Ryan Reynolds Says “Green Lantern” Taught Him “Constraint Is The Greatest Creative Tool”

Ryan Reynolds had a big laugh at himself when he admitted that his two-year-old son, Olin, thinks Green Lantern is “the best movie ever.” But the 48-year-old actor made it clear that, behind the kid’s grin, he learned some of the toughest lessons of his career on the 2011 DC Comics flop.

Speaking at the TIME 100 Summit in New York City on April 23, Ryan said he walked onto the Green Lantern set and watched “a lot of money being spent on special effects and all sorts of stuff” instead of actual storytelling. He remembered pitching a simple scene where characters just talked.

As he recalled; “I don’t know. There could be a fun exchange of dialogue. It doesn’t cost anything. And they would say, ‘Just spectacle. Spectacle.'”

That push for shiny visuals over real moments taught him something he still carries today: constraint is the greatest creative tool. “…Too much money, too much time wrecks creativity. It just murders it,” he explained. “So, anyway, character over spectacle was the lesson that I took with me, in retrospect. I look back now, it’s what really shapes my point of view.”

Ryan’s take comes more than a decade after he wore the green ring as test pilot Hal Jordan. The movie stumbled at the box office and with critics, but on that very set he met Blake Lively, who would become his wife and the mother of their four children.

Before Green Lantern, Ryan briefly played a version of Wade Wilson in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009). He’d later bring Wade back to life in 2016’s Deadpool, giving the wisecracking antihero the solo film he deserved and turning it into a massive hit. Now, he says, he’s carried those early experiences into every new project.

At the summit, Ryan teased that he’s writing something new for Deadpool as part of an ensemble cast, but he’s cautious. “I like that he’s isolated,” he said. “If Deadpool becomes an Avenger or an X-Man, we’re at the end. That’s his wish fulfillment, and we can’t give him that for a long time.”