Director Martin Campbell is still in the casting process for his big-screen version of DC Comics’ Green Lantern, in anticipation of a March shooting date, but that doesn’t him talking about the film. During an interview with Collider as part of the press tour for his current movie Edge of Darkness (a remake of the UK TV show of the same name), Campbell spoke about his plans for Green Lantern:
…it will be much more in the tone of Iron Man. It’s got to be. Certainly not Batman Begins, which is a pretty dark movie. No, he’s the Hal Jordan character who’s the sort of shoot from the hip, irresponsible kind of cocky test pilot if you will. In fact, the character seems to be the least likely to be chosen as Green Lantern. Well, of course that’s the fun of it. So no, it’ll be much more like Iron Man. So it’ll have one foot in reality if you see what I mean.
When I first took on the job, I did it because I’d never done a superhero movie before and secondly he’s just…he’s a psychological character. His powers are psychological. They’re to do with will and the enemy is fear and so on and so forth, as opposed to Superman who sort of runs into a phone box, gets the old spandex on and off he goes. So he’s a much more complex character and also again, it’s the origin story, which again is the Carol Ferris character, Carl Ferris. There’s Sinestro, Kilowog, Tomar-Re. All these characters and all who appear in the movie. So it’s such a kind of eclectic range of characters and also it’s the only superhero to go to another planet, so you’re creating at least another world that…and none of them do.
OK, just soak that information in for a minute… The movie is going to be similar in tone to Iron Man – good. The film will feature Sinestro, Kilowog, Tomar-Re (and Abin-Sur obviously) – good. Green Lantern will see the titular character go to another planet? – EPIC!
That small tidbit of information marks Green Lantern as one to watch – it will be (to my knowledge) the first live-action superhero movie to take place on an alien world, and that alone will be worth your hard-earned money.
You can read the full interview with Martin Campbell over at Collider.
