Will Smith would have been disastrous in The Matrix and now I want to see it
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.
They were probably thinking of Cillian Murphy’s character
I’m imagining his robot hating Detective Spooner from iRobot, walking around the matrix being pissed off. Or in inception confused and pissed off.
Real eyes realize.
… real lies
Most likely Leo DeCaprio’s role.
Imagine the tie-in music video he would have done.
With the squid machines doing hip hop dances in the background
Woo, ha-ha ha-ha.
Given that he turned it down for Wild Wild West, use that as a basis.
uh-huh yeah ha ha woo uh huh am I dreaming or is this real, sleep all day, gotta get that feel ha ha yeah oh uh the city is spinning, but ya see ha ha I ain’t dipping. gotta get the reception, ha ha yeah woo it’s an inception!
🫶
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.
Don’t forget Will Smith was a Rapper and DJ first, ended up deep in a financial hole because he didn’t save any money for taxes following his musical success, took the role on Fresh Prince to try to keep the lights on and then Fresh Prince ended up being super successful and leading him to his second and even more successful career in acting
There would be too many wisecracks. Did keanu even smile as Neo?
Yup. I think if will smith had done it, it would be a completely different movie and may not have been as much a runaway success as it was
I know kung fu
Agreed, but I also firmly believe there is another universe in which we could believably type “Keanu Reeves would have been disastrous in The Matrix”
It would have been a very different movie. So, maybe people couldn’t picture Keanu in that forgettable action comedy called The Matrix. But, Keanu did show he could do comedy. His first big movie was Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. He’d also done Parenthood. In addition, he’d shown he could do action movies / thrillers with a bit of comedy when he did Speed, and fairly serious action movies with Point Break.
Will Smith has done plenty of action movies, but all of them are at least somewhat comedic. He’s shown he can do serious roles too, like Happyness, 7 Pounds, etc. But, I don’t think you’d hire him for a science fiction action movie without having him do some comedy. I’m sure Will Smith could do a straight dramatic science fiction action movie with no comedy, but AFAIK he’s never done it.
IMO Keanu is a much more limited actor than Will Smith. But, The Matrix played to his strengths.
I’m sure Will Smith could do a straight dramatic science fiction action movie with no comedy, but AFAIK he’s never done it.
I Am Legend is probably the closest.
It has been a while since I saw it, but you’re right. I mostly remember it as drama, not comedy.
There are Ai clips now on YouTube where they replace actors in famous movies, like putting Tom Cruise in the matrix or whatever.
I dont watch them because I dont want my nice memories of these movies to be overwritten, but it shows how easy it is today to do.
I just want to see the whole “AI Will Smith chewing” video posted into some Matrix parts now. Someone make it happen. I believe in you.
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.
AI BROS, DO YOUR THING!
It’s just an infinite number of Will Smiths eating an infinite amount of spaghetti.
I still appreciate that he actually acted out the AI clips of him eating spaghetti
Edit: found it on Instagram and I could watch the clip in a private tab successfully, didn’t see any better hosts on a quick search though
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
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.
And that car, though.
I mean, it had nothing to do with him, but still. Goddamn sexy car.
Honestly, Sean Connery as Gandalf would have been shit.
But imagine him ‘asking harry calmly’
The movie made a decent bit of money, just terrible reviews.
He was interviewed by Czech TV during the premiere and was asked if the viewers should go see it. He said that he’s getting paid for every ticket sold and therefore yes! Everyone should see it!
I remember liking LOEG
I recently rewatched it and it was a good romp for sure. I never read the comics but apparently it was super unlike the comics it was based on which was part of its problem. Generally pissing off your core audience of fans in an adaptation is bad for the outcome of the movie
Worked for Constantine!
That’s the only one I know of.
As someone who has never read the Constantine comics, I enjoyed the movie with Keanu Reeves. I haven’t re-watched it in years though, so I wonder if it holds up.
I watch it at least once a year, including earlier this year, and it absolutely holds up.
Made me laugh. I dont know how true it is but its funny. :)
Sean Connery also came out of retirement to be part of this monstrosity
Holy shit, I never even heard of that, and the poster gives me an idea why. Was this by request from his grandkids or something?
According the Wikipedia page he did it as a favor to the creators. They do not have their own Wikipedia page so I have no idea how they know him. The film was pretty much universally hated for virtually every aspect.
Sir Billi received extremely negative reviews from critics and audiences. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 0%, based on eight reviews, with an average rating of 2.3/10. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 17 out of 100, based on 4 critics, indicating “overwhelming dislike”.
This article says the director was a friend of a friend, and “the first animated film made in Scotland” played on his national pride.
