Talking to the folks over at b>The Outhousers, Green Lantern writer Marc Guggenheim has a frank discussion about his involvement on Green Lantern---
The original Green Lantern script leaked online before the movie hit theaters. It was set more in space and dove into the Green Lantern Corps. a little more. Was the end result a product of too many voices on the project at once?
MG: It's complicated because movies are very different from television. In movies, there are always "more cooks in the kitchen." It's a dance and I actually look at the process of filmmaking...when you just consider the number of pieces,not people but the components that all have to come together, that all have to align to make a movie good, it's kind of a miracle when it actually turns out well. You're dealing with a huge, complex piece of machinery and Green Lantern is an extraordinarily ambitious property to tackle. You have space, you have earth, you have the combination of the two, and ring constructs and how they work. There's just a lot of pieces that all have to come together and for some people, the way those pieces came together was not satisfying and some people thought it was a very entertaining film.
I don't typically like to second-guess how and why things turn out the way they do. At the end of the day, going back to what I said previously, it's sort of a miracle that any movie turns out well. Green Lantern has gotten a little bit of a bum rap on the internet and even in the mainstream press. I think if you go back and take a look at it with fresh eyes, it actually stands up better than peoples memory of it.
But at the same time, you go, "this is the project, this is the way it turned out, and you move on while asking, "What can I take from this experience?" Which is true, whether you turned in The Dark Knight or Howard the Duck. There should always be an element of learning to improve your craft. I'm not unhappy that the draft that is online is online, it was our very first draft. We did a total of 5 before another writer came in and did a rewrite but I'm glad that it's out there for people to see what were the raw, knee-jerk, first intentions before they there were even the realities of a budget and production. It's very much a blue-sky draft. As a writer, I always enjoy reading other writers blue-sky drafts because they're educational as far as what they were seeing in their head.
Are we entering a 'cosmic age' with the looming possibility of a Green Lantern sequel and Marvel now apparently, moving on Guardians of the Galaxy?
MG: We live in this golden age of visual effects where so many things are possible, you're always limited by time and money and things are possible toady that were not even possible 5 years ago. And you can really tell stories on an incredibly large canvas. It's an exciting time but it's always important to make sure that the spectacle doesn't drown out the character. One of the things I loved about The Avengers movie was that it was this bid budget movie but there were all these little, wonderful character moments or character arcs woven into what probably could've gotten away with just being a big spectacle. Wow, I'm sure no script is ever greenlit on the first draft but five sounds excessive and even that wasn't enough because Michael Goldenberg rewrote the script after the fifth try. I actually never managed to read that leaked draft but researching online, reactions to it were overwhelmingly positive. Hopefully Warner Bros. will have news for us at next week's Comic-Con.
Running Time: 1 hr 54 min
Release Date: 17 June 2011 (USA)
MPAA Rating: Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Mark Strong, Blake Lively and Peter Sarsgaard
Directed by: Martin Campbell
Written by: Greg Berlanti (screenplay), Michael Green (screenplay),Marc Guggenheim (screenplay), Michael Goldenberg (screenplay)
ComicBookMovie.com, and/or the user who contributed this post, may earn commissions or revenue through clicks or purchases made through any third-party links contained within the content above.