Ryan Reynolds’ Mockery of Green Lantern Is Exhausting

You know how you have that one friend who’s always using the same recycled joke as a punchline? That’s what Ryan Reynolds sounds like every time he makes fun of 2011’s Green Lantern film.

In a commencement speech he prepared for his former school, Reynolds said, “Some of you might consider me successful. I don’t know. Some of you may have seen Green Lantern.” It’s the third time in a week that he’s poked fun at the superhero film, after recently sharing the LOLs with co-star Taika Waititi and telling a fan on Twitter to not rent the movie.

We get it. The film was a box office bomb, a critical dud, and the actors don’t hold many fond memories of the experience. Fair enough. The point is, his schtick is getting old now. Reynolds has beat this dead horse so much that it’s starting to look like biltong now.

While everyone laughed at his mention of the CGI suit in 2016’s Deadpool and some of the offhand comments he made about it in the past, it’s nine years later now. It’s time to move on and to stop feeding the hate machine that seems to encompass the narrative of every single comic book movie.

Reynolds’ behaviour only adds fuel and credence to the rhetoric surrounding the genre online. Too many “fans” spend hours of energy fighting about past movies than discussing what they enjoy or what they’re looking forward to. It’s an utterly pointless exercise, proving that too many things live rent-free in people’s minds and online fandom is truly where love for franchises goes to die.

Reynolds prides himself on his self-deprecating sense of humour and taking the mickey out of everything, but his approach is disingenuous when you consider the past. He didn’t mind cashing the pay check for the film or going in front of the camera praising what he loved about Green Lantern in 2011.

While it’s all about working the press and part of the job, the same can be said of what he’s doing now. Reynolds is working the fans and saying exactly what they want to hear. If the film had been successful and launched a franchise, there’s no way he’d be slating it at every opportunity.

Everyone has regrets in their past and we can all change our minds about experiences, but there comes a time to move on. After Deadpool‘s success, Reynolds doesn’t even need to focus on a film he made almost a decade ago. Hell, he should be apologising for Blade: Trinity and 6 Underground more than anything else.