But Reynolds’s glib, self-satisfied take certainly didn’t help things. We first meet the character dashing out on a one night stand and joking about how he forgot her name. At work, Jordan participates in a flight exercise against a drone that his employer hopes to use to secure a much-needed government contract. Instead, Jordan chooses to show off his pilot skills, making the drone look bad, destroying his jet, and losing the company the contract. When Jordan gets the power ring that gives him his Green Lantern abilities, he first uses it against a couple of guys who are mad at him… because he got them all laid off when he decided to show off against the drone.
Again, all of these story problems come from the writers and the director. But Reynolds delivers all of his lines with maximum snark, because that’s the tone he does best. Stan, however, can certainly play a stoic hero. But as his indie work shows, he’s great at playing weird losers and frustrated sad boys. In other words, he could have taken that same material, scenes that ask us to cheer when Hal Jordan is a selfish jerk, and made them interesting.
Alas, it didn’t happen, so Green Lantern flopped and the concept disappeared from live action until Nathan Fillion popped up as Guy Gardner, a different Green Lantern jerk, in last year’s Superman. Later this year, Kyle Chandler will try his hand playing an older and hopefully wiser Hal Jordan alongside Aaron Pierre as John Stewart in the HBO series Lanterns.
As for Stan, things worked out pretty well, by his own admission. “Looking back, I’m almost glad it didn’t [work], because I don’t know if I could have handled that level of attention like some of those guys,” he conceded. Clearly, he can handle it now, whether in indies, the MCU, or the DC Universe.
