FORUMS

We are used to paparazzi hanging round the sets of major upcoming movies, hoping to score shots of the stars in costume and thoroughly ruin any tiny sliver of magic that might come with first seeing these things up on the silver screen. The story was no different when Warners' Green Lantern was filming in New Orleans earlier this year, with the snappers delivering pics of Peter Sarsgaard as enormo-brained baddie, Hector Hammond. There was however no joy for them when they went looking for the motherload – shots of Ryan Reynolds suited up in emerald spandex for his role as the titular do-gooder.

This was because there was no Green Lantern costume to photograph. As Slash Film revealed in April, instead of Reynolds squeezing himself into an actual costume, the actor instead sported an LED-fitted motion capture suit for the shoot, with his Lantern get-up then being created by CG artists during post-production. And we now have a decent idea what that will look like in practice.

Entertainment Weekly are all psyched up about Comic-Con – well, they are if they think it'll shift some magazines – and the cover of their newest edition delivers the first picture of Reynolds as Hal Jordan, aka the Green Lantern. It has to be said that initial reactions round the Indie Movies office have not been entirely positive, with him being compared to an eco-friendly version of Ben Affleck's Daredevil, and the Meteor Man, the title character from a dimly-recalled 1993 Robert Townsend movie.

The proportions of this specific picture look weird to me too, with its stumpified right arm and squat torso. Still, the CG genesis of the garb might deliver some nifty visual effects when we see it in motion. But no promises that it will.

Directed by Martin Campbell, Green Lantern is scheduled for a 17 June 2011 theatrical release. Starring alongside Reynolds and Sarsgaard are Blake Lively, Mark Strong and Tim Robbins.