I wasn’t familiar with the Green Lantern comics so I was wondering why a character named Sinestro was a good guy. Well, an Easter Egg scene after the end credits reveals that my instinct may have been correct. I got to the bottom of this with Mark Strong, who plays the film’s Sinestro, at the press conference for Green Lantern.
CraveOnline: Was part of the deal that the role would get bigger in sequels?
Mark Strong: As far as where we go from this film, it was never discussed. It’s there in the source material, but this was the movie we were making.
CraveOnline: When did you shoot the tag?
Mark Strong: That was shot speculatively, I think. There was an idea that there would be an introduction of the idea that the yellow ring corrupts him. Perhaps it was felt in the body of the film, it wasn’t the right time to introduce it. So actually the thing to do is introduce everybody to the mythology and the story, and then give them that little taste. Certainly the fanboys who know about it will be excited, and anybody else, at least they have an opportunity of understanding where it could go from here.
CraveOnline: How did you ground Sinestro so that even though they’re in space with aliens, you really believe you have to train this guy to be a Lantern?
Mark Strong: I couldn’t do any research on aliens. I don’t know any aliens, so I didn’t know what kind of a guy he was. All I could do was use human characteristics, and it was very obvious to me he’s a kind of military commander-type figure who is very wary of this new Lantern and feels like his priority is the Corps, and if this guy’s going to be the weak link in the Corps, then he’s going to have to do something about it. The way he’s drawn, it’s a muscular drawing, you have to try and bring an element of that to the way you play him. That’s what I tried to do.
