Grab any major magazine off the supermarket checkout shelf, and there’s a good chance that you’ll end up seeing a well-dressed Ryan Reynolds with his hair perfectly coiffed, grin ever-present, adjusting the sleeves on his button-down shirt. On a recent rainy day in The Big Easy, he met up with a small group of reporters on the set of Green Lantern looking like a glossy cover spread come to life, with one noticeable difference: tiny black symmetrical dots all over his face, chest and arms. He looked like any other handsome, self-assured man at work - who just happened to appear as though someone had used a magic marker to draw fake chicken pox all over him.
For 70 years, epic tales of the Green Lantern have played out in comic books, cartoons, toys - everywhere, it seems, except on the big screen. Now Reynolds - seen by many as the superhero savior, a perfect hybrid of humor, charisma and physical prowess - is finally fulfilling a prophecy he only flirted with (Blade Trinity, Deadpool, an aborted Flash film) until now.
The imagination-filled reasons why Green Lantern is ideal movie fodder are the same that make for a less-than-ideal set visit. Much of the storyline is set in outer space, includes “weapons” made from the Lantern’s ring that will be added in post-production, and has Reynolds’s Hal Jordan surrounded by aliens and monsters of all shapes and sizes.
So, what did we see during our recent visit to the Lantern set? Well, in addition to Reynolds covered in dots (the visual f/x people will use those later to keep the star from getting lost among all those manufactured worlds), Mark Strong unrecognizable in mind-blowing Sinestro makeup, and a handful of finished earthbound scenes featuring Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard and Angela Bassett, not a lot we can talk about - yet.
Check out the attached photos for a sneak peek at what’s to come in June of 2011 when Green Lantern hits theaters, and stay tuned as we’ll be rolling out our full set visit sometime before then. Because when it comes to one of the most anticipated films of next year, there are a lot of dots left to be connected.
