The superhero movie Jack Black narrowly avoided: “It was too weird”
With the greatest of respect, Jack Black isn’t the first name that immediately comes to mind when thinking of Hollywood’s definition of a superhero.
The idea of a superhero is neatly ingrained in all our brains. Having become a part of the cultural landscape over nearly 100 years of permutations, the visual we have with a superhero is usually svelte, strong and undeniably handsome. It’s not exactly where Black excels.
The 21st-century boom period that’s seen comic book adaptations defined by their stars getting ridiculously jacked to squeeze into their skin-tight costumes stands in the opposite corner from Black’s charismatic, exuberant, and free-wheeling style. Black’s power on screen isn’t derived from his body in the strictest sense; it is born out of his willingness to command the screen. However, it almost came to fruition.
In fact, it might have been better if it did, considering the film in question ended up going down in infamy as a box office bust. It was so significant in its lack of merits that the person who did end up starring would proceed to spend the next decade tearing it to shreds any time the opportunity presented itself.
Green Lantern had been in development in one form or another since 1997, a time when Kevin Smith was approached to gauge his interest in penning the screenplay. He knocked back the offer, having just finished scripting Tim Burton’s doomed Superman Lives, placing it firmly on the Warner Bros back burner.
In 2004, Robert Smigel had refitted the standard superheroic origin story into a more overtly comedic vehicle, with Black lined up to star. Comic book fans have never been ones to keep their opinions to themselves when it comes to casting, even in the early days of the internet, leading to a furious uproar over the prospect of the intergalactic traveller being turned into a joke.
Based on such vocal opposition, Black’s Green Lantern was ultimately shelved, leaving the star disappointed that he was unable to play the part. “I really liked the script that a friend of mine wrote,” he told MTV. “But nobody wanted to make it; it was too weird.”
Harnessing the powers of the character’s Power Ring, it’s easy to see why readers weren’t sold when such unlimited cosmic powers were going to be used to create condoms made entirely of space energy. “I was going to be making all kinds of stuff,” he continued. “I was going to be capturing bad guys with green, giant prophylactics, some funny stuff.”
Black resigned himself to the fact that “it would have been a comedy, maybe they didn’t want to go that way with the character,” only for Ryan Reynolds to end up headlining Martin Campbell’s 2011 iteration of Green Lantern and regretting his decision to do so immeasurably.
One of the least interesting entries to a genre that’s delivered its fair share of mediocrity over the years, Reynolds’ ill-fated stint as Hal Jordan made a mockery of the star reportedly signing a three-picture contract. It went down in a ball of box office flames before being swept under the rug and ignored in favour of yet another rebooted universe of DC Comics favourites.
Speaking of watching the movie he branded a “disaster” for years in 2023, Reynolds said: “There was just too many people spending too much money and when there was a problem rather than say, ‘OK, let’s stop spending on special effects and let’s think about character’. That just never… the thinking was never there to do that,” he said, adding. “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.
Upon seeing the movie, he said: “The words were ‘holy s***’ and ‘no, no!’ 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.”
