It’s possible that my headline is a little premature. You see, casting notices have gone out for the adaptation of Green Lantern and they reveal some of the movie’s supporting players. You get some pretty no duh names in there: Carol Ferris, who was Hal Jordan’s boss and love interest, and Abin Sur, the Green Lantern who, as he lay dying, bequeathed Hal his ring. But there are two other names that intrigue.
One is Hector Hammond. He’s a pretty lame villain from the Silver Age Green Lantern comics, a guy with a big head and a pencil thin mustache. His whole schtick is that he was mutated by some radioactive meteorite and gained psionic powers and the ability to mind control others. He also became paralyzed.
Hammond was reimagined in recent issues of Green Lantern, and I’d say that this sounds like what he might be like in the movie:
He appears in the secret origin, where he claims to be Carol Ferris’s boyfriend. However in the next issue it is revealed that he is just a private consultant for Ferris Aircraft and that they had gone out to dinner, according to Carol, “on business”. While inspecting Abin Sur’s crashed aircraft, Hammond is affected by the meteorite fragment in its reactor. This leads to his brain growing bigger, and able to read minds, including Carol Ferris and Hal Jordan who Hammond deduces is the Green Lantern. His mental powers keep Hal from using his ring, and is only stopped when Sinestro encases his head in an energy bubble, cutting off his air supply. By number 35 he wants the power of a god and wants revenge on Hal Jordan/Green Lantern.
The other name in the casting shows up in that paragraph from Wikipedia: Sinestro. Sinestro is probably Green Lantern’s greatest foe (he has a yellow power ring, which is like a real bitch for Green Lanterns), but he began his career as a Green Lantern, and in fact as Hal Jordan’s mentor. But why would his parents name him Sinestro? Jesus, it’s like they were marking him for evil.
So this is where I’m possibly premature: could Sinestro be in the movie only as a good guy, and going bad in a future film? Or might Sinestro go bad sometime in Act II of this film?
Go to Spoiler TV for the full breakdown, which interestingly never lists anyone as aliens or wearing funny make-up.