‘Deadpool 2’ Actor Mainly Knew Ryan Reynolds From ‘Green Lantern’ and Wasn’t a Fan

Deadpool 2 featured a pretty wide ensemble of familiar and new faces, but it sounds like one of the cast members had a unique relationship with franchise star Ryan Reynolds.

Julian Dennison, who appears in the film as Russell Collins/Firefist, was asked about his preconceived notions about Reynolds while in an interview with Conan. As Dennison revealed, the most memorable performance he had seen from Reynolds was in 2010’s Green Lantern… a film he didn’t look at too positively.

“I saw his movies. I wouldn’t say I was a fan. You know, there was Green Lantern.” Dennison said, before sarcastically remarking. “It was a really …great movie.”

But according to Dennison, actually meeting and working with Reynolds made him see the actor in a different light.

“He’s a super nice guy!” Dennison continued. “He’s gonna probably watch this, so – he’s a super nice guy, really cool to work with, amazing family. Yeah, he’s just super nice.”

Thankfully, Reynolds seems more than aware of the ways that Green Lantern failed — well, as much as he can without having actually seen the film.

“Look, I’ve never seen the full final version of Green Lantern,” Reynolds revealed in an interview earlier this month. “I saw a very late stage rough cut of the film. Now, that isn’t to say that I didn’t want to see it because I didn’t like it. I have movies that have been received pretty well that I haven’t seen, and then I have movies that I have seen 100 times that people don’t like but I just like. The Green Lantern [joke in Deadpool] to me is just sort of, I don’t know, kind of fun. It’s me just taking the piss out of me, but it’s more [Deadpool] though.”

As fans of the Deadpool franchise have seen, the films aren’t afraid of poking fun of Green Lantern in various ways. This culminated pretty majorly in Deadpool 2‘s post-credits scene, as the Merc with a Mouth shot Reynolds point-blank shortly after he finished reading the Green Lantern script.

As it turns out, Green Lantern and Deadpool have a pretty symbiotic relationship, as Reynolds ultimately took on the role because Fox refused to greenlight the latter film.

“I wrote a letter to my executive at Fox saying, ‘I’m gonna take this movie Green Lantern if you guys aren’t gonna make Deadpool.’” Reynolds revealed back in 2016. “I’m at the altar, about to say ‘I do’ to somebody else, but tell me you want to spend the rest of your life with me, because I want to spend the rest of my life with you,’” he recalled. “They said, ‘Unfortunately, we can’t green-light that movie, and I don’t think it’s ever going to get green-lit.’ So I was like, Okay, I’m gonna go move on with my life, then, I guess.”

Thankfully, Deadpool did end up getting greenlit, Green Lantern faded into obscurity, and we all got some pretty hilarious jokes about it in the process.

Do you agree with Dennison’s review of Green Lantern? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Deadpool 2 is in theaters now.