Martin Campbell, director of the 2011 box office flop 'Green Lantern,' reflects candidly on the movie's shortcomings and why it failed to leave a mark in the competitive world of superhero films.
- February 23, 2025
AceShowbiz - When 2011's "Green Lantern" movie landed in theaters, it brought with it a whirlwind of expectations. Unfortunately, the film fell short, grossing $237 million against a hefty $200 million budget.
Director Martin Campbell is not the first filmmaker to stumble in the DC superhero universe, and fourteen years later, he remains forthright about the experience and the film's many pitfalls.
In a recent interview with Variety while promoting his latest thriller, "Cleaner," Campbell was clear about his feelings towards directing another superhero movie: "None whatsoever," he stated.
Campbell admitted his unfamiliarity with the genre significantly influenced the outcome. "I think quite honestly, if you're going to do a superhero movie, you have to be in that world a little bit, you know what I mean? You have to be excited by it. You have to have a background where you are part of that world and you've been involved in that thing. And I wasn't."
In retrospect, Campbell said in a previous interview that he saw himself as "the wrong director" for the film, a realization he came to only after its release.
"I read all the comics and so forth. All the characters are true to the comics, if you see what I mean," he noted. However, he felt that the script lacked quality, saying, "I'm not blaming it on that. I'm simply saying I don't think that the script was great. I also felt that Parallax, our bad guy, was just a cloud with a face on it - literally, that's all it was.â€
While acknowledging the efforts of its stars Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively, who he described as "wonderful to work with," Campbell emphasized that the story itself was "left wanting."
Additionally, budget constraints led to a compromised ending. "I had a totally different ending to the movie, or the last third of it, all of which was scrapped in the interest of budget," he recalled.
Ultimately, Campbell takes full responsibility for the film's failure. "Listen, I'm not making any excuses," he insisted. "When you direct and people don't like it, you suck it up and you say, 'Well, I'm the director, so that's my fault.' I mean, the point was that I made that film simply because I hadn't done a superhero movie before, and the film failed, as simple as that."
