The Green Lantern: Who Should Play Sinestro?

MTV Splash Page “stumbled upon” the great idea of doing a weekly feature where they fantasy-cast the roles of some of the biggest and yet-to-be-cast superhero movies that are currently in the pipeline (truly an original concept).

If you’ve already seen our own Screen Rant features like “Potential villains of Wolverine 2“, “Should The Joker & Two-Face Return for Batman 3?” or any of our excellent Avengers-related features, you already get the idea: it’s fun to pretend that you (the audience) control the movie universe.

Well, for their inaugural post, Splash Page speculates on which actors are best fit to be painted purple in order to play Hal Jordan’s mentor-turned-nemesis, Sinestro, opposite Ryan Reynolds in the upcoming live-action adaptation of The Green Lantern.

And I have to say, it’s a pretty impressive list.

Here are the actors that Splash Page nominated:

Daniel Day-Lewis

Danny Huston (Wolverine, Clash of the Titans)

Jeremy Irons

Guy Pearce

Gary Oldman

You’ll have to head over to the actual Splash Page article if you want to see pics of the actors (do they look the part of Sinestro?) as well as quick blurbs as to why they would be good fits for the role. For our purposes here, let’s recap who Sinestro is, and what he means to mythos of Green Lantern.

For those who don’t know, when Hal Jordan is first awarded his power ring and summoned to Oa, home base of the Green Lantern Corps, Sinestro is the most celebrated (and feared) member of the corps. He takes Hal Jordan under his wing and teaches him the ropes. The turning point in their relationship comes when Sinestro is empowered with a yellow ring (weakness of Green Lanterns) and his ambitions for universal martial order finally bubble to the surface, forcing Hal to become the proverbial student who ultimately bests the teacher.

In the years since that initial setup, Hal and Sinestro have gone at it time and again, most recently in acclaimed DC Comics (and DC/WB films) writer Geoff Johns’ now-classic “Sinestro Corps War” storyline. DC Universe’s recent animated feature, Green Lantern: First Flight, also made great use of Sinestro – so good, in fact, that the character’s descent into villainy completely overshadows the origin story of Hal Jordan.

Sinestro is a complicated character, to say the least. The best analogy I can think of would be Denzel Washington’s Detective Alonzo Harris in Training Day: Sinestro is essentially a veteran cop who views the system as broken and the laws as guidelines to be side-stepped, stretched, or even outright broken. He’s also a master manipulator – a tactic he employs until the moment arrives to start kicking ass, in which case Sinestro is as brutal and ruthless as they come.

I say all that to say: It’s going to take a VERY strong actor to truly nail all the subtleties of Sinestro – especially if earlier script reports are true, and Sinestro will actually play more of a “Senator Palpatine role” (a mentor with shades of villainy) for much of this first Green Lantern film. Remember, Denzel Washington earned an Oscar™ for nailing such a complicated role – you think about it like that, suddenly you start wondering if maybe they SHOULDN’T be pushing for a heavyweight like Daniel Day-Lewis to take on the part. I’m just saying, the man WOULD be great…

Daniel Day-Lewis as Sinestro? (Not that it would ever happen)

What do you think: what kind of actor is it going to take to do Sinestro justice? Do you agree with MTV’s picks?

The Green Lantern is set to hit theaters on June 17, 2011 – that’s IF it can straighten out its current budgetary woes and still make it into production on time this fall.

Source: MTV Splash Page