Most people would have forgotten about Green Lantern a long time ago if it wasn’t for leading man Ryan Reynolds, who hasn’t been able to resist an opportunity to take shots at the infamous box office bomb for nearly a decade. And given that Warner Bros. have been trying to get a reboot off the ground for six years now, you can bet there’s been some frustration in the boardroom that the 6 Underground star just can’t seem to let it go.
Indeed, when you think of Green Lantern these days, your mind instantly turns to the constant fun Reynolds has been poking at the misguided blockbuster as opposed to the content of the movie itself, while co-star Taika Waititi has also gotten in on the act by pretending that he’s never heard of it despite playing a prominent role as Hal Jordan’s best friend Thomas Kalmaku.
Now, in a recent interview to promote upcoming action comedy Free Guy, Reynolds has finally gone into detail and explained why a lot of his online activity is specifically tailored around the idea that Green Lantern is a terrible film that his fans shouldn’t even bother watching.
“I think it’s more about just laughing at myself, not laughing at other people, necessarily, that are involved in a project. But laughing at myself and my own contribution to that failure or however you want to characterize it. It was just something that I thought was worth examining, you know? And in examining it, you take that energy that is typically, maybe it’s hurtful or maybe it’s something that’s dragging you down, and you end up creating a sort of mental Judo with it. You’re using its energy against it and creating something positive out of it.”
Of course, one of the most famous Green Lantern jokes came in Deadpool, when Wade Wilson demanded that his costume be neither green nor animated, and unsurprisingly, it turns out that Reynolds was responsible for putting it in the script.
“I wrote it into the Deadpool script, I think where my character says something like, ‘Please don’t make this suit green or animated’, when he’s being shoved into the superhero factory or whatever. And I noticed that it felt good to shine a light on that for a second. So I don’t know, it’s just something I’ve always done, but the most significant thing that’s ever happened in my career is laughing at myself always. Like, since the start of the work. And there’s plenty there to laugh at. Everybody has their own, you lay in bed at night and you think, ‘Oh God, this thing I did was so awful or silly or ridiculous’. I think that’s got this fuel for lots of stuff.”
Whenever the DCEU’s planned reboot and the in-development HBO Max show arrive, they’ll have a lot of work to do in order to shake off the stigma that hangs around director Martin Campbell’s dismal attempt at bringing the mythology to life. And no doubt Ryan Reynolds will be one of the first people to voice their opinion on the next iteration of Green Lantern once it debuts.