Why The Deadpool Suit Is Way Better Than The Green Lantern Suit, According To Ryan Reynolds

The last time we saw Ryan Reynolds in a superhero movie it was 2011’s much-derided Green Lantern. He’s getting another shot at the genre by playing a more faithful version of Wade Wilson next year in Deadpool. With the Merc With The Mouth being his last superhero role, he hasn’t been shy with the heaps of praise, but it’s not just the character’s insane personality he loves. Reynolds also thinks Wade’s distinctive red costume is much better than what he wore during Green Lantern.

When asked by Screen Rant which costume he preferred, Reynolds said hands down it was the Deadpool suit, largely due to the fact that, unlike his Green Lantern duds, this is something he is actually able to wear. He said:

Oh, ‘Deadpool,’ you can’t even compare – I mean, it’s brutal doing a film where you’re wearing a motion capture suit for the whole time. Just as an actor it’s brutal, but like – a lot of people relate to [Deadpool] because he has cancer. So we worked a lot with the Make a Wish Foundation and those kids would come on set, and I loved hosting them. Because when I’d walk out in that suit, you’d watch their minds explode, and that felt amazing. And that’s something I never really got to experience before because there was no Green Lantern suit. I didn’t even get to see the Green Lantern suit until the first trailer. I never even knew what it looked like. So [‘Deadpool’] was a pretty great experience. I love having the tactile, real deal, all the time.

As Reynolds noted, his costume in Green Lantern was entirely CGI, and he only wore a motion capture suit while on set. Despite millions of dollars being poured into the visual effects budget, the Emerald Knight’s outfit (as well as his energy constructs, to be honest) didn’t end up looking great in the final product. The idea of making the costume all special effects worked in principle, since rather than pulling a costume out of a closet or duffel bag, Hal Jordan’s Green Lantern suit was generated by his power ring. Once the ring is taken off or runs out of a charge, the energy uniform disappears. Somewhere in the execution, however, the costume just ended up looking fake and unappealing.

Ryan Reynolds Green Lantern

As for Deadpool, we’ve seen many pictures of Reynolds wearing the costume in official photos and behind-the-scenes snapshots, and it looks practically identical to what Wade wears in the comics. He even humorously wore the garb on April Fool’s Day to "kill" Mario Lopez for suggesting that Deadpool would be better off being rated PG-13. Let’s not kid ourselves, though, anything would have looked better than that getup and makeup he wore as Weapon XI in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

You can seen Reynolds run around in his skin-tight red costume when Deadpool his theaters on February 12, 2016.

Adam Holmes
Senior Content Producer

Connoisseur of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, John Wick, MonsterVerse and Doctor Who lore, Adam is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend. He started working for the site back in late 2014 writing exclusively comic book movie and TV-related articles, and along with branching out into other genres, he also made the jump to editing. Along with his writing and editing duties, as well as interviewing creative talent from time to time, he also oversees the assignment of movie-related features. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Journalism, and he’s been sourced numerous times on Wikipedia. He's aware he looks like Harry Potter and Clark Kent.