Jack Black's Canceled Green Lantern Movie Could Have Changed DC Forever

The Green Lantern is probably the best superhero to be named after a piece of camping equipment. 

I jest, of course, but I think even the character's most die-hard fans would have to admit that the Green Lantern is a surreal concept. The character belongs to a corps of high-powered space police who said about the cosmos under the power of magical rings that glow with a green light. Green, it seems, is the physical manifestation of willpower, and the Green Lantern Corps are just suffused with it, allowing them to wield their rings as weapons. The rings allow them to manifest any object they can imagine, at least temporarily, constructed out of green light. There's more lore as well, but detailing every last bit of Green Lantern mythology would have us both punching our computer monitors in frustration. 

Nevertheless, the Green Lantern, in all his iterations, has remained a consistent part of DC Comics lore since his modern inception in 1959. He is usually a big part of superhero team-ups, even if he is behind Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Cyborg, and the Flash on the Justice League roster. 

It seems that a comedic film about the Green Lantern might be appropriate, as a real-life version of the character would likely have to repeatedly explain his powers to people. He's weird and confusing, and one might be able to — if we're to allow our superheroes to be treated with a little irreverence — picture an eternally frustrated, somewhat buffoonish version of the character. Purist Green Lantern fans would hate that, but perhaps a mass audience would respond? 

That, at least, was the hope of Robert Smigel and Jack Black who, back in 2006, penned a comedy draft of "Green Lantern" for Warner Bros., replete with satire and gleeful disrespect for the character. /Film covered that script a few years back, based on a 2011 interview with Vanity Fair. Fans, it seems (according to Den of Geek), ultimately put the kibosh on the film, thinking it wasn't reverent enough. 

The premise of Smigel's film was that one doesn't require any sort of skills to be Green Lantern. The ring, by Green Lantern lore, just has to "choose" you (based on an ineffable sense of dignity), and you suddenly have the powers of a (green) god. Jack Black was to play a talentless reality TV star named Jud — the type who eats weird things on camera — that the ring mistakenly identifies as noble. It seems there was a malfunction in the computer belonging to Abin Sur, the alien who previously wore the ring. The ring would magically land on Jud's finger just as he was eating an uncooked coyote carcass.

Jud would then have been forced to join the Green Lantern Corps, reluctantly becoming a fighter for peace and justice. Smigel noted that, while Jack Black was to play a comedy version of the character, the earnest, po-faced presentation of Green Lantern's world would remain intact. The mythology would go unaltered. Indeed, Smigel was aiming to adapt the "Emerald Dawn" story that was published by DC Comics in 1989 and 1990. Just with a guy who eats coyotes. Also with puppets and musical numbers. And a hero that wears a fanny pack. And scenes where villains are trapped inside giant green condoms. All of those things were in his script. 

Smigel recalled in the Vanity Fair interview that an early draft of his script had leaked online, and fans were outraged. Online forums erupted with objections, most of them using very, very colorful language. The studio heads at Warner Bros. immediately caught wind of the objections and were suddenly less amenable to making a crass comedy version of "Green Lantern." 

Warner Bros. shot down the Smigel/Black film, electing instead to do a straight, "serious" version of the character. "Green Lantern" starring Ryan Reynolds came out in 2011. 

Perhaps the comedy version would have been better. 

Those who saw Martin Campbell's 2011 "Green Lantern" can tell you that the Smigel version might have been the superior option after all. "Green Lantern" was widely panned by critics and reviled by fans for its dumb script and bad pacing. Many disliked the Green Lantern suit that was constructed out of CGI. The $200 million film only made $237 at the box office, making it a huge bomb for the studio. Ryan Reynolds would mock "Green Lantern" in his 2016 film "Deadpool," saying that Deadpool's superhero suit shouldn't be green ... or animated. In "Deadpool 2," the title character traveled back in time and murdered the real-world Ryan Reynolds before he had a chance to star in "Green Lantern." The film was a literal punchline. 

Green Lantern had a cameo appearance in "Justice League" and turned up here and there in animated projects (like "The LEGO Movie"), but the 2011 film pretty much killed off any mainstream interest that Warner Bros. might have had in the character. Would the Jack Black version have been better? It's hard to say. It certainly would have openly lampooned a character that many DC Comics fans liked, but that might not have been a bad thing. If "Green Lantern" had been funny, then perhaps a lot would have been forgiven. Of course, Smigel understood the problems with his approach. He said in Vanity Fair: 

"I mean, if I were a diehard Green Lantern fan, I would have waited many years — watching all of these other superhero movies like Daredevil get their turn — and I would be very frustrated to hear that it's finally going to be done as a comedy. I wouldn't just feel screwed; I would also see it as a personal affront that the superhero that I've been worshiping is looked at as a joke." 

But if it had worked, we might be living in a world of widespread superhero comedies. It's a universe I have the imagination to picture.