When Warner Bros. and DC announced thatRyan Reynoldswould be starring as Hal Jordan in the big budget adaptation ofGreen Lantern, withGoldeneyeandCasino RoyaledirectorMartin Campbellhelming, there was a lot to be excited about. However, the resulting film is considered one of the worst of the genre and was abomb at the global box office when it opened in 2011, earning $237 million against a $200 million production budget.
Speaking withVarietyahead of his next filmCleaner, Campbell opened up aboutall the reasons why hisGreen Lanternmovie was so awful. It all comes down to enthusiasm for a project, in this case a comic book adaptation. As he explained:
“I’d never done one before. 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.”
To be fair,Campbell did his proper research, reading the legendary runs of the comic book series, but still,the film was terrible. Campbell also said that the script wasn’t great, taking the blame for the failure. It also didn’t help that Reynolds' Green Lantern suit was CGI instead of actually being a costume. The actor got meta inDeadpoolby saying, “Please don’t make the super suit green… or animated!”
And the director also said that thevillain left a lot to be desired:
“I also felt that Parallax, our bad guy, was justa cloud with a face on it — literally, that’s all it was.”
In the comic book, theoriginal Green Lantern Hal Jordan becomes the villain Parallax, while the then-new GL Kyle Rayner must fight him. Currently, the film has a terrible 25% critical and 45% audience rating. Asubsequent sequel was scrappedand a year later,Christopher Nolan wrapped up his legendary Batman trilogy withThe Dark Knight Rises.
Parallax wasn’t the only cloud bad guy in a big budget superhero film. In the 2007 sequelFantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, while arguably a little better than the first,the production team really dropped the ball with Galactus. While the Silver Surfer, played by the terrific Doug Jones (Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth), was fairly comic book accurate, Galactus is a whole different story. As the “Devourer of Worlds” approaches Earth, audiences see he is not the giant man in purple,but a cloud with a face. Thankfully, the MCU version,The Fantastic Four: First Steps, ensures that fans are getting an authentic Galactus, asteased in the movie’s first trailer.
James Gunn’s Offer for Ryan Reynolds to Reprise His Hated DC Role Received a Deadpool-Worthy Response
Ryan Reynolds gave James Gunn a NSFW response to the less than serious suggestion he should join the DCU.
Meanwhile, in James Gunn’s upcoming Superman,fans are being treated to an authenticGuy Gardner, the “bad boy” of the Green Lantern Corp., and played by the always terrific Nathan Fillion (Castle, Firefly). Gunn and his team are also working on theLanternsTV series, which will star Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights) as Hal Jordan and Aaron Pierre (The Underground Railroad) as John Stewart.
