Remember all that talk last year about how actors saw “Avatar” as a threat to the future of their profession? Well, it seems the costume designers should be shaking in their boots as well.
Thanks to Peter Sciretta at /Film, news has trickled down that the reason we haven’t gotten a glimpse of Ryan Reynolds in full dress from Martin Cambell’s “Green Lantern” is that there isn’t a practical costume in effect. Writes Sciretta:
The suit that Ryan wears on set is a grey tracking motion/performance capture suit with led lights. I’ve heard that Ryan Reynolds has been joking on set that Warner Bros is going to make him into a Na’vi when the final cut is released. His joke, not mine. The Green Lantern suit you will see in the final film will be almost entirely created using computers.
Shortly after, current Green Lantern writer (and modern DC Universe architect) Geoff Johns confirmed the report via his Twitter account:
The rumor is that Ryan’s #GreenLantern uniform will be CGI — hell, yeah it will be! Generated from his ring in Ivan Reis-like glory!! :)
At first it sounded a bit dodgy to me, but hey, at least Sciretta’s studio source assures him “the suit will look cool.” With spin like that, who can argue? Seriously, though, I suppose if any DC property allowed for this kind of technology experimentation, it’s the cosmos-set world of Green Lantern. And the way Johns describes it (I happen to be reading the Green Lantern books as of late), it could turn the actual donning of the suit moments into exhilarating cinematic beats.
This in tandem with “Tron: Legacy” will surely keep the motion/performance capture debate going. What say you?
Read the rest of Sciretta’s report at /Film.
Comments
10 responses to “WB going mo-cap for ‘Green Lantern’ threads”
cool cool- motion capture isnt going away, its just another tool film makers have at their disposal
I’m looking forward to the day when they announce a technology that causes producers to believe that the future of their “profession” is threatened…
That would be spectacular Paul.
The only “actors” who have to worry about being replaced by mo-cap are Channing Tatum, Megan Fox, etc.
People like Day-Lewis, Mortensen, DiCaprio, Streep and Bridges aren’t being replaced.
Good point Fitz. Now that it’s possible to turn a good actor like, say, Ray Winstone into a young buff hero in a CGI movie, it’s the pretty faces that should be worried, not the talent.
not all the actors thought it was a threat just those who don’t want to understand it like Morgan Freeman and Jeff Bridges
Freeman certainly showed an ignorance, but you can’t say the same of Bridges. He stated outright that nothing would ever replace traditional acting, and anyway, he’s the last person who’d talk it down too much considering Tron: Legacy.
And by the way, “those who don’t want to understand it” represents a massive percentage, I’d wager.
I’ll reserve judgment until release but the announcement is a bit bothersome. I mean this would make a lot of sense on some comic book properties (i.e. Spawn, Sandman, Hellboy, etc.) where practical effects don’t make the most feasible solution. But there is nothing special about Green Lantern’s costume. If Christian Bale can run around in the Batsuit from Batman Begins Ryan should have no complaints.
If you’d actually read why they’re doing it then it sorta makes sense, but it’ll be interesting to see how it manifests itself on screen.
Alandre: As Glenn is alluding to, since the suit comes from the ring, it kind of makes perfect sense to animate it.