Some people are not set up for science fiction or fantasy at all. Will Smith is a borderline case, though.
Didn’t you do a sci-fi with his kid? I’ve never seen it and I have no idea what it was about or what it was called but I’m sure it was a sci-fi.
I think with The Matrix specifically it has to do with the physicality. Late 90s Will Smith was in shape and could do big, bombastic action, but I can’t imagine him doing precise martial arts moves without it looking like a comedy.
So what? He’s still doing fine. Was he supposed to be in every blockbuster ever made?
He also won an Oscar. Keanu didn’t. I don’t think that doing Matrix or Inception would have a big impact on his career.
Will smiths thing is most similar to dwayne johnson, he wanted to be the LEAD or the most prominent actor and not the side character
What do you mean, he played the genie, and, oh right…
Django Unchained too.
Thank the lord!
Yeah, no joke lol. Jamie Foxx absolutely knocked it out the park.
I thought they considered Smith for DiCaprios role, like in Inception.
For a moment I got him and Matt Smith confused and wondered why he would have has anything to do with Inception.
Edit: came out in 2010, so scratch that thought. For a moment I had a mental collapse and thought it came out late 90s.
Matt Smith as neo would be amazing
- You hear that mr Anderson? The sound of inevitability.
- My name is the Doctor!
I imagine him throwing some Bad Boys type energy into the lobby shootout.
Sean Connery turned down both Gandalf in Lord of the Rings and Morpheus in The Matrix because he didn’t understand the scripts. He turned down Dumbledore in Harry Potter because it was too fantastical. Then he tried a reverse approach where he accepted the next role he didn’t understand, because clearly that was where the money was at. So he accepted Allan Quartermain in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a movie which flopped hard. Then he ragequit the industry and retired.
I love that movie, I thought he did great in it too
And that car, though.
I mean, it had nothing to do with him, but still. Goddamn sexy car.
Same here. It’s a fun action romp with some interesting characters. I get that it’s not peak cinema but it’s still good.
Some of the CGI in it is insanely good too (the invisible man), Corridor Crew did a react episode or two about it.
The movie made a decent bit of money, just terrible reviews.
Will Smith would have been disastrous in The Matrix and now I want to see it
I get what you mean/agree, but to play devil’s advocate, his character in Enemy of the State could’ve sorta worked as Neo.
It is crazy how I always think of that movie as “early career Will Smith before he became famous quippy superstar” but it released between Men In Black and Wild Wild West.
There would be too many wisecracks. Did keanu even smile as Neo?
well , excuse me for the AI haters out there. But we gotta do this.
Seedance, c’mon boy, DO IT!!!
Will Smith as NEO in the Matrix.
EDIT: I found one, a year old but it checks out
You get that we wanted dialogue right? We can all imagine Will Smith in a leather jacket with slow motion bullets moving around him.
Every time someone who is pro AI tries to advocate for it it always comes off as their brain having turned to porridge. You get we can see that image in our minds, we don’t need it visualised for us at the expense of half an olympic swimming pool worth of water and at least six trees.
I was thinking, thank god he turned it down.
Inception, on the other hand - I can’t recall any of the characters, so I don’t know which role he was considering. It’s a perfect Will Smith movie.
If memory serves me right the protagonist in Inception was confused a lot and Wil can pull off confused.
If memory serves me right the protagonist in Inception was confused a lot
Dicarpio’s character wasn’t confused, you may be thinking of Elliot Page’s character, but I wouldn’t count that character as the main protagonist.
I barely remember it. I was pretty high at the time.
Real eyes realize.
… real lies
I’m imagining his robot hating Detective Spooner from iRobot, walking around the matrix being pissed off. Or in inception confused and pissed off.
Most likely Leo DeCaprio’s role.
Imagine the tie-in music video he would have done.
Given that he turned it down for Wild Wild West, use that as a basis.
With the squid machines doing hip hop dances in the background
Woo, ha-ha ha-ha.
AI BROS, DO YOUR THING!
It’s just an infinite number of Will Smiths eating an infinite amount of spaghetti.
Fixed
This feels like a spot-the-difference thing, and I’m failing badly. I can’t tell what changed.
Statement vs question
?
?
From the interview I heard they pitched the matrix terribly.
Back in the late 90s, I have no idea how you’d pitch that any other way. It’s a miracle that movie got made.
