The movie Ryan Reynolds wants to delete from history: “The darkest crease in the anus of the universe”
The idea that Ryan Reynolds would want to delete one of his own movies from history is surprising. After all, the man has made a boatload of terrible films, so the notion that only one is bad enough that he’d wish it out of existence sounds vaguely preposterous. However, there is one movie in his increasingly disastrous filmography which the star has repeatedly bashed at every opportunity. Hell, he’s actually managed to turn lambasting the project to his advantage, as it’s now a big part of his Deadpool schtick, so it’s unlikely he’ll declare a moratorium on criticising it anytime soon.
Reynolds wasn’t always the A-list star he has been since Deadpool hit big in 2016. In fact, there was a period where it looked like he would never truly find that defining blockbuster hit that would set him up for life – although it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Between 2004 and 2013, Reynolds starred in a succession of comic book movies which didn’t quite work out, including Blade: Trinity, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and RIPD. His most high-profile disaster from this period was undoubtedly 2011’s Green Lantern, though – a film so bad that it put the kibosh on an entire cinematic universe.
You see, when Reynolds signed up to play DC Comics’ space cop Hal Jordan, a member of the intergalactic Green Lantern Corps, the project was intended to be the launching point for a DC film universe. However, when it stuttered at the box office and was eviscerated by critics, Warner Brothers and DC decided to reshape those plans. The studio eventually used 2013’s Man of Steel as the official starting point of the – equally reviled – DC Extended Universe, with no sign of Reynolds’ CGI-suited hero anywhere.
Over the next decade or so, Reynolds began making a cottage industry out of trashing the movie, even including a scene in Deadpool 2 for his fourth-wall-breaking Marvel antihero to make a big-screen gag at Green Lantern’s expense. When asked in 2016 why one of his superhero movies worked and another didn’t, Reynolds said, “Well, it’s simple: Deadpool always knew what it was. With Green Lantern, I don’t think anyone ever figured out exactly what it was.”
At the Just For Laughs festival in 2023, Reynolds explained that he knew the film was a disaster when he watched it for the first time at the premiere. He mused, “Sitting in that premiere, watching that. Oh my God, it’s tough. The words were ‘Holy shit’ 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.”
Reynolds did try to explain why he thinks Green Lantern didn’t succeed as a film, but his explanation sounds bitterly ironic when you realise it could probably be applied to 90% of his movies from the last eight years. He 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’… the thinking was never there to do that.”
To his credit, Reynolds has pointed out on a few occasions that 185 cast and crew members worked hard on Green Lantern to make it as good as possible, and he had fun shooting it. Of course, one incredible thing also came out of the film: it was where he met his future wife and mother of his three children, Blake Lively.
However, with customary Reynolds snark, when he talked about this life-changing moment on the SmartLess podcast, he quipped, “I met Blake on the darkest crease in the anus of the universe called Green Lantern.”
