There are many reasons why the Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern movie flopped at the box office and became one of the biggest bombs of all time. Warner Bros. and DC Comics spent over two decades trying to adapt the Green Lantern comics into a movie, eventually planning to make a more comedic superhero film starring Jack Black. However, the success of Iron Man and the beginnings of the Marvel Cinematic Universe changed those plans, and Warner Bros hoped a more dramatic Green Lantern film might kickstart a DC Universe.
On paper, the 2011 Green Lantern movie seemed like a surefire hit. Superhero movies were in vogue, with Thor and Captain America releasing that same summer. The film also boasted an impressive ensemble, with talented actors like Mark Strong, Angela Bassett, Temuera Morrison, Michael Clarke Duncan, and Geoffrey Rush, among others. Unfortunately, the movie failed to win over audiences, scrapping plans for a Green Lantern sequel and delaying the start of the DC Cinematic Universe until the release of Man of Steel. Yet the question remains, just why did Green Lantern bomb so badly?
6 Ryan Reynolds Wasn’t An Action Star When Green Lantern Came Out
While Ryan Reynolds is best known today for playing smart-mouthed action heroes, he was better known for his comedic work when Green Lantern was released. Reynolds had tried to avoid being stereotyped by taking smaller action-oriented roles like Hannibal King in Blade: Trinity and Wade Wilson in Wolverine: Origins but was still most recognized for his work in romantic comedies like Just Friends and dramas like Fireflies in the Garden. While Reynolds was a fine choice for the role of test pilot Hal Jordan, some may have had trouble believing that the star of the National Lampoon’s Van Wilder franchise could be a convincing superhero.
5 Green Lantern Received Bad Reviews From Critics & Audiences
Audiences were turned away by the vast array of negative reviews that Green Lantern received from both professional critics and Internet commentators. The film earned a 26% overall rotten rating, based on the 185 negative reviews gathered by the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. The film fared slightly better with general audiences but still earned a negative 45% rating. Even the positive reviews seemed to offer little more than back-handed complements, with London Evening Standard critic David Sexton saying that he preferred Green Lantern to Thor “precisely because it’s so openly childish.”
4 Green Lantern Had Several Character & Story Issues
One of the chief complaints regarding Green Lantern was its story, which was viewed as overly complicated and plot-heavy. The opening scene drops the audience deep into the lore of the Green Lantern Corps from the comics, explaining how the intergalactic police force was created and how they draw energy through their rings from the collective willpower of the universe. The scene also introduces the fear entity Parallax and the greatest of Green Lanterns, Abin Sur, who is said to be the only one capable of containing him.
This opening is almost completely ignored by the sudden introduction of Hal Jordan, who is quickly established as a well-meaning iconoclast struggling to live up to the legacy of his heroic father. While the scenes centering on Hal play well to Ryan Reynolds’ strengths as an actor, they clash completely with the more serious scenes involving Abin Sur’s battle with Parallax in deep space. While the story of Hal Jordan is that of a man finding balance between two worlds, the Green Lantern movie’s efforts to convey that idea made it seem like two movies had been poorly spliced together.
The film’s erratic focus also proved problematic for the supporting cast of characters. The Green Lantern Corps comics contained one of the best ensembles ever assembled, with memorable characters like Hal’s first mentor, Tomar-Re, the Green Lantern drill sergeant Kilowog, and the great Green Lanter Thaal Sinestro, destined to become the Corps’ worst enemy. While all these characters were included in Green Lantern, they had little time to be developed due to the rapid pacing of the story. It was all too much and yet, at the same time, too little.
3 DC Chose The Wrong Villain For Green Lantern’s First Movie
Another problem with the Green Lantern film was that it lacked a compelling villain. While Parallax is one of the most powerful villains in the Green Lantern Corps comics, the idea of a being that exists as a psychic manifestation of fear itself was too metaphysical for a story that was already asking audiences to believe in alien technology capable of tapping willpower as an energy source. This was further complicated by the decision to make Parallax a corrupted Guardian of the Universe and tying him to the origin of Hector Hammond, whose psychic powers in the film were the result of being exposed to a piece of Parallax.
Sinestro would seem a better choice for the main villain of the first Green Lantern film. Drawing on the power of fear with a ring that counters the abilities of Green Lanterns, Sinestro would be an appropriate antagonist, commanding a power both equal and opposite to that of Hal Jordan. However, Sinestro’s background in the comics is that of a fallen hero who served as a mentor to Hal Jordan before being drummed out of the Corps for abusing his authority. There was no room for that story in a film that was already burdened with introducing the complex lore of the Green Lantern Corps to a general audience.
2 Green Lantern’s Suit & CGI Were Mocked By Fans
The CGI utilized for Green Lantern was another issue that drove audiences away. The decision to render Hal Jordan’s Green Lantern uniform entirely in CGI proved unwise, given the green-screen technology employed resulted in Ryan Reynolds’ head comically floating upon a clearly artificial background through many of the film’s action sequences. This was due to the film being rushed for a summer release, with most of the animation having been completed in the final two months of the post-production cycle. Reynolds would later reference the terrible costume in Deadpool, with Wade Wilson begging the captors intent on making him a super-soldier, “Please don’t make the super suit green… or animated!“
1 Green Lantern Released At The Wrong Time
Another reason that the Green Lantern movie failed to find an audience was simply bad timing. The summer of 2011 was full of superhero movies, with Fox releasing X-Men: First-Class and Paramount releasing Thor one month earlier. There may have also been some confusion with a Green Hornet movie released earlier that year. With Captain America releasing later that summer as well, the market was saturated, and it was hard for a new superhero series to stand out.
Another issue was that Green Lantern was released in between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. Christopher Nolan’s trilogy of Batman films had a huge following, so introducing a new DC Comics franchise that was meant to start a new cinematic universe unconnected to the Nolan films and drastically different in tone was a risk. All these factors added up to make Green Lantern one of the biggest bombs in history.
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