Martin Campbell. Photo: Theo Kingma

  It’s not often a top flight director is honest enough to call his latest movie, a special effects-filled, big budget extravaganza, “cheesy.”

Ryan Reynolds

  But New Zealand-born Martin Campbell, who rebooted the James Bond franchise with the gritty Casino Royale, is refreshingly candid in his assessment of The Green Lantern, the latest in a series of summer blockbusters based on comic book superheroes. 
   Campbell, whose favourite director is David Lean and favourite movie Lawrence of Arabia, told me: “The very nature of a Green Lantern or a comic strip is that it’s lightweight, fantasy and, if you will, cheesy. The concept of some of these movies is what we used to call a big cheese factor.”
   He took the assignment, he says, because: “I don’t get that many offers and this was a new challenge.”
 The Green Lantern stars hunky Ryan Reynolds as the cocky test pilot who joins the Green Lantern Corps of intergalactic warriors.  
“I chose him because he was cheap and he’s not the best looking guy in the world,” said Campbell, tongue-in-cheek.