Is This Peter Sarsgaard As Hector Hammond In Green Lantern?

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Spy pics rarely do a makeup job justice. But a makeup design that takes a very literal approach to recreating a comic character's look can also be dangerous. Take the photo above, which is reportedly of Peter Sarsgaard in makeup (but not full costume) as Hector Hammond, one of the villains of Green Lantern. He looks a hell of a lot like the character as he's always been drawn. (A bit younger.) Will that work on film?

Sky Showbiz (via Gordon and the Whale) has this pic. Early reports about Sarsgaard being cast pegged him as slightly different from the classic comic version of the character. He's based more on the Geoff Johns GL stories than the early comic appearances, and was said to be "the pathologist son of a senator who is seen as a disappointment in his father's eyes."

Hammond comes into contact with the radioactive meteorite in the crashed spacecraft of Abin Sur, the alien who leads Hal Jordan to becoming Green Lantern. The radiation gives Hammond psychic powers but also deforms him. His head is enlarged and, in earlier versions of the comic character, he is paralyzed.

So the pic we've got here seems to clearly show Sarsgaard post-deformation. But it's a photo without proper lighting and without any post-production CGI work (remember that there may be quite a lot of that in Green Lantern) so it isn't the best way to see the character for the first time.

That said, beyond the fact that Hammond, Joseph Merrick and Eric Stoltz in Mask could form a power trio, the makeup looks pretty good from a distance. If you're going to make a younger version of the classic 'big deformed head' look for Hector Hammond, then this is a good start. It's ugly as hell, but he's the bad guy. Ugly is fine.