Years before Zack Snyder's Justice League , its predecessor, or any of the other films that make up the current DC universe on film, there was Green Lantern. The movie seemed to have a lot going for it. Ryan Reynolds was a popular young actor, Green Lantern was a popular comic book hero. This was the movie that was supposed to launch DC's response to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it didn't exactly work out. The movie was largely deemed to be... not good, and everything went back to the drawing board.
Yesterday was St. Patrick's Day, a celebration of all things green. And Ryan Reynolds decided to take that day to watch Green Lantern for the first time ever. The actor said he'd only ever been present for his own scenes, and had never actually seen the finished film, so he poured himself a special bright green cocktail made from his own Aviation Gin, and jumped in, while dropping his thoughts on Twitter. His comments, as you can probably guess, were pretty hilarious.
Green Lantern is a pretty formulaic origin story superhero movie. And while that's not inherently a bad thing, but even Ryan Reynolds has to admit that there's a lot here that we've all seen before. Even outside of superhero movies, moviegoers are familiar with the dead parent tragic backstory. Disney may have perfected this trope, but this wasn't a movie made by Disney, and it seems like even Ryan Reynolds feels that Green Lantern doesn't exactly make it work.
Later, Ryan Reynolds takes the first of what will be many shots at Green Lantern's CGI work. The movie is full of it, and while CGI had come a long way, even in 2011, that doesn't mean it all works. It also doesn't mean that the ways that actors handle it has become any easier. At the end of the day, acting against nothing is still really weird.
However, if there's any aspect of Green Lantern that Ryan Reynolds truly believes has aged badly, it's the conflict with big bad Parallax. At this point, after everything we've all been through, an evil space cloud just feels like a walk in the park, right?
Later, Ryan Reynolds takes another shot at the CGI, but in a way that actually makes a lot of sense. He points out that the movie used traditional make-up techniques to turn Peter Sarsgaard into his massive brained character. And yet, there was some insistence on using CGI for so much else, including something as simple as the Green Lantern superhero costume.
While Ryan Reynolds certainly has his fun at Green Lantern's expense, in the final analysis, the actor is complementary of the movie to a degree. Is it the best movie ever? No, of course not. But neither is it the total abomination of a movie that many have claimed.
Of course, maybe it was the Aviation Gin talking and Green Lantern is just as terrible as so many people say. In the end, it's all just opinions and there are a lot of people who still legitimately like Green Lantern for being exactly what it is. Still, if you can watch the movie with gin, that's probably preferable.
