Movies Will Smith talks about turning down The Matrix

[CitizenVectron]

 

 

lol. Entertaining, and makes sense. And he owns the Wild Wild West mistake.

 

Also:

 

 

[skillzdadirecta]

He really regrets this because he's told this story a BUNCH of times  That's the first time I heard the actual pitch though.

[Kal-El814]

Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

 

AWW HELL NO

[Keyser_Soze]

It's not that bad of a pitch, I mean at the time it was like the only movie that did that kind of things.

 

He's right at the end though. Movie would have been bad if Val Kilmer was Morpheus and honestly if he was Neo it would have sucked too.

[Bloodporne]

37 minutes ago, skillzdadirecta said:

He really regrets this because he's told this story a BUNCH of times  That's the first time I heard the actual pitch though.

His imitation of the pitch actually sounds like Keanu Reeves so he probably heard that shit and went

 

"Woah."

 

 

[TheLeon]

I loved Wild Wild West when I was 8 years old, so it’s all good, Will. 

[SaysWho?]

That was damned entertaining.  

[skillzdadirecta]

2 hours ago, Keyser_Soze said:

It's not that bad of a pitch, I mean at the time it was like the only movie that did that kind of things.

 

He's right at the end though. Movie would have been bad if Val Kilmer was Morpheus and honestly if he was Neo it would have sucked too.

This is the first time I heard Val Kilmer mentioned. I always heard that Sean Connery was the first choice to play Morpheus opposite Wil but he didn’t understand the script 

[Kal-El814]

1 hour ago, skillzdadirecta said:

This is the first time I heard Val Kilmer mentioned. I always heard that Sean Connery was the first choice to play Morpheus opposite Wil but he didn’t understand the script 

 

He did not understand it. He also didn’t understand the script for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and assumed that since he didn’t understand The Matrix and it was huge, he should take League. Oops.

[DarkStar189]

4 hours ago, TheLeon said:

I loved Wild Wild West when I was 8 years old, so it’s all good, Will. 

I was around 12 and was probably a little too excited to get the Wild Wild West sunglasses at Burger King.... 

[Fizzzzle]

I didn't think Wild Wild West was THAT bad. Granted, I didn't see it until years later after I had heard people say nothing but trash about it, so rising above my expectations wasn't exactly hard.

[Mercury33]

I’m probably in the minority in thinking Val would have been great as Morpheus. 

[Greatoneshere]

The Matrix is a near perfect movie, and the casting is part of it. I simply can't see anyone else in their respective roles now. Will Smith would have been terrible given what we ended up seeing anyway. He did do us a favor. But who knows. 

 

He also passed on Django Unchained. I like Will Smith but I mean c'mon.

 

Also, Wild Wild West is one of the funniest movies of all time. It has a lot of great dialogue and the chemistry between Kenneth Branaugh, Will Smith, and Kevin Kline is excellent. The movie is super inappropriate and raunchy, which I think makes it funnier (some of the sexual jokes go too far and most of the movie is probably unwatchable to today's progressives but I personally think the movie's jokes are go for broke).

[SimpleG]

13 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

He also passed on Django Unchained.

Theres no way he would have done Tarantino's lines or scenes as is. I mean can anyone see Will yelling "D`artagnan Motherfuckers!" while blowing off some old white mans cock.

[Greatoneshere]

Just now, SimpleG said:

Theres no way he would have done Tarantino's lines or scenes as is. I mean can anyone see Will yelling "D`artagnan Motherfuckers!" while blowing off some old white mans cock.

 

Yes, if he stretches his acting range, which he has been shown to be able to do with a number of specific films. Jamie Foxx was great, so I don't care ultimately, just saying that if I were Will Smith, I would have tried.

[SimpleG]

Just now, Greatoneshere said:

Yes, if he stretches his acting range

Its not a matter of range, he wants a fairly family safe image and that aint it

[NeoJoe]

"And so I made Wild WIld West. Sorry..."

 

[Brick]

8 hours ago, Kal-El814 said:

Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

 

AWW HELL NO

 

 

5 hours ago, Kal-El814 said:

 

He did not understand it. He also didn’t understand the script for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and assumed that since he didn’t understand The Matrix and it was huge, he should take League. Oops.

 

He also turned down to play Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings because, you guessed it, he did not understand the script. 

 

 

 

Speaking of Wild Wild West

 

 

 

 

 

[Greatoneshere]

1 hour ago, SimpleG said:

Its not a matter of range, he wants a fairly family safe image and that aint it

 

Bad Boys 1+2 are not family safe image at all though, among others.

[SimpleG]

35 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

Bad Boys 1+2 are not family safe image at all though, among others.

