Marvel and DC have spent their entire existence trying to convince fans they are galaxies apart, despite orbiting the same comic cosmos. Yet, every time they clash at the box office, they somehow prove they are just different shades of the same spandex. These rival realms have their sacred icons and die-hard factions, but Ryan Reynolds is one of the rare cosmic wanderers who dabbled in both. However, while Marvel found a way to wield this walking, wisecracking infinity stone, DC fumbled the Green Lantern ring, and now, the film’s director finally sheds light on why.

As it turns out, Reynolds’ DC misfire was infected by a Marvel-grade blunder that doomed the Fantastic Four before it.

In a recent conversation with Variety during a press day for Cleaner, Martin Campbell’s forthcoming thriller, the Green Lantern director revisited the DC disaster starring Ryan Reynolds in a candid clearance of his own shortcomings. Recounting its commercial inadequacy, Campbell still holds his unfamiliarity and lack of probe about the genre guilty. But even then, what did not help was the script. And to add to that, Parallax “was just a cloud with a face with it,” he lamented.

A similar lamentation among Marvel fans surfaced with Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) when Galactus was depicted as a massive-cloud-like entity instead of his traditional comic book form. The decision was driven by VFX limitations and the lack of character-driven storytelling with creative interpretation and focus playing just as much a role. Despite Campbell repeatedly dubbing himself the “wrong director” for the 2011 flick, his deficiency of comic book credentials is not the only culprit.

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While there are endless reasons to enlist, one that outshines the rest is that Green Lantern instilled the fear of missing out on Martin Campbell.

In his trip down the comic lanes with Variety, Martin Campbell was unrelentingly critical about himself, constantly blaming his inexperience in the comic spectrum, having not made a superhero film before Green Lantern. Although comic flops in Hollywood are not exactly novel, this setback left him with zero interest in making one again. But speaking of why Ryan Reynolds could not play savior despite ironically being one, Campbell double downs the problem was not him. 

“You had Ryan [Reynolds] and you had Blake [Lively] who were, by the way, wonderful to work with,” Campbell mused before adding the tail of all problems. Even though the characters were part and parcel of the narrative, the story, he believes, was “left wanting.” Budget concerns also led to creative compromise with the movie’s ending, but Campbell affirmed that if anyone were to be thrown under the bus, it would be him.

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What do you think of Martin Campbell's reasoning behind Green Lantern tanking at the box office? Let us know in the comments below!