‘Green Lantern’: The design secrets of the hero’s power ring

The glowing green ring of Green Lantern can give shape to any imagined object, but that only created a hardship for the design team on the new $200-million Warner Bros. film: How could they come up with one piece of jewelry that lived up to that sort of cosmic mystique?


Ngila Dickson, who picked up an Oscar for her work in “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” said that for years in the comics the ring was an object of solid green and there was a sleek surface to it like a solid, carved hunk of some sort of alien-world emerald. She opted to go in a different direction with a metal band that holds a green gem to the hand like some authority symbol of antiquity. She looked at royal jewelry from various cultures and eras.

The final product is “an object that, if you look closely, seems to have the universe inside of its green face.” It’s a ring that “has been passed down and worn in battle” and although it comes from a distant, alien culture of super-science, there is “an aura of the ancient spiritual life and oppressive duty” that defines the ancient Guardians of the Universe and their Green Lantern Corps., the peacekeeping force that drafts its first human member in Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds).

“The ring is about science and magic, duty and power,” Dickson said. “And just the sheer age of the Guardians, with all that sadness and knowledge,  is a story written in every ring.”