonna be in it. “What about the Corps?” and “Which Green Lanterns are gonna show up?”, and “Is Bzzd gonna be in there?” What are you guys talking about? It's also really exciting that I didn't know anything about because then, you know, my nephews don't know anything about it. To introduce, reintroduce a character to a younger generation you have a lot more freedom and you're not being compared to all the different incarnations that you've seen before like the more staple, more commonly known superheroes. So that's really exciting.
Because you're doing less action than Ryan, how much green screen acting did you have to do and how is that a different kind of imagination as an actor then pretending to be any other character in a situation?
Well we still had a lot of, most of the stuff that we shot there was a blue screen, couldn't be green or he would just disappear [laugh], just be a floating head. Different movie. A lot of the stuff we did was with the blue screen and that's very different because I'm used to being in scenes and having a good idea what it's gonna look like when the finish product comes out, but to be existing in a world that doesn't even have life until we wrap. You know? You're shooting for six months and then the movie starts, is something very different and makes it that much more exciting when you see it. Seeing those ten minutes of footage, I now feel like a fan of the movie whether I was in it or not. “Ah, I can't wait to see this movie!” and here dedicated six months of my life to it and I have no idea what it's going to look like and that's really cool because there's an extra energy there. When things are just sitting in the room and manmade there's not that sort of life breathing through it in the way you can with CGI. Just like with Ryan's suit, it's comprised of energy and no fabric, no thread, could have conveyed that the way this CGI can, so it's pretty exciting.
When you read the character of Carol, what did you make sure that you nailed down about the character?
She’s a very strong woman. She’s a business woman – she inherits her father’s aviation company. She’s also militant, she’s a fighter pilot. But she’s also very caring and kind. She has this relationship with Hal, they’re each other’s first love, they’ve known each other since they were children. She witnessed his father’s death with him. So there’s that history. Also, keeping in mind the fact that she becomes a villain. You have to have those kinds of teeth apparent in the beginning so it makes sense that her arc goes there. So there are a lot of different levels to play with her. But I really appreciated not being the damsel in distress.
Martin Campbell – what is it like working with a director like him working on a project like this?
He’s an incredible person to work with. I never met a person who works so hard and is so old [laughs]. He would get up at 5:00 in the morning and go to the production office, and he would go, “Yeah, it opens at 9:00.” I said, “Why would you go in at 5:00?” And he said, “I get to work before all these people come in and distract me!” And I thought he left at 9:00am. No, he would continue be there the whole production day and leave at 8:00pm. He is somebody who will take something very fantastical and find the realism in it. When I watch Casino Royaleand I watch those fights, I could feel my ribs cracking [laughs]. He makes it so realistic. To bring that realism to a thing like this, so the audience can grasp on to something, because when it’s taking place on Earth and in space, you can get lost in the fantasy of it all, but you need something, some human interaction, something to connect with in it, and grab on and take the journey of the film. We were really lucky to have Martin tell this sort of story and I love working with him. He spent a lot of time rehearsing, flying out every weekend, spend 12 hours a day going over the script, talking about the characters, their backstories, their history. And then before we shoot the scene we would spend an hour in the trailer before shooting. On a film this large every moment costs a lot of money, and the fact that we could sit in that trailer and rehearse for an hour to make the scenes better, to make the story better, was an amazing, amazing thing that they afforded us that chance to make the best movie we could make.
Once you really got into the world of the Green Lantern, what did you grow to love about it?
I really love that Hal wasn’t a super man; he is just a man. He’s somebody who inherits great responsibility, but you’re not really sure he wants it. I’m not sure every man in the world would say, “Yeah, you know what, I want to sacrifice my life to go fight aliens and have my family specifically attacked and targeted and everyone I love and save the Earth” - the fact that he had reservations about being the person responsible for saving planet Earth. The fact that he had weaknesses – his father was taken from him, he was a person with great potential, but was broken and guarded. I loved that, because not everyone is a hero and without Ryan there would have been no Hal Jordan, and he’s somebody who could be incredibly intimidating and super, and he’s incredibly talented and intelligent, but he’s also very humble and kind and witty and charming. To relay all of those emotions he’s a very human super man. And I loved that about Ryan, I loved that about Green Lantern. And also the fact that he is weak – he looks to people around him for support, whether it’s his nephew or Carol, because people do need each other and I thought that was beautiful.
You keep mentioning Star Sapphire, are you convinced or are you gonna try to push for you to be her in the sequel, if there is one?
If this movie is successful and we did a few more films I'm pretty confident that Star Sapphire would show up. Just by all – all the conversations are very guarded and protected, even with us because nobody wants to commit to anything, but I can't imagine Star Sapphire not showing up if we made more films.
Costume too, of course?
Well, I mean, a little more material would be nice [laughs]. And by “a little” I mean a lot.
How would you compare Carol and the character and the complexity that she offers to Lois Lane or Mary Jane, these typical female roles in comic book franchises?
She's very untraditional in the fact that she is head-to-head with Hal, and the fact that they are always challenging each other was something was really nice that she's not waiting for him to save her. There are times where he experiences weakness where she has to come in and save him and I think that that's a little more like real life. Like I was saying if people, do – where you're missing something you can have a family member, a friend, or a lover fill that and empower you and make you stronger in that area and it's nice to see that in a comic book film because when there's a hero, he's the hero and he saves the world and he saves the he loves but the fact that other people can be heroes too is pretty cool.
Again, lots more to the interview at the link above. Next we move to some casting news. /Film reports on the rumored voices of GL's Tomar Re and Kilawog:
One rumor is that Michael Clarke Duncan could voice the giant alien Kilowog. And now, supporting that as-yet unconfirmed talk, is word that Geoffrey Rush voices the bird/fish/ alien Tomar Re. Deadline says that Mr. Rush “provided the voice for Tomar-Re, the scientist who works alongside the title character in the Green Lantern Corps.” (The Green Lantern’s Speech jokes begin now.) That suggests that he has already done the voice work, so take that as you will with respect to the rumors that those characters aren’t entirely locked down.
Here's a few new images showcasing Reynolds, as well as a look at some of the alien members of the Green Lantern Corps.
And finally, the moment you have all been waiting for. Time to sit back, put away your reading muscles, and watch 4 minutes of exclusive Green Lantern footage that was released at WonderCon. You can watch it below or over at Apple:
Wow. That was freaking amazing. It was grand, epic, filled with green things. Seriously, I got chills when the lantern takes over and he recites the oath. At times it does still look a little unfinished, but with out first really good shots of Sinestro, the GL Corps, Hector Hammond (played by Peter Sarsgaard), and Hal in full costume, this was a very interesting look at the film. I mean, the scene with the mini-gun construct is dynamite, and was that a glimpse of Parallax I saw there? Awesome.
Green Lantern flies into theaters 06.17.11... *sigh* in 3-D...
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