While the catalog of popular superhero movies has grown exponentially over the past decade, both in quality and quality, there are still a fair share of recent entries that don't exactly go over well with fans, critics, or both. There are always a litany of reasons behind these major films' critical and/or financial failure, whether it be the production quality, the script, the acting, or any number of other aspects surrounding the movies.
One of the most notable comic book movie duds was the enormously-maligned Green Lantern from 2011 , which arrived during the noted rebirth of great superhero movies, but hit mostly the wrong notes upon its arrival in theaters. Luckily, this has made for some fantastic comedic material in more recent times, even allowing other major releases to poke fun at it in their own stories. This is mostly the case concerning the very man who starred in Green Lantern , and he took some time to explain his reasoning behind his continued mocking of the DC bomb.
NEWS
Via a new excerpt from Comicbook.com , superhero movie veteran Ryan Reynolds opened up on why he makes so many jokes about 2011's Green Lantern , in which he played the starring role of Hal Jordan. While on a press tour for his new movie Free Guy , he spoke on why he chooses to embrace the hate the film receives instead of letting it bother him:
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.
Reynolds went on to explain why he targeted Green Lantern specifically in his Deadpool movie:
"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."
WHAT THIS MEANS
Ryan Reynolds has made himself into one of the biggest names in Hollywood over the past decade, notably for his charm and his distinct comedic brilliance. While Green Lantern is quite likely the most notable flop of his acting career , Reynolds has seemed to use the negative experience with that movie to fuel himself going forward, especially by using it as a funny experience as opposed to something that makes him angry.
Even considering the DC solo film being the lowest moment of his acting life, he used the superhero genre to make probably his biggest break yet when he brought the role of Wade W. Wilson to life in 2016's Deadpool and 2018's Deadpool 2 . He has become absolutely synonymous with the foul-mouthed, unkillable cancer survivor , even using his meta nature from the comics to bring Green Lantern into his first solo film. Before undergoing the process that mangles his body and gives him his powers, he makes a quip while being rolled in on a gurney saying "please don't make the supersuit green...or animated!"
Ryan Reynolds seems to have embraced everything that he has worked through over the past decade in both his DC solo film and his Marvel appearances, and his future looks brighter than ever as he looks to continue playing Deadpool. There are no official plans for him , or any of the X-Men, to join the MCU yet after the Fox/Disney merger, although there are rumors that Marvel CCO Kevin Feige wants to make him one of the faces of the mega-franchise for a long time to come.
