Ryan Reynolds Is Proud of Blake Lively’s Warner Bros. Flop — and the Sweet Reason Will Melt Your Heart
Ryan Reynolds is cheering on Blake Lively’s so-called flop Green Lantern — the much-mocked WB misfire that introduced the couple — turning a box office bust into his favorite win.
Ryan Reynolds just made a surprisingly sweet case for Green Lantern of all things. Not because the internet finally forgave that 2011 DC swing, but because his son Olin is obsessed with it. If you ever needed a reason to be gentle on your old work, having a kid who plays it on loop will do the trick.
The quote, because it says it all
'You laugh, but my son, it is his favorite movie, and he watches it every f---ing day. Do you understand the work I have had to do to get to the place where I can just pass by that screen and not go, "Well, we could have [done that differently]?"'
Reynolds dropped that at The Wall Street Journal's CMO Council Summit, talking about the exact movie he starred in and has spent years publicly clowning. And yet, here we are: dad mode trumps roast mode.
Quick refresher on Green Lantern: numbers, context, the whole deal
If you missed the cultural moment (or blocked it out), Green Lantern was widely panned and barely earned out. It also happens to be where Reynolds and Blake Lively sparked their romance, so the legacy is not all bad. The rest of it, though, is rough:
- Release: 2011 DC superhero film starring Reynolds as Hal Jordan
- Rotten Tomatoes: 25% critic score, 45% audience score
- IMDb: 5.5/10
- Budget: $200 million
- Worldwide box office: $219.5 million
- Production companies: Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Entertainment, De Line Pictures
Why he is weirdly grateful for it now
Reynolds said the movie is also a marker for how much he has grown professionally. Back then, as he put it, he was in a 'Yes, sir. No, sir. How high can I jump, sir?' phase. Now, it is something he uses to teach his kids about the value of eating a few losses along the way. He joked that when he is out in the world it can look like a nonstop victory lap with selfies and back slaps, so at home he makes a point of talking about the misses and how those are the foundation for everything else.
For the family scorecard: he and Lively share four kids — daughters James (10), Inez (9), and Betty (6), plus their son Olin, who is apparently the Green Lantern superfan in residence.
About that 'dad vs. son' energy
Reynolds also hit Late Night with Seth Meyers in October and joked about the adjustment that comes with having a boy after three girls. His words: three girls are 'just so easy,' while the boy 'has gotta break everything,' and he feels 'in direct competition' with him. He even cracked that if they had started with three boys, he would 'never' have gone for a fourth kid and would give himself a 'punching vasectomy.' Some fans did not love that punchline — not exactly shocking if you are familiar with his sense of humor — but he delivered it with the same chaotic-dad energy he brings to most late-night couches.
Green Lantern is currently streaming on Max (formerly HBO Max), if you want to see the movie that launched a marriage and turned into a teachable moment — and yes, the one a certain Reynolds kid will not stop replaying.