Years before Ryan Reynolds became Deadpool, he starred in a little superhero movie called Green Lantern. Instead of being Reynolds' breakout hit, the movie is one of the better-known flops of the genre. However, the star says it did serve a purpose, as it taught him a lot about how to make movies by doing the opposite of what Green Lantern did.
Speaking with Time, Reynolds says that, while he didn’t realize it at the time, Green Lantern taught him the importance of focusing on characters in movies. This was because his first superhero flick was so focused on creating a visual spectacle that it forgot everything else. He explained…
On that film, I saw a lot of money being spent at special effects and all sorts of stuff. And I remember suggesting, we could write like a scene in the movie where people talk and, I don’t know, this could be like a fun exchange of dialogue that doesn’t cost anything. It was just spectacle, spectacle. So anyway, character over spectacle was the lesson that I took with me in retrospect.
It’s difficult to argue that Green Lantern wasn’t a “spectacle first” sort of movie. Considering even the superhero costume was done with CGI, the film tried to do everything it could to make every shot visually interesting. However, Reynolds just saw that most of it was a waste. Money was being spent because it could be, not because it should be.
The actor says the experience of watching Green Lantern fail led directly to his desire to make Deadpool. He wanted to have more creative control over the project, rather than just acting, and felt he understood the process in a way that would make it work. Considering how huge Deadpool has become, he was clearly on to something.
Spectacle alone doesn’t make a movie great, but beyond that, Ryan Reynolds says the biggest problem with Green Lantern was a lack of constraints. When a production doesn’t have all the time and money in the world, it needs to make decisions about how to best spend its resources, and that’s where real creativity can come up with solutions. The Adam Project star said…
Too much money and too much time wrecks creativity, just murders it, and constraint is the greatest creative tool you can possibly have.
The first Deadpool was made for a surprisingly small amount of money. Reynolds has even talked about how they had to find ways to replace set pieces after the movie's budget would get cut. So, it's clear he really did put his Green Lantern lessons into practice.
Considering the success that Ryan Reynolds has had both on screen and off, he clearly learned a lot about managing creative endeavors. It seems that while Green Lantern may have been a terrible movie, it’s a good thing that he did it. If he hadn’t, he might not have learned these lessons.
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