Mark Strong Describes His Green Lantern Character
Posted 04.07.10 by Ryan
Director Martin Campbell has insisted that his upcoming comic book adaptation of Green Lantern will only have one villain — Peter Sarsgaard as Dr. Hector Hammond — but anyone who knows the Green Lantern comic book realizes that casting Mark Strong as Sinestro means that an arch-nemesis is waiting in the wings for future sequels. Strong spoke to USA Today about his character's involvement in the movie.
For anybody who's familiar with the Green Lantern and the origin story, the film closely follows the early comics. Sinestro starts out as Hal Jordan's (Ryan Reynolds) mentor, slightly suspicious and not sure of him because obviously Hal is the first human being who's made into a Green Lantern. He's certainly very strict and certainly unsure of the wisdom of Hal becoming a Green Lantern. He is a military guy but isn't immediately bad. It's the kind of person he is that lends himself to becoming bad over the course of the comics being written, but initially he's quite a heroic figure.
Strong also revealed that the look of his character will also closely follow the standards set by the comic book, including Strong being outfitted with special contact lenses.
That widow's peak and thin mustache was for some reason originally based on David Niven, and Hal Jordan was based on Paul Newman. Obviously at the time, whoever was doing the original comics must have looked at them as guys doing very well in the film industry, and based those characters on them. So I would like to do justice to the Sinestro that was conceived for the comic books.
While Strong could not comment further about the movie, Green Lantern character designer Aaron Sims recently revealed to MTV that the movie will indeed spend time away from Earth.
The one thing I can say is that we designed a lot of aliens.
Green Lantern comic book writer Geoff Johns has previously mentioned that the planet Oa along with alien Lantern Kilowog and the Guardians of the Universe — who recruit Green Lanterns across the universe — would all be included in the movie, while Campbell has confirmed that another alien member of the Green Lantern Corps, Tomar-Re will also be included in the movie.