Green Lantern was one of the biggest disasters for both Ryan Reynolds and DC movies, and that opinion has not changed over time.
Some movies don’t shine as brightly as they could in their debut but go on to become cult classics or find success years after their initial release. Unfortunately, Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern was neither of these and is still seen as a movie that should never have happened. Unfortunately, that opinion is mostly shared by Reynolds, who even made the movie’s reputation a joke in Deadpool 2‘s post-credits scene.
While appearing at a comedy festival in the UK, Variety reported that Reynolds was asked about his famous superhero movie and had no issue explaining the big thing he believed went wrong with the film. He said:
“There was just too many people spending too much money and when there was a problem rather than say, ‘Okay, let’s stop spending on special effects and let’s think about character. How do we replace this big spectacle thing – that isn’t working at all – with something that’s character based?’ and that just never – the thinking was never there to do that,” he explained. “And to their credit, it’s a very old school way of looking at things. It’s just ‘Let’s just keep spending our way through this.’ And that was – it didn’t work. At the same time, there are 185 people that worked on that movie, they all had an amazing time, we loved shooting it. Truly, shooting the movie was a lot of fun. But, you know, sitting in that premiere, watching that, oh my God. It’s tough.”
Ryan Reynolds Recalled His Reaction to the Premiere of Green Lantern
As Ryan Reynolds made clear, attending the premiere of Green Lantern was not the greatest moment of his career, and when asked what was going through his mind at the time, he continued:
“The words were ‘Holy Sh*t’ and ‘No. NO!’ Oh my God [my butt] was like a ukelele down there. It was crazy. It was an odd feeling. It was not a feeling I wanted to repeat. So I really spent the following years just owning as much as I could, it was the only way to kind of process it.”
Of course, despite that experience with the superhero genre and his less-than-spectacular first appearance as Wade Wilson in X-Men Origins: WolverineReynolds managed to fall on his feet when he returned to play Wade Wilson again in DeadpoolHaving wiped the slate clean with the character, Deadpool and Deadpool 2 played to Reynolds’ strengths, and now he is about to join the MCU, along with his buddy Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, in Deadpool 3.
Where exactly his long-term Deadpool future lies is still unclear. Still, with production due to start in the coming months for the new movie, there is no doubt of this threequel being anything other than a massive smash for Marvel Studios when it releases in November 2024. With both Reynolds and Jackman already on the promotion trail via their dueling social media accounts, the road to the MCU’s first R-rated movie is well and truly underway.