Martin Campbell Says He Shouldn't Have Directed 'Green Lantern'

Sometimes a filmmaker agrees with the audience: the movie was terrible, and you, the director, were the problem. In a new ScreenRant interview with filmmaker Martin Campbell, currently promoting his new film “The Protégé’,” the director of the notorious Ryan Reynolds-led superhero bomb, “Green Lantern,” admits he was the wrong man for the gig, and shouldn’t have made the movie. It’s refreshingly honest, candid and accountable.

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Though it doesn’t necessarily begin that way, Campbell starts complaining or noting, at least that he didn’t have final cut on the film (like it would have mattered?)

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“We’ll put it this way: I did have my cut,” he said. “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.”

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That’s fine, and all, but considering how loathed that movie is generally, even Reynolds notoriously despises it and mocks it every opportunity he gets; it’s doubtful that the opening scene would’ve saved the rest of the movie. Campbell then, however, quickly segues into taking full responsibility for the film’s failure, and just on a purely human level; again, it’s really refreshing to hear in a world when no one can ever admit they were wrong.

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“But you know what? The film did not work, really,” he said, explaining that he was a huge 007 fan before making the successful “Casino Royale” remake but didn’t really care for superheroes in the first place. “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.”

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“Green Lantern” grossed $219.9 million off a $200 million budget in 2011 and was said to have needed to make double than that (at least) to break even, so yeah, it was considered a big bomb and one of the many false starts Warner Bros. made trying to get their DC Universe off the ground post-Christopher Nolan.