Martin Campbell has accomplished more than enough in his career to avoid being known as ‘the Green Lantern‘ guy, but it’s still a source of embarrassment for the filmmaker that the infamous box office bomb is still viewed as one of the worst comic book adaptations ever made, and Ryan Reynolds can’t resist the opportunity to mock it any time the opportunity presents itself even ten years later.
The New Zealand filmmaker first gained mainstream attention with the BBC’s classic crime thriller series Edge of Darkness in 1985, and he even directed the Hollywood remake with Mel Gibson 25 years later. The 77 year-old also rebooted James Bond twice and delivered a pair of the franchise’s best-ever installments in Goldeneye and Casino Royale, while he helmed Antonio Banderas’ swashbuckling box office smash hit The Mask of Zorro and its sequel.
Campbell doesn’t have any plans to slow down, either, with action thriller The Protégé releasing next week and Liam Neeson’s next effort Memory very recently wrapping production. However, in a recent Reddit AMA the filmmaker made it abundantly clear that his experience on Green Lantern has forever soured him on the notion of big budget superhero blockbusters, as you can read below.
“Over my dead body. I’d love to work in comedy! I think I’d do a good job. Marvel? Forget it. I f*cked it up once, never again.”
That’s pretty understandable, and at least Campbell hasn’t taken the same route as Reynolds and co-star Taika Waititi, who’ve taken to pretending as though they were never part of Green Lantern in the first place. No director ever experiences a 100% success rate throughout their career, but the dismal DC Comics epic has maintained an unwanted level of notoriety ever since the summer of 2011, so much so that its director can’t even contemplate the notion of returning to the same genre sandbox ever again.