There was a lot of talk in the buildup to Zack Snyder’s Justice League that the Green Lantern Corps could end up getting a much more substantial role in the story, which was admittedly largely fuelled by the constant speculation that Ryan Reynolds was going to appear in a surprise cameo as Hal Jordan, something he was quick to deny.
Snyder admitted that the idea crossed his mind at one stage, but it was a million miles away from coming close to happening, despite the various reports making the rounds at the time that Reynolds had a contract ready to go. While the Lanterns don’t get much of an increase in screen time, it’s hardly detrimental to the plot, and it’s clear that the filmmaker was saving them for his following two Justice League blockbusters.
However, in a new interview, Snyder revealed that he came close to quitting Justice League altogether after Warner Bros. insisted that he remove a scene that would have featured John Stewart’s Green Lantern. Apparently, the final exchange between Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne and Harry Lennix’s Martian Manhunter was originally shot with Stewart in mind, although cooler heads prevailed in the end.
“The last scene with Martian Manhunter, originally, I had shot it in England. And the dialogue was very similar, but it was supposed to be one of the Lanterns. And then the studio had told me I wasn’t allowed to shoot anything. That there would be no film made of any kind. During production, that was a thing they insisted on. And I shot stuff anyway, of course, in my yard. And one of the things I shot was the Green Lantern scene. And then they asked me, when they saw the movie and saw that I put it in there, they’d take it out.
And I said that I would quit if they tried to take it out. And I felt bad. The truth is I didn’t want the fans to not have a movie, just based on that one stand that I was going to take. And the Green Lantern was John Stewart. And that was part of it too. I was like, ‘I don’t want to take a person of color out of this movie. I’m not going to do it’. And, but then, but I felt like having Harry Lennix’s Martian Manhunter at the end was, that was okay.”
The thought of Zack Snyder finally being given the opportunity to bring his original vision for Justice League to life, only to quit in the face of studio pressure over including one of the Green Lanterns, is something that would have sent the fanbase into complete and utter disarray had it happened. Luckily, the Martian Manhunter compromise was made, and we’re finally living in a world where the Snyder Cut exists, something that felt like an impossibility for the longest time.