Green Lantern director, Martin Campbell, says he shouldn’t have directed the superhero movie at all. Following his regrettable premiere as Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), 2011’s now-infamous Green Lantern starred Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan—the first human to become a member of the Green Lantern Corps. The cast also included Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard, Mark Strong, Angela Bassett, Tim Robbins, and Taika Waititi.

Green Lantern was ultimately a failure, being panned by critics and bringing in only $219 million at the box office on a $200 million budget. What was originally conceived as a DC franchise turned into a regrettable one-off. Reynolds has openly (and repeatedly) poked fun at the project via social media and in the Deadpool franchise. Deadpool 2’s post-credits scene even saw its Merc with a Mouth travel through time to prevent Reynolds from ever committing to Green Lantern. A decade after it hit theaters, Warner Bros. is finally looking to revitalize the IP with the DCEU’s Green Lantern Corps on HBO Max.

SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY

In a Screen Rant exclusive interview, Martin Campbell talked about directing Green Lantern. When asked about Zack Snyder’s Justice League, David Ayer’s cut of the Suicide Squad, and whether or not there’s a Campbell cut of Green Lantern, the director said he shouldn’t have directed a superhero movie at all. Read what he had to say below:

“No,” said Campbell. “We’ll put it this way: I did have my cut. The point was, right at the beginning of the movie, there was a whole sequence where he’s an 11 year old kid. It’s how his father dies in the air crash, which was a really good sequence. But [the production head] at the time decided that he wanted the death of the father intercut with Hal plunging in the plane, and he saw these flashbacks come to him. That was something that I didn’t like very much.

“But you know what? The film did not work, really. That’s the point, and I’m partly responsible for that. I shouldn’t have done it. Because with something like Bond – I love Bond, and I watched every Bond film before I ever directed it. Superhero movies are not my cup of tea, and for that reason, I shouldn’t have done it. But directors always have to carry the can for the failures. What do they say? Success has many fathers, failure has one. And that’s me.”

It’s certainly reasonable to assume Green Lantern suffered from studio interference similar to Suicide Squad (2016) and Justice League (2017). Reynolds has accused the studio of rushing to make the film without a completed script to meet release dates and adhere to a cool poster. It’s clear that the studio made mistakes during the production of Green Lantern and, given Campbell’s comments, he probably wasn’t in a position to save the project. It’s worth mentioning that worse comic book movies have been made—Catwoman (2004), Jonah Hex (2010), and Fantastic Four (2015)—to name a few. After finally watching the film this year, Reynolds even said it wasn’t as bad as he thought it was.

Green Lantern didn’t do anything good for DC or its respective genre, but that’s probably a good thing. Reynolds went on to truly become Wade Wilson/Deadpool—which is more than a definitive role. Campbell has helmed some of the James Bond franchise’s best entries as well as the BBC series Edge of Darkness and its film adaptation. While there may have been a version of Green Lantern that played to Campbell’s strengths, it just wasn’t in the cards.

Key Release Dates
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  • The Batman (2022)Release date: Mar 04, 2022
  • Black Adam (2022)Release date: Oct 21, 2022
  • The Flash (2023)Release date: Jun 23, 2023
  • Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023)Release date: Mar 17, 2023
  • Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2022)Release date: Dec 16, 2022
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Josh Plainse
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Josh Plainse is a writer, movie, and television fanatic based out of Wisconsin. Josh works for Screen Rant covering the latest in entertainment while simultaneously pursuing the never-ending dream of becoming an established novelist, screenwriter, and/or decent human being. Josh would accredit characters such as Goku, Han Solo, Simba, and Maximus Decimus Meridius for instilling within him an affinity for storytelling. It is this incessant obsession which has propelled him to seek opportunities that inform, entertain, and inspire others.

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