Ryan Reynolds gives details into what led ‘Green Lantern’ to flop

Ryan Reynolds recently held a Q&A at the Just For Laughs Comedy Festival which was hosted by Rob Delaney. During the panel, Reynolds reflected on the turbulent production of ‘Green Lantern’.

According to Reynolds, too much money was spent on visual effects to make the film look good, while not as much time or effort was spent on developing the characters.

He said, “There was just too many people spending too much money and when there was a problem rather than say, ‘Okay, let’s stop spending on special effects and let’s think about character. How do we replace this big spectacle thing – that isn’t working at all – with something that’s character based?’ and that just never – the thinking was never there to do that.

“And to their credit, it’s a very old school way of looking at things,” the actor continued. “It’s just ‘Let’s just keep spending our way through this.’ And that was – it didn’t work.

“At the same time, there are 185 people that worked on that movie, they all had an amazing time, we loved shooting it. Truly, shooting the movie was a lot of fun. But, you know, sitting in that premiere, watching that, oh my God. It’s tough.”

A critical failure

The superhero film accumulated an astonishing amount of negative reviews from both fans and critics alike. It currently sits at 26 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

When asked about his initial reaction following the film’s premiere Reynolds said, “Oh my God it was like a ukulele down there. It was crazy. It was an odd feeling.

“It was not a feeling I wanted to repeat,” he added. “So I really spent the following years just owning as much as I could, it was the only way to kind of process it.”

Though Reynolds has redeemed himself to superhero fans as he’s since gone on to play the mercenary Deadpool for Marvel to mostly positive acclaim.