Will Smith would have been disastrous in The Matrix and now I want to see it
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.
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.
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!
With the squid machines doing hip hop dances in the background
Woo, ha-ha ha-ha.
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.
Real eyes realize.
… real lies
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.
Most likely Leo DeCaprio’s role.
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?
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I know kung fu
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
After Earth. It’s kinda lightweight as far as sci fi goes.
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
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 =)
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!
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
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I dunno if I would call Inception a gamble, it’s Christopher Nolan
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
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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.
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.
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With this crisis of new stories to tell, with this incessant demand and lack of offer, it would be interesting to see the movies that famously never were made or would have been made differently with other directors, protagonists, scripts, adaptations, etc. I’d still avoid them, but a Matrix film starring Will Smith would be a success selling tickets.
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
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.
She fucks other dudes and talks about it on TV. She’s his Dom, and an unhealthy one.
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.
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
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 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.
Keanu was famous, but the way I remember it he wasn’t a huge box office draw yet.
Fixed
This feels like a spot-the-difference thing, and I’m failing badly. I can’t tell what changed.
?
Statement vs question
?
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.
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
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 goo-filled pod pretending to be normal. You know there’s something wrong but you can’t put your finger on it until someone shows you.
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.)
I’m proud of you right now! Hell yes!
-a trans woman
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.
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.
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.
To be honest, I was expecting the character named Switch to be significantly different between the real world and the matrix and that would have been consistent with the prevalence of people picking the other gender when playing games with customization. It wouldn’t have even struck me as representing someone who was transgender at the time.
Stupid execs!
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.
I think part of it is that in hindsight it’s a super fucking trans-coded film. I bet the Wachowskis didn’t realize it until later either. Honestly I love it and I think it adds another whole layer to everything.
Its so much about freeing yourself from the cycle of control and misinformation
Yeah, like being trans
Clearly no one told Elon.
But he took Wild Wild West, Hancock, and I Am Legend. Okay.
“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
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.
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.
Would you believe that Denzel had made the call?
dunno. but he would’ve been infinitely better than Will Smith.
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.
