Recently GQ sat down with Ryan Reynolds, start of the upcoming Deadpool movie, and asked him about his return to superhero films, possible superhero fatigue and his take on Fantastic Four. The Interview is pretty long, but I’ll only put in the parts that I feel matter.
The first big question was about Reynolds playing Hal Jordan, Green Lantern, and all the backlash he received from it.
I mean, I don’t give a rusty fuck, because—I know that this is gonna sound like some sort of guy who’s spent a little bit of time in a monastery or something, but it all led to here. If I had to do it all again, I’d do the exact same thing. You know, also,Green Lantern—you gotta remember, at the time, everyone was gunning for that role. The guys I was screen-testing against are amazing talents. [Reynolds reportedly beat out Bradley Cooper, Justin Timberlake, and Jared Leto for the role.] But would I change it? No! And if it was as big a success, then it might have offered a whole different avenue of opportunities, or maybe I would just be kind of always that guy. I really don’t know.
I was unaware that so many big leading men were vying for that role, but Bradley Cooper went on to voice Rocket Racoon and Jared Leto is The Joker, so it didn’t turn out that bad for them.
The interviewer goes right into Deadpool. With the experience of being in one of the most disliked superhero movies Reynolds was asked if he was reluctant to go back and do a superhero movie.
A little bit. But Deadpool was different because there wasn’t a big budget attached to it. There was not a tremendous responsibility to meet some kind of bottom line. Those kinds of superhero movies when you’re out front, there’s a vast and quite frightening budget attached to them. This one had a super-reasonable budget, and it was subversive and a little bit different, and to me a little refreshing in the comic-book world. But you always have trepidation. When you’re out front, you have trepidation.
Then he was asked about how Reynolds feels about not being a leading mean, but not because of his looks
Because the character is called the Merc with a Mouth, and you have to explain that somehow. He can’t just be this guy who’s walking around and looks like a normal guy who’s just super-obnoxious. There has to be a reason for it. And the reason for it is because he looks like that.
Next the topic of superhero fatigue came up. The question of audiences not being in it as they used to be, which resulted in low Fantastic Four number came up
It’s a genre. There are good horror movies and bad horror movies. There are good comedies and bad comedies. Think of it like that. Think of it less about just superheroes. I do believe that they explore similar archetypes a lot, so I think that notion can be somewhat fatiguing, maybe. I think one of the reasons that Deadpool has gained a lot of momentum isn’t just that it’s funny or isn’t just that it’s rated R. The meta aspect is very important. So I think Deadpool’s coming along at the right time, because it’s also speaking to that generation and that group of people that have seen them all, seen all these comic-book films and enjoyed them all to varying degrees of success. But I think it’s speaking to them as though the guy in that red suit is one of them, to some degree.
The interviewer takes the end of that quote and refers to the audience as a someone who cracks wise as they are watching a movie
Yeah. It’s like there’s an element of, like, watching a DVD commentary by someone who’s got some pop-culture savvy and is kind of funny and a little obnoxious and is saying the things that you maybe wouldn’t say. It’s fun. That’s also why the film is budgeted the way it’s budgeted, is released the way it’s released, is allowed to be rated R, kind of all these things. Because for the studio, it’s actually relatively low-risk.
The whole interview can be found in this months issue of GQ, where you can also find Reynolds on the cover.