The unmade Jack Black movie killed by furious fans: “A lot of angry internet reactions”
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when Hollywood started taking fandom seriously. However, as nerd culture became such a lucrative business in the 2000s and 2010s, there was a concerted shift in how the movie business viewed the obsessive fans of Star Wars, Marvel, DC, and the like. These fans now have the power to make or break a movie, and, fascinatingly, Jack Black was one of the first to discover what happens when you find yourself on the wrong side of geek vitriol.
In the early days of superhero movies, Hollywood paid little attention to what fans wanted from their adaptations. The creative powers behind Tim Burton’s Batman, for example, changed the established comic book continuity by having The Joker murder Bruce Wayne’s parents in the movie, instead of a random mugger named Joe Chill.
Fans complained to each other in comic book shops and at conventions, but had no real way to make their voices heard. Even if they had gotten the ear of a Hollywood power player, though, it’s unlikely that person would have paid any attention to the grousing of a handful of hardcore nerds. After all, it was Hollywood’s prerogative to make changes to a property on its way from comic book page to the silver screen, and the vast majority of the film’s audience would have no idea about deviations from the canon.
By the time Jack Black was contacted about playing the obscure DC superhero Green Lantern in 2004, though, the lay of the land had begun to shift. Marvel had experienced massive success with Bryan Singer’s X-Men in 2000 and Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man in 2002, both of which took their source material seriously. Two of George Lucas’ Star Wars prequel films had also been released by that point, with the angry fan reaction to 1999’s The Phantom Menace being a particularly vicious flashpoint in the story of fandom’s battle for legitimacy.
In what would soon be revealed as an ill-advised move, DC and Warner Bros barrelled into this changing landscape with a comedic take on the company’s space-faring superhero. Saturday Night Live writer Robert Smigel was hired to pen a script about a schlubby reality TV star who is chosen by a malfunctioning power ring to be the new guardian of the universe, the Green Lantern, instead of Hal Jordan, the heroic fighter pilot from the comics.
Hijinks ensue as the world’s laziest superhero tries to impress girls with his powers and avoid responsibility. In the finale, he uses his magic ring to create a construct of Superman to turn the Earth backwards and reverse time because he’s too work-shy to do it himself. Black loved this sly reference to Richard Donner’s classic Superman: The Movie, and was keen to make the movie.
However, to his dismay, fans were not happy about their beloved superhero being turned into a silly comedy. To make matters worse, this time they had the internet at their disposal and could instantly register their disgust throughout the world. A firestorm of outrage erupted on message boards everywhere, and it was so furious that Warner soon began to get cold feet about the idea. “There were a lot of angry Internet reactions just to the idea of Jack Black,” Smigel remembered.
For his part, the writer wasn’t the least bit surprised that fans were angry, because he understood their position. “If I were a die-hard Green Lantern fan,” he confessed to Vanity Fair in 2011, “I would be very frustrated to hear that it’s finally going to be done as a comedy. I wouldn’t just feel screwed; I would also see it as a personal affront that the superhero that I’ve been worshiping is looked at as a joke.”
Interestingly, Smigel did so much research into the character and the DC universe before writing his script that he wound up seeing merit on both sides. He immediately recognised the elements that could be played for laughs, identifying that Green Lantern’s whole setup was a comedic premise. “In order to be a superhero,” he chuckled, “this requires no physical skill or talent. All it requires is owning this ring.” The more he read the character’s classic comics, though, the more he understood the character had enormous potential. “I actually think some of the stuff they did in the 80s and 90s was kind of amazing,” he admitted, “and could have been adapted into an excellent, fairly serious Green Lantern movie.
Ultimately, Warner and DC got cold feet thanks to the heavy fan backlash, and the idea of a comedic Green Lantern was put on ice. “I never got a direct phone call about it,” Smigel grumbled. “That’s sort of how Hollywood works.”
As for Black, he claimed the problem was that Smigel’s script was too clever for its own good and would have gone over most people’s heads. “There’s a humour barrier, similar to the sound barrier,” Black mused to HuffPost. “Where, if you go over it – if you go too funny and smart – there’s an explosion and your movie makes no money.” Feel free to insert your own joke here about the Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern movie that was eventually made instead: a film that was neither too funny nor too smart, but still made no money.
