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.
And the movies are still fine. I can’t think of a single role in either film where Will Smith replacing the actor would have improved the film. He’s not really a good fit for either one imo.
Too bad because he played in th 12 monkeys army and that was a good one despite of the tricky scenario.
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.
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.
All the way, my brother! Fuck Will Smith and his whole fucking family.
Also, yes. He dumb.
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.
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
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.
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.
There would be too many wisecracks. Did keanu even smile as Neo?
I know kung fu
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
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
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.
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.
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
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.
They were probably thinking of Cillian Murphy’s character
I barely remember it. I was pretty high at the time.
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.
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.
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!
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
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 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.
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.
Clearly no one told Elon.
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
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.
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.)
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
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.
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!
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
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.
