The 2013 movie Ryan Reynolds will always regret making: “I felt sort of fake and weird”
Eventually, Ryan Reynolds made it to where everyone predicted he would end up by becoming a certified movie star, but it took a lot longer than expected, and some of it was entirely his own fault.
The actor developed the unwanted habit of playing major roles in big-budget, effects-driven blockbusters that were almost universally crap, whether it was his comic book excursions in Blade: Trinity, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and Green Lantern, or Safe House and The Change-Up.
While it couldn’t be denied that he had charm, charisma, and screen presence to share, with Buried and The Voices also showing that when he wasn’t playing Ryan Reynolds every time he appeared onscreen, there was a genuinely talented dramatic actor underneath there, too, not that we’ve seen much of that in the last decade.
Up until the success of Deadpool, which he also co-wrote and produced in 2016, his biggest hit had been The Proposal seven years previously, and with the greatest of respect, the lion’s share of the film’s success can be laid at the feet of genre extraordinaire Sandra Bullock’s return to the rom-com, not his involvement.
While he still has a habit of headlining mediocre genre films, with Free Guy, 6 Underground, Red Notice, and If a few recent additions to the collection, Reynolds has reached a point where he’s famous enough to get away with the odd stinker, and if things are ever looking rocky, there’s always Deadpool to fall back on.
In some ways, he hasn’t learned the lessons from his pixelated follies of the past, but in others, he has. “I found the most difficult roles were the ones where I had to portray some sort of ideal masculinity,” he offered. “That’s where I felt sort of fake and weird. I’ll be the first to admit I have not been as wise with my decision-making as I should have been. I wasn’t really methodical about it, like, ‘What is this movie? What are we making here?'”
That led him to Robert Schwentke’s RIPD, which was a horrendous piece of work. Co-starring with Jeff Bridges, who admitted as much, it ironically finds Reynolds portraying some sort of ideal masculinity, with his character, Nick Walker, a generic action hero with a generic action hero name, who works the generic action hero job of being a cop and is motivated by generic action hero things, in this case, bringing his own killer to justice.
“Is this a popcorn, bubble-gum romp? Is this a slightly subversive take on zombie culture?” were the questions he wished he’d asked himself. Instead, “It was more like, ‘Woah, cool, Jeff Bridges! And there’s some jokes in there that really work for me.” There weren’t any jokes that worked for anyone else, mind, with RIPD trashed by critics and tanking at the box office.
He’ll no doubt make at least a handful of bad movies in the future, and he’s made a couple since that one was released in 2013, but at least he’s asking himself if he should bother before signing on, which is better than being so distracted by the prospect of shiny things that he’ll agree without thinking things through.
