Green Lantern | 2011
- Locations |
- Louisiana
- DIRECTOR |
- Martin Campbell
Film productions used only to venture to New Orleans to take advantage of the picturesque French Quarter, but lately the city is establishing its Business District as the new ‘Anytown’ – in this case, ‘Coast City, California’.
After the prologue, setting up the concept of the intergalactic Green Lantern Corps, mortally wounded guardian Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison) crashlands on earth, and passes his power ring on to seemingly fearless test pilot Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds). The spot where Jordan discovers Sur’s alien craft is on the shore of the Tchefuncte River, alongside T River's Inc, 1999 Main Street, in Madisonville, on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, across from New Orleans.
The ‘Ferris Aircraft’ corporation is the recently restored art deco terminal of New Orleans Lakefront Airport, 6001 Stars and Stripes Boulevard, on the lake’s southern shore. Built in the Thirties, Lakefront was considered a deco masterpiece, designed by Weiss, Dreyfous, and Seiferth – the firm responsible for the Louisiana State Capitol building in Baton Rouge. For years, its period styling was hidden by Sixties concrete cladding but, after being flooded during the Hurricane Katrina disaster, renovations have seen it restored to its Thirties glory.
The science lab where Dr Hector Hammond (Peter Sarsgaard) teaches, and gradually metamorphoses following the alien infection, is the Science Building of the University of New Orleans, on Founders Avenue.
South of the Mississippi River from New Orleans is the neighbourhood of Algiers Point. It’s here you’ll find the Old Point Bar, 545 Patterson Drive, which became ‘Broome’s Bar’, where Hal Jordan dances with Carol Ferris (Blake Lively). The Old Point is seen in Expendables 2, while scenes for the 2005 biopic Ray were also filmed in Algiers Point.
The film’s climax is set in New Orleans’ Central Business District, as panicked crowds flee the appearance of the Parallax. The ‘Farmers market’ was set up on Poydras Street at O’Keefe Avenue. Did you recognise this as the same spot used for the explosive climax of the 2012 film of 21 Jump Street?
