15 years later, Green Lantern remains Ryan Reynolds' most important failure

Fifteen years after its release, Green Lantern remains one of the biggest failures of Ryan Reynolds' career. He plays Hal Jordan, a test pilot chosen by a cosmic ring to join the Green Lantern Corps and confront Parallax, but the film squandered a huge budget on excessive CGI and a thin script.

In its second weekend it was eclipsed by Cars 2 and Bad Teacher and ultimately lost an estimated $75 million for Warner Bros.; it holds 25 percent from critics and 45 percent from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. Reynolds has said the production lacked a functioning script and a clear identity, and later reflected that too much money and too much time wreck creativity.

The experience taught him to trust his own voice: he accepted that if his name would headline a flop, he would rather be the architect of that outcome. Before Green Lantern he had worked to convince 20th Century Fox to make a proper Deadpool film after an ill-received turn as Wade Wilson in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

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