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.
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?)
“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.”
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.
“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.”
READ MORE: Ryan Reynolds Says He Was “Unhirable” After ‘Green Lantern’
“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.
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