Can a Green Lantern Corps Film Work After the Ridicule from Deadpool?

Before Justice League, before Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Wonder Woman and even Man of Steel, there was Green Lantern. The Ryan Reynolds-starring film was produced by Warner Bros. in the hopes of launching a shared cinematic universe to rival Marvel's, which was only just coming into its own back in 2011. Green Lantern was supposed to be the opening salvo of the DC Extended Universe, the start of a wide, cosmic tapestry of films... until the film was released, and people actually saw it. Sadly, the result was a far cry from the epic stories of DC's comics and the movie was ultimately deemed a massive failure.

Critics despised the film, and audiences couldn't find much to get excited about it either. Even though a sequel was set up in the movie's mid-credits scene, a follow-up movie never materialized due to a combination of incredibly poor audience reception and a disappointing box office haul. In fact, the result was so bad that Warner Bros. ultimately decided to pretend like the film never happened, relaunching its shared universe from scratch in 2013 with Zack Snyder's Man of Steel.

The DCEU may not be the success that Warner Bros. would hope for, but that hasn't stopped the studio from expanding the tapestry of its DC films universe by green-lighting many different projects. Among the movies currently in development is Green Lantern Corps, a film that was recently confirmed to be written by former Chief Creative Officer of DC Entertainment Geoff Johns. But the question really needs to asked: Is there room in the public's heart for another Green Lantern film, or has the franchise been permanently damaged?

A Regrettable Place in Pop Culture

Ever since its release, people have been quite hard on Green Lantern. It started with the more obvious complaints, about the lack of depth and pathos in the film, and how the visual effects left much to be desired. Most fans agreed that the digital costume was a mistake' it was, frankly, terrible, and poorly rendered. On top of that, most agreed that the depiction of Parallax as nothing more than a menacing(?) cloud was a terrible adaptation of the living embodiment of fear, which in the comics is depicted as a terrifying monster.

As bad as the immediate reaction was, it only grew worse over time. As the Marvel Cinematic Universe got bigger and Man of Steel properly kicked off the DCEU, people looked back at Green Lantern with even more disdain. To make matter even worse, all that got heightened with the release of Ryan Reynold's other superhero franchise, Deadpool. Wade Wilson's fourth wall-breaking jokes about Green Lantern's animated suit were appreciated by audiences, but it contributed in making "hating Green Lantern" the cool new thing in pop culture, to the point that Hal Jordan/Green Lantern was on equal grounds with Aquaman in terms of ridicule.

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Then, Deadpool 2 arguably put the final nail in the coffin of the Green Lantern franchise. In the sequel's mid-credits scene, a time-traveling Deadpool shot and killed Ryan Reynolds just as he finished reading the Green Lantern script, preventing the movie from ever getting made.

The scene was received with laughter by an audience who knew all to well of the DC film's failures, and the jokes continued on Twitter, with Warner Bros. itself joining in on the fun, asking for Reynolds' ring back. Even the upcoming Teen Titans Go! animated movie piled onto the film, as did one of the writers of Green Lantern.

At this point, everyone is in on the Green Lantern joke, and that will make it that much harder for a new film to be taken seriously.

How Green Lantern Corps Can Distance Itself from the Ridicule

All the way through its production, Green Lantern Corps will be facing an uphill battle. But, one thing that it does have in its favor is that the creative minds behind the project know the current public perception of the franchise. Comic readers know how great the Green Lantern stories are, how epic and grand and cosmic they are -- but the movie public has no idea. This is why writer Geoff Johns now has the opportunity to show everyone what a real Green Lantern film can look like.

With Green Lantern Corps, the franchise has a second chance to prove its worth as a space epic that can match, perhaps even outshine, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy. Geoff Johns' comic book run on the Green Lantern title was a rousing success that managed to redefine the Corps' place in the DC Universe, meaning that the writer knows exactly how to properly bring the title to the big screen. Since it's already been confirmed that the film will be inspired by Johns' comic run, then there is quite literally no limits to what this film can achieve. The Green Lantern mythology is filled with memorable villains, epic space battles and heroic and character-defining moments -- and these are exactly what should be at the heart of this new film.

For this movie, DC and Warner Bros. need to mine everything that made the comics great. There is hope yet for the Green Lantern franchise. A scorned public has been shown to give second chances to the X-Men, Spider-Man and even Aquaman. All they require is a product of quality. It won't be necessarily easy, but Green Lantern Corps needs to show, first and foremost, that it is nothing like its predecessor. It needs to travel far away from Earth and let the characters shine. It needs to take itself seriously and take its time in telling its own story. It shouldn't look like its more interested in telling the story of the sequel.

More than anything, Green Lantern Corps can't hold back. It has to go all in. No matter who is under the mask, whether it's Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Kyle Rayner, Guy Gardner, Simon Baz or Jessica Cruz, Green Lantern is no joke. And it's time everyone knows it.

The Green Lantern Corps film does not have a production start date yet, nor does it have an official cast or release date. The film will be penned by Geoff Johns, and it's said to star both Hal Jordan and John Stewart as the main characters. It's expected to drop some time in 2020.