Ryan Reynolds Gives Deadpool Word

There I was, totally concerned that you who are the lesser comic book savvy among us would confuse the Green Lantern with the Green Hornet. You may think all super heroes are the same, but there’s miles of difference between these two headliners, my friend. The first has a link to outer space, while the second has a martial arts expert for a sidekick and driver. It could be that the bigger concern is that you might confuse Ryan Reynolds’s two upcoming hero roles.

It is, after all, all about Mr. Reynolds. What’s not to love? He’s cute, he’s buff, he’s funny, he’s Canadian, and he’s married to Scarlett Johansson. He may also be the luckiest actor of all time in getting a chance to portray, not only Green Lantern, but Deadpool as well. Our hope is audiences won’t confuse the two films. But then, how could they?

Deadpool is a Marvel character. He has an unmistakable red and black costume that completely obscures his face. Known affectionately to fan boys world wide as “the merc with the mouth”, he’s a mercenary for hire with an infamous wit. In fact, the LA Times wrote, the “antihero, manufactured by a sinister government program to be a murderous machine, is mentally unstable and morally slippery, which makes for an interesting challenge for the actor.”

Actor Ryan Reynold himself confirmed this, saying, “With Deadpool, it’s a lot like going to prison for the first day. You got to walk up and hit the biggest guy you see to establish a bit of cred. With Deadpool, early on you have to establish that moral flexibility. There’s a gamble to it — you’re going to lose a few people right at the beginning but you take the gamble and know that eventually you’re going to win them back. You won’t lose the hard-core fans of the character, they already know who he is. We have to play to a broader audience than that. As an actor you have to be willing to do something like … back in Vancouver we used to call it a [nasty] burger. ’You gotta eat the [nasty] burger to get to the cookies.’ And yes, I want to write a cookbook about that…”

I told you he was funny.

Reynolds said Deadpool, to be a Robert Rodriguez project, “goes in such a different direction than a superhero movie usually goes. It’s a nasty piece of work. It’s just based in so much emotional filth, completely. It’s like ‘Barfly‘ if it were a superhero movie. It sort of treads into the world of an emotionally damaged person. I always say that Deadpool is a guy in a highly militarized shame spiral…”

But don’t feel too bad for the actor portraying him. Remember he also gets to be the Air Force Boy Scout, Green Lantern, hitting theaters with his power ring in 2011. I even hear a sequel is already being penned. And now you’ll never confuse two super heroes again. I’ll make sure of that!