10 years ago, Green Lantern premiered in theaters, with Ryan Reynolds playing Hal Jordan, the first human member of the Green Lantern Corps. Rather than lunch a popular superhero film series, Green Lantern was met with primarily negative critical reception and underwhelmed at the box office, resulting in plans for a sequel being scrapped and Reynolds frequently mocking the movie in the years since. Now Green Lantern director Martin Campbell has chimed in with his thoughts on the Emerald Knight’s first cinematic outing, as well as DC’s chief competition, Marvel.
As part of the promotional campaign for his new movie The Protégé, Martin Campbell (whose credits also include GoldenEye, The Mask of Zorro and Casino Royale), held a Reddit AMA to answer all sorts of questions. Perhaps inevitably, Green Lantern eventually came up, with Campbell writing the following when asked what was the worst fight he’d ever been in:
With the Warner executives, over Green Lantern.
Yikes! Apparently during the course of making Green Lantern, Martin Campbell butted heads with Warner Bros executives at least once, if not several times, about what the final product should look like. We’ve seen before with the theatrical cuts of Suicide Squad and Justice League of how studio interference can drastically change and ultimately hinder DC movies, and Green Lantern was dealing with this same kind of problem years earlier. Ryan Reynolds also said back in 2016 that the reason Green Lantern didn’t succeed was it fell victim to the Hollywood process of “poster first, release date second, script last.”
But hey, that was DC. Would Martin Campbell be up for giving superhero movies another go over at Marvel? Definitely not, because when someone asked if there was a genre he hadn’t worked in that he’d love to take a shot at, the filmmaker answered:
I'd love to work in comedy! I think I'd do a good job. Marvel? Forget it. I fucked it up once, never again.
Hey, at least the man knows what he wants. Martin Campbell is taking his share of responsibility for how Green Lantern turned out, and he doesn’t want to risk a similar situation happening over at Marvel Studios. I’ll tell you what, if Marvel ever greenlights a Nova movie, considering the similarities between that property and Green Lantern, I’d have been curious to see if Campbell would have had better luck on that project.
Oh, and in case it wasn’t already clear that Martin Campbell had a bad experience working on Green Lantern, he shared this blunt response to someone inquiring about if Green Lantern 2 will happen:
Over my dead body.
While a sequel to 2011’s Green Lantern has not been in the cards for a long time, especially since Ryan Reynolds has been leaving his stamp on the superhero movie genre in recent years as Deadpool, the Green Lantern property is getting a second shot at live-action redemption on two fronts. A Green Lantern series for HBO Max is on the way that will feature Alan Scott (played by Jeremy Irvine), Guy Gardner (played by Finn Wittrock), Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz, among others. The Green Lantern Corps reboot movie starring a new version of Hal Jordan alongside John Stewart is also still in development, although it’s still unclear if it will be connected to the TV show or not.
As for Martin Campbell, you can see The Protégé in theaters starting August 20, and his next movie lined up is the Liam Neeson and Guy Pearce-led action thriller Memory.
