What Green Lantern Taught Ryan Reynolds About Deadpool

Back in 2011, moviegoers watched as one of the biggest superhero flops of all-time dropped into theaters. Green Lantern was all but annihilated by fans and critics who tore the film’s script apart, and many wondered whether the project would tank Ryan Reynold’s burgeoning career. Luckily, the leading man survived the flop and came out on the other side with Marvel’s Deadpool. And, now, the actor is saying he learnt one very important lesson from Green Lantern which helped him tackle the mouthy merc.

Apparently, success all comes down to the script.

“You just go back to script, script, script,” Reynolds said at a recent Q&A screening of Deadpool. “[On Green Lantern] we did not have a working script until we were halfway through shooting. That is a handicap, there’s nothing you can do about that. And that’s just the nature of this business oftentimes, it’s a poster and release date first, start shooting and we’ll figure out the rest as we go. And it’s just, it’s insane. It’s hard for everyone. Everyone that worked on that movie gave their last drop of blood.”

This isn’t the first time that Reynolds has talked about how important a script can be and how lacking Green Lantern‘s was. Last year, the actor spoke with Yahoo! about the tanked superhero flick and said its biggest downfall was its script.

“When we shot Green Lantern, nobody auditioning for the role of Green Lantern was given the opportunity to read the script, because the script didn’t exist,” he said. “I’m not complaining about it — it was an opportunity of a lifetime, and if I were to go back and retrace my steps, I would probably do everything the exact same way. But script, that’s what’s different on this one.”

According to Reynolds, Green Lantern barely registers on his list of scalable films. The actor has been asked to rate the movie on a scale of 1-10 in the past, and Reynolds failed to diplomatically rank the movie.

“I would give it a scant…4? Yeah, 3 or 4?” he told Andy Cohen before renegotiating his answer. “ONE! IT’S A ONE!”

Luckily, Reynolds had a much better time on-set when he was working on Deadpool. The most frustrating element of the film was its meager budget, but the small-scale figures ultimately gifted Deadpool a bit of indie charm. If he were asked to rate the new superhero flick, fans are thinking Reynolds would give the film a far better score than its unsavory predecessor.

[H/T] The Playlist