Green Lantern director admits he “never should have done the film”

Before Ryan Reynolds became celebrated for his performance in the Deadpool movies, he had his share of superhero disappointments. In fact, his first outing as Deadpool was in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which was a total flop. He also played lead character Hal Jordan in Green Lantern (2011), which fell well short of expectations.

But the blame for that doesn’t lie with Reynolds; director Martin Campbell (Casino Royale) recently admitted to Collider that making a superhero movie was way out of his comfort zone. “The point about Green Lantern is that whereas with Bond, I love Bond, I love the Bond films, I really enjoyed them, it was an event for me, I’m not a comic book fan,” he said.

"And the truth is I never should have done the film, but I did it because I had never done a comic book film before, so I think the blame rests on my shoulders to a large extent. It was a big studio movie, and the script was not up to par, we had Ryan Reynolds — terrific — and Blake Lively, so at least those two got together, we did create something."

Clearly, Campbell isn’t interested in deflecting blame from himself, although that doesn’t mean there aren’t other contributing factors as to why the movie flopped. “The problem was in the last six to eight weeks of pre-production, every day — and I mean every day, we had meetings about cutting the budget,” Campbell revealed. “Every god**mn day.”

"And I’d worked out a terrific ending for that movie. I remember I had this quite big office down in New Orleans, the production offices, and I plastered the walls with storyboards. It was like wallpaper everywhere for the ending of the movie, and they came in and said, ‘We can’t afford it. You have to cut it all.’ So in the end they came up with that crap ending."

It’s now been over a decade since Green Lantern hit theaters, and a lot has changed. Entire cinematic universes (and now even multiverses) have been built around superhero movies, which continue to smash box office records. It’s hard to imagine studios quibbling over the budget like that now.

A new Green Lantern series is coming to HBO Max

Still, reflecting on the film over a decade later, Campbell still doesn’t think he was the right man for the job. “I never should have done it, but I did it,” he said. “I don’t think I did a good job, so for me, for superhero movies, there are better people than me who ought to be doing those movies.”

Unlike so many other popular superheroes, Green Lantern has not cemented himself as a beloved live-action hero. That could be about to change, as there’s a Green Lantern series in the works at HBO Max. Star Finn Wittrock (American Horror Story) tells Collider that he’s been learning from previous Green Lantern interpretations, including the 2011 Ryan Reynolds version.

“It definitely was something that was in my head,” Wittrock said. “In some ways, it’s almost better. I think it offers a chance to reinvent the whole thing and you’re not going to have… I mean, no offense to the movie. It is what it is, but you’re not going to have people who are dying for the creation of that movie. [The show] can be its own new interpretation.”

From the looks of it, we’re just getting started with Green Lantern. Hopefully, the future versions can learn from past mistakes.

HBO Max’s Green Lantern series is due to commence filming later this year, with a potential release in 2022!

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