Martin Campbellis one of our underrated action directors, and he should really be able to dine out on making two of the best Bond movies of all-time (GoldenEyeandCasino Royale) as well as one of the best blockbusters of the 90s withThe Mask of Zorro. However, a film where he did not have a great time was the 2011 superhero movieGreen Lantern. The film was a flop upon its release, and now serves as a punchline inDeadpoolif it’s even remembered at all.
We recently spoke to Campbell for his new filmThe Protégé, and talked about the experience of making Green Lantern and why it was so difficult. Campbell explained that the studio purse strings unexpectedly tightened right before they were about to go into production:
“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. 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.
The problem was I remember in the last six to eight weeks of pre-production, every day—and I mean every day, we had meetings about cutting the budget. ‘We need to cut the budget. How are we going to cut the budget.’ Every goddamn 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. However, having said that, I never should have done it, but I did it. 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.”
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I think Campbell is being a bit harsh on himself, and while it’s humble of him to take the responsibility and acknowledge his own disinterest in the superhero genre, it sounds like the larger problem was one of studio meddling and Warner Bros. not trusting what they had to where they were trying to pinch pennies before the film even started rolling.
As for that original ending, Campbell said it would have seen the Lanterns taking on a common foe as opposed to what’s in the finished film, which is basically Hal Jordan taking on Parallax by himself:
“To be honest, there was a battle in the streets between the four lanterns—between our heroes, Kilowog, Sinestro, and obviously Ryan Reynolds, and blah-blah—taking on a huge kind of monster that was taking over the city, and it was really The Magnificent Seven in a way, or The Magnificent Four. However, it did not come to pass, so there we are.”
For more from our interview with Campbell, check outThe Collider Podcast.The Protégéopens in theaters on August 20th.
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