I believe even the Wachowski’s said they pitched it terribly. Apparently they focused on bullet time and did a terrible job explaining it. So nothing made sense. Then you realize it was a new age Film Noire, and that wasn’t exactly going to entice funding. Other than Keanu Reeves I don’t think any of the cast was well known, and I’m not even sure how big Keanu Reeves was. Other than Speed it was an odd assortment of movies for him.
Here’s will smith https://youtu.be/hm2szuXKgL8&t=70
Keanu was big. Bill & Ted was iconic, after that he was in Point Break, a fairly successful action flick and Speed was massive. Yeah he did some more niche stuff like Johnny Mnemonic, but makes me think he makes more sense for something like the Matrix. Will Smith opted for Wild Wild West over Matrix, which obviously wasn’t a success, but fit with the kinds of movies he was doing at the time.
Makes sense for a guy to go from Speed to Johnny Mnemonic to the Matrix, and it also makes sense for a guy to go from Bad Boys to Independence Day to Men in Black to Wild Wild West.
Keanu was famous, but the way I remember it he wasn’t a huge box office draw yet.
Challenging ideas
really?
IDK he might be, he certainly is a dick. but also you don’t usually get to read the whole script (definitely not the final script) before choosing to accept a role, they may only get a scene, maybe just an elevator pitch etc.
But he took Wild Wild West, Hancock, and I Am Legend. Okay.
Hancock was fantastic, fuck the ending being coherent it’s an action comedy
It’s not just the very ending, unless you mean the entire 2nd half… it just felt like there were two entirely different movies made, and they took the first half of one and haphazardly grafted it on to the second half of the other. The tonal whiplash alone was crazy.
I feel like that sort of movie mismatched has happened a lot over the years. I figure that producer meddling or overfitting to test-screening reactions is typically the cause.
“It’s [current year] blazing saddles.”
“It’s Martian manhunter but demon in a bottle”
“It’s Dracula, but from Dracula’s perspective.”
They’re interesting premises and easily understood. I can’t knock smith for choosing them. You never know what’ll end up on the editor’s floor. There might have been a better cut somewhere in there
I wonder if someone explained to him The Matrix is a transgender allegory.
I only ever heard this pop up after the sisters transitioned. I really dont get it? Its so much about freeing yourself from the cycle of control and misinformation that was prevalent even in the 90s
They also wanted the character Switch to be trans and switch genders between the Martix and Real Life, but the executives stopped it.
It can be a transgender allegory, but that’s just one valid interpretation.
Like Smith literally keeps dead naming Neo through the whole film. It’s about breaking free from the world that controls you to be who you’re supposed to be.
I didn’t think of it until I heard the theory either but when you look back on it, it’s definitely there.
In school my RE teacher was trying to tell me about how so many films are about Jesus.
TBF I love the Matrix and I had heard that before so I mentioned it and she said “yeah thats a good one”
But so many things can secretly mean something if you really want it to. Really the good guy goes through growth and saves everyone then dies. Is basically like the main story humans like to tell. 90’s was big on “the world isn’t what you see it is. It’s broken and we can build something new” like fight club, is that a trans move? Is that about Jesus? I dont think so.
Not trans but I see how it’s an allegory. You live your life with how people expect you to be, while in reality you’re in a good-filled pod pretending to be normal.
It goes to show how deep gender dysphoria is. It’s not just how you present to other people, but how you exist in the real universe, not the projection that society places on everyone, enforced by secret forces that are so deep in the bedrock of reality that they possess the bodies of anyone to enforce their wills.
Also now I get why trans folks use the term eggs.
(Man my high school English teachers would be proud of me for this.)
Damn I didn’t notice that about the agents, you’re right. When you’re trans, anyone on the street or even your family can transform into a monster that wants to kill you.
I’m proud of you right now! Hell yes!
-a trans woman
Its so much about freeing yourself from the cycle of control and misinformation
Yeah, like being trans
Clearly no one told Elon.
Alot of Scientologists I see as using it as a way to grift and enrich themselves. Smith I can see being dumb enough to fall for it.
Well, hindsight is 20/20, but he also doesn’t have the best history of choosing hits. Maybe it’s his manager? Maybe he’s dumb.
He’s definitely an asshole, though.
