Contrary to what the P&A budget for Minions will have you believe, there are other movies opening this weekend. It's a big weekend in the top markets for LGBT releases. And nationwide a horror movie (The Gallows) and a new sci-fi body swap thriller Self/Less starring Ben Kingsley & Ryan Reynolds are also opening. I read a headline yesterday lamenting

WTF happened to Ryan Reynolds's career?" 

Ryan Reynolds in his first real year of stardom (2002) and now (2015). Images from Buying the Cow and Self/Less

And I thought: Well... nothing. It's always been this way!

He first won semi-stardom in 2002 frequently displaying his then amazing body (it wasn't the norm for male stars to look like cartoon superheroes OUT of costume just 12 years ago) in the popular college comedy Van Wilder and the lesser seen romantic comedy Buying the Cow. Since then it's been a constant annual barrage of mainstream comedies, mainstream action and franchise pics, and mainsteam horror. Some of his movies were barely screened or went straight to DVD but even those were populist ventures. Either Reynolds or his management just haven't had ambitions outside the multiplex. This has only very recently begun to change with experiments like Buried (good) and The Voices (terrible) which fit comfortably into populist genres but still were plainly too weird --even in screenplay stages -- for mass appeal. He's been perpetually "on the verge" but has never achieved anything beyond the B list. Okay, the B+ list.

So how many of his 24 pictures (excluding voice work and cameos) have you seen since his 2002 breakthrough? The posters are after the jump...