It also says I got the order wrong, and that he declined all those roles after The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/bizarre-story-sean-connerys-final-film/
I’m so glad he skips movies he would have ruined
Strongly agree. As an actor Will Smith always brings some sass to movies. I feel like he would’ve ruined a few scenes. Especially him teasing Agent Smith unnecessarily.
He slapped a man on national television because he made a joke about his wife. That wasn’t even a mean joke, it was just in somewhat bad taste. (He was also laughing at the joke until he saw his wife roll her eyes at it)
He is quite dumb
She’s basically his boss tbh. It does not seem like a healthy relationship
She fucks other dudes and talks about it on TV. She’s his Dom, and an unhealthy one.
He didn’t want to have to go home in the same limo with her screaming at him for not defending her in front of the whole world. So he destroyed his Oscar winning night, his reputation, and his career, because he was too afraid of her acting like a psychopath.
And she probably did it anyway.
I’ve been in that relationship too. It really fucks with you.
Yeah but, what if you could star in this instead?
A cool thing about being tone deaf is that I can’t tell who voices who.
A sad thing is I can’t tell hot water vs cold water being poured. Finding out people could do that seemed like a super power to me.
I usually just wait for a subtle hints of steam building up inside the boiler. To be clear, i think shark tale is really not bad, at all. But it’s weird. I have a dvd of this movie
How is this different from regular deafness?
The problem is that there’s no such thing as “regular” deafness (same for blindness). It’s a spectrum with several different types.
You can be deaf but still capable of hearing, and you can be blind and still be capable of seeing. Although in a diminished capacity.
In the case of being tone deaf, you struggle to differentiate different pitches.
I can hear, I just hear things more monotone.
I can tell accents and volume levels apart though. Tonal languages are very difficult.
I have never even thought about this
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…
His acting as the genie was OK. But it was very clear that he was acting in the shadow of Robin Williams for that role. It is kinda hard to move away from that one however.
Agreed and his personality takes over the story which works for men in black but I don’t think it would for the matrix.
Wild Wild West was ok too
He also turned down Django Unchained. Will Smith is just shit at picking roles.
Thank God. He would have ruined it.
Will can’t help but be himself in a movie. Instead of… You know… “Act”.
I don’t want the alternate Django Unchained where Will Smith starts rappin and getting jiggy with it.
he’s also extremely dedicated to maintaining his brand. turning down Django Unchained does feel like a HUGE wiff to me though. Django is basically Deadshot if Deadshot lived in the Antebellum South (presumably after the California gold rush since he spends some time in Colorado). maybe Tarantino films can’t ever fit the Will Smith toxic positivity brand?
Yea, but isn’t a kind of big part of his brand that he is technically family friendly? Like he didn’t use bad language in his music and stuff, right? Django Unchained but rated PG-13 would have been an entirely different movie…
Why does Will Smith in Django Unchained make me think of Wow Wow.
I mean, he’s picked plenty of bangers.
Sometimes there’s scheduling conflicts. Sometimes a director casts a wide net, knowing he’s going to get a bunch of rejections. Sometimes you get roped into a project as a favor or a quid pro quo (Vin Disel coming back for a cameo in FF: Tokyo Drift to get Chronicles of Riddick made, only to end up making nine more movies and counting) and it changes your career.
I honestly can’t think of the last will smith movie I enjoyed
Gemini was kind of entertaining, but I wouldn’t go as far as calling it “good”.
I wasn’t bored while watching it, but I wouldn’t really recommend it to anyone.
EXACTLY.
Bad Boys for Life was fun.
I don’t get people sometimes. Here’s a hollywood elite who thinks they have the ability to physically assault another person (and so fucking brazenly in front of the whole world) and never be held responsible. Fuck Will Smith and anything he profits from including recognition of past performances. Comments in here are acting like a bunch of wannabe-nostalgia-cucks who don’t care as long as the individual did a silly little dance and entertained them some. Dude needs serious rehabilitation and a reality check which will never come to him because people would rather talk about his performances instead of the actual person.
Also, yes. He dumb.
All the way, my brother! Fuck Will Smith and his whole fucking family.
maybe he just didnt get the point of the story or something. I dont think you can act well if you cant get into the character
In general, will smith has always been an action type of guy in his roles, but to do that he always needed to have clear motivations. I guess a nested dream in a dream isn’t functional for this type of actor.
Well, and the fact that back then these movies were almost a gamble you know, like now we treat them as cult classics, but than they were absolutely new and nobody know what they were about.
I’m sure Keano was the right choice there. I could see him handling the Matrix if he walked into it in bewilderment like the original Men in Black movie. He’d be fine up until somewhere around the Oracle. I think when things started coming together, and he needed to start commanding his own destiny, the suspension of disbelief would have dropped.
