More Green Lantern Concept Art Revealed, Plus a Creepy Cool Viral Audio Clip
Posted 06.08.11 by BrentJS
A couple weeks ago, we got a sneak peek at some of the incredible artwork that went into making the otherworldly landscapes of the alien planet Oa, home of the Green Lantern Corps of intergalactic guardians, leap from the pages of DC Comics' Green Lantern comic book series to the big screen in director Martin Campbell's Green Lantern adaptation. Now, we have an opportunity to sneak a peek at the designs for some of the bizarre characters that populate the movie.
Character and concept artist Jerad S. Marantz, whose designs inspired several of the mutant characters in director Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class, recently opened up his sketchbook, so to speak, to share some of the designs he created to bring several Green Lantern characters to life. Included in the nearly two dozen images released are designs for the head-swelling transformation of Hector Hammond (played in the movie by Peter Sarsgaard, though Marantz appeared to have Philip Seymor Hoffman in mind when he did the designs) after he encounters a piece of the cosmic fear-entity, Parallax, the Guardians of the Universe, the practically immortal creators of the Green Lantern Corps, and the robot Green Lantern Stel, one of the 3,600-strong (7,200 in the comic books) members of the Corps.
In other Green Lantern news, a new viral campaign was discovered that offers an interesting look at some of the other players in the movie, most notably Dr. Amanda Waller (played by Angela Bassett). The campaign was kicked off in May, but it remained pretty dormant until it appeared in the pages of this month's Green Lantern comic book as a seemingly normal advertisement from the "Newton & District Astronomer's Guild," requesting volunteers to join the campaign to "convince Dr. Amanda Waller to give us access to the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope" to view "an anomaly" in space. In DC Comics lore, Dr. Waller is something of a government watchdog of superhero activity, once holding the post of Secretary of Metahuman Affairs under President Lex Luthor (yes, that really happened!). In the movie, Dr. Waller is the one who turns over the body of Hal Jordan's (Ryan Reynolds) alien predecessor in the Corps, Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison), to Hector Hammond to study.
In the viral campaign, the Newton group apparently witnessed something in space — presumably something caused by Parallax — and requests that Dr. Waller has NASA look at it with the Spitzer Space Telescope. Dr. Waller does as the Newton group asks, but tells them, "We got nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary." However, a man on Waller's staff named Robert Frazer leaked an audio file to the group that contains an intercepted distress call from Green Lantern Fentara of Space Sector 2815 to Sinestro (Mark Strong), and contains the creepy "voice" of the Corps' greatest enemey, Parallax.
Green Lantern was written by Michael Green, Greg Berlanti, and Marc Guggenheim. It is based on the power ring-wielding superhero created by John Broome and Gil Kane that first appeared in Showcase #22 (October 1959) and the revamped character reintroduced into the mainstream DC Universe by current DC Comics Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns in the 2004 Green Lantern: Rebrith mini-series. The cast includes Blake Lively as Carol Ferris and Academy Award–winner Tim Robbins as Senator Hammond, with Academy Award–nominee Michael Clarke Duncan and Academy Award–winner Geoffrey Rush providing the voices of alien Lanterns Kilowog and Tomar-Re, respectively.
Next Showing: Green Lantern opens June 17