Last night, Ryan Reynolds may have said he’s reached his super hero film quota with “Green Lantern” already completed and “Deadpool,” plus the genre-y graphic novel, “R.I.P.D.,” but he may be getting ahead of himself, since none of these pictures has been released. We’ve been pretty skeptical of “Green Lantern” so far, and more importantly, so has the vocal movie geek community who the movie is aimed at. Early trailers looked like lame SyFy channel tele-movies and even Warner Bros. admitted that all the early footage was weak.
But at WonderCon in San Francisco this weekend, we must admit, Warner Bros. knocked it out of the park and the just-released WonderCon footage is incredibly impressive. The creature designs by the always amazing Neville Page (who worked on “Piranha 3D,” “Avatar,” “Cloverfield,” “Star Trek,” and “Tron Legacy“) are surprisingly excellent. Unlike “Superman” or most superhero films, “Green Lantern” takes place on Oa, a planet that is home to Green Lanterns guardians around the universe and the aliens, effects and creatures could have easily been a dealbreaker (see how Lucas fucked most of this up with the similarly alien-populated planet of Coruscant). But the effects, vistas and scope of the planet looks terrific. If ever a studio has turned around the middling buzz of a film project, Warner Bros. has done it.
If we’re going to nitpick, the mask still looks a little odd, but at this point, that’s a quibble, and by the sounds of it, producers will be tweaking the film right down to the wire. Two new character posters have been unveiled with Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively as Carol Ferris and you can watch them below as well as the Wondercon footage.
Again, we’ll admit, we didn’t think director Martin Campbell could pull this off, perhaps the taste of the godawful and challenged “Edge of Darkness” still fresh in our minds. But maybe we shouldn’t have forgotten how well he revitalized the Bond series in “Casino Royale” and “The Legend of Zorro” ain’t bad for escapist entertainment either. “Green Lantern” also stars Peter Sarsgaard, Mark Strong, Tim Robbins, Angela Bassett, Temuera Morrison, Jon Tenney, the voice of Geoffrey Rush (and maybe Michael Clarke Duncan), and is set for release on June 17.
[Posters Via ShockTilYouDrop/DailyBlam]