I suppose I could see Inception as being a very risky film based on the script, to be completely fair
and at the time, that was only a third of the way through Nolan’s career as a blockbuster director. not even, actually
I dunno if I would call Inception a gamble, it’s Christopher Nolan
Maybe Will Smith actually tried to read Baudrillard to get a grip on some basic concepts behind the movie. However, english translations of Baudrillard are fucking awful and borderline unreadable (common issue with scary french philosophers for some reason) so he gave up. Also - fuck Will Smith. Denzel should’ve starred in The Enemy of the State.
Timely reference to Baudrillard with his map metaphor. Nice.
it would be really funny if someone making Borges’ On Exactitude in Science adaptation starring Keanu Reeves and Steve Coogan as his evil twin
Would you believe that Denzel had made the call?
dunno. but he would’ve been infinitely better than Will Smith.
Nah sure, giant mecha-spider in the Wild West is more straightforward I guess.
(Speaking of which Kevin Smith did a ride of a story about a superman movie that never got made, which ties into that very same Mecha-spider)
I enjoy Kevin Smith story time far more than his movies.
I think you mean the Thanagarian Snare-beast.
Superman hides behind a rock
Wild West was a fantastic movie and I’m sad they never mad a sequel.
Oh I’m not knocking it, I thought it was a good movie. Hell I should watch it again sometime.
Will Smith has that particular balance between a huge blockbuster story but bringing it with his particular comedy factor. I don’t like him as much in serious tone stuff. In that regard he probably made the right choice with the Matrix.
Ever heard about his wife?
He has a wife, you know?Her name is Infragantia… Infragantia Cuckolds
HOW DARE YOU
The bald one?
👊
Making fun of a black woman for alopecia is kinda low… You’re better than that. At least I hope so.
Some people are not set up for science fiction or fantasy at all. Will Smith is a borderline case, though.
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.
Thats what we all said about Keanu. He was a joke at the time. Or rather basically type cast. Even in the more serious roles he was pretty goofy. Speed comes to mind. The Matrix gave me and many i know a bigger liking for the young silly Ted Logan.
Point Break? I think Keanu was a heart throb who could do action, but who had started in comedy. Will Smith was more a comedic actor who could do action, but was mostly doing action-comedy.
Yeah but that would go both ways. Imagine he did the matrix and it maybe worked out. People would now be like: can you imagine the shitty actor Keanu Reeves was going to play neo in the matrix?
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.
He’s done quite a bit of sci-fi! Off the top of my head I can think of
- Men in Black
- I, Robot
- I am Legend
- Independence Day
Basically the same character in all those movies. Not a criticism but it’s the same dude. Neo is not a bad ass running down a cephalopod. He’s learning and adapting to a system and using his mind. I just dont see it working out as well as he is a front man, not a team. He takes over the story with personality.
None of those films feature any science.
Neither does The Matrix, but it’s still firmly planted in the realm of science fiction.
That’s why it is called science fiction!
Oh yeah I’d forgotten he was in independent day. That’s not a slight against him, I’ve just not seen it in ages.
The only reason I didn’t include things like I robot as sci-fi is it’s only surface level sci-fi. You could easily have made it be about Orcs and demons and it would have fitted.
I was trying to think if he had been in any hard sci-fi and the only thing I can think of is that film with his kid in it. No idea what it was called.
I watch Independence Day every 4th of July, but what I like to call the “abridged version” where I watch until the aliens blow up the White House and then I’m done =)
After Earth. It’s kinda lightweight as far as sci fi goes.
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.
Yeah, he was huge. Stallone and Schwarzenegger were bigger names for purely action movies. But, Keanu and Tom Cruise were the action stars who the teenage girls wanted to watch.
I think it’s all the years of Fresh Prince of Bel Air that makes me think of Will Smith as primarily a comedic actor at that point. Because, he and Keanu really had a similar path. They started with comedy and then proved they could do action. I guess Will Smith’s action movies were a bit more action comedy. Men in Black is definitely a sci fi action comedy. Bad Boys was an action comedy. Independence Day wasn’t really a sci fi action comedy, but he did punch out an alien. But, Will Smith did do Enemy of the State, and I don’t remember much comedy in that. For Keanu, Speed isn’t an action comedy, but there’s some light-hearted stuff in it. But, Point Break (from what I remember) was a more serious tone.
But, I think by 1999 if you were hiring Keanu Reeves for a purely serious action role, that wouldn’t be seen as strange. And, if you were hiring Will Smith for a purely serious role, it would probably be seen as wasting his talent.
Larry Fishbourne and Joey Pants were pretty well known.
Laurence Fishburne was a big face at the time if i remember correctly. Keanu had just done Speed and The Devils Advocate. That was a strange movie.
Keanu was famous, but the way I remember it he wasn’t a huge box office draw yet.
The jiggy with guy dumb?
The wild wild west guy dumb?
Yes
Let’s all get jiggy with it!