I said fairly family safe and I should have just said safer or more universal appealing films. Here is interesting article about the difference in how someone like Tyler Perry goes about films vs Will Smith

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15405702.2013.810070

 

The second related reason Smith and Perry are rarely considered together has to do with their divergent black identity politics. Will Smith stars in films with multiracial casts that tend to portray America as “postracial,” and in his publicity image he is consistently described as having “transcended race” (see Palmer, 2011Palmer, L. 2011. Black man/white machine: Will Smith crosses over. Velvet Light Trap, 67: 28–40.
 [Crossref], [Google Scholar]
). A representative Newsweek cover story declared that Smith's “appeal is so universal that it transcends race” (Smith, 2007). The postracial refrain also pertains to audience: Smith's is huge, racially diverse, and international. By contrast, Perry's cultural products point to continuing de facto racial segregation in the United States in terms of both text and audience. His more recent films do portray some interracial friendships and scenarios and as an actor he has started to branch out into mainstream, multiracial films, but most of the central characters in the films he produces are black and southern. Capturing his narrow but extremely loyal domestic fanbase, Perry explains

 

The different racial outlooks of Overbrook and Perry in industry terms travel into the textual meanings of their film products. As scholars have argued, hugely successful Will Smith vehicles such as Pursuit of Happyness (Gabriele Muccino, 2006), I am Legend (Francis Lawrence, 2007), and Hancock depict worlds that are largely postracial in which there is little sense of racial hierarchy. While some scholars persuasively suggest that veiled racial critiques circulate in particular Smith films (see Brayton, 2011; Palmer, 2011), there is a general, and generally convincing, view that Smith's star image of professionalism under duress, transcendence and sacrifice, and acculturated black charisma, by and large, serve to disavow continuing, entrenched racial injustice in America (Aldridge, 2011; Vera & Gordon, 2003, pp. 181–184). 

 

I would suggest that both the undertones of racial critique and the dominant note of postracialism are spurred by the vision of America and Hollywood that Overbrook projects. Capturing the confluence of production and text, Lassiter describes “looking at our properties from development through production through marketing as global movies. That's what we do with Will, and that's what we like for our company to represent” (quoted in Cohen, 2008). In conjuring a sense of the international free trade of ideas and resources, Overbrook and “Will Smith” tell at best partial stories—Smith vehicles are not really “global movies” so much as pro-American ones with great international reach. Nonetheless, such films are consistent with these black producers' own individual epic business narratives and have assuredly enhanced certain kinds of racial tolerance (with Smith attaining, in the words of one industry executive, “a Tom Hanksian level of likability” [quoted in Smith, 2007]).

 

DU just is not a Will Smith style film 

 

 

[Greatoneshere]

Just now, SimpleG said:

I said fairly family safe and I should have just said safer or more universal appealing films. Here is interesting article about the difference in how someone like Tyler Perry goes about films vs Will Smith

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15405702.2013.810070

 

I mean, I'm aware of this, (though reading that helps), that just makes it stupid and sad then. Will Smith has certainly done not family safe stuff to my mind, but whatever works for him I guess. I still think passing on good art is stupid, but okay.

[Reputator]

9 hours ago, TheLeon said:

I loved Wild Wild West when I was 8 years old, so it’s all good, Will. 

 

I still like that movie. Fuck it! Think I care?

[Keyser_Soze]

The only part of Wild Wild West I saw was that damn music video they always showed on TRL so I hated it and then hated the movie by extension without seeing it.

[Dre801]

Welp, at least his wife was in the sequels, that's. . . .something.

[Bacon]

6 hours ago, Dre801 said:

Welp, at least his wife was in the sequels, that's. . . .something.

So, you're saying she cheated on him because he wasn't The One?

[stepee]

12 hours ago, Brick said:

 

 

 

He also turned down to play Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings because, you guessed it, he did not understand the script. 

 

 

 

Speaking of Wild Wild West

 

 

 

 

 

 

woke up in incredible pain because my meds ran out and watched this as they are now starting to kick in, helped a lot, ty! Now I need to look into more John Peters stories. That was an amazing story lol.

[Bitgod]

But we were that close to not having Artemis Clyde Frog.

[Guest]

Just saw that tasty Matrix Resurrections trailer. Weird to see it 20 years after the first, but the action stuff looked killer.

[Jason]

On 8/20/2021 at 3:05 PM, Kal-El814 said:

 

He did not understand it. He also didn’t understand the script for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and assumed that since he didn’t understand The Matrix and it was huge, he should take League. Oops.

 

On 8/20/2021 at 8:36 PM, Brick said:

 

 

 

He also turned down to play Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings because, you guessed it, he did not understand the script. 

 

 

 

Speaking of Wild Wild West

 

 

 

 

 

 

So Connery was just really fucking dumb, huh?

[skillzdadirecta]

On 8/20/2021 at 4:40 PM, Greatoneshere said:

 

Yes, if he stretches his acting range, which he has been shown to be able to do with a number of specific films. Jamie Foxx was great, so I don't care ultimately, just saying that if I were Will Smith, I would have tried.

From what I've heard, he and Tarantino had issues with the script that couldn't be resolved so to me it seemed like more of a clash of egos and personalities. Tarantino WANTED Will Smith and Smith passed when he saw they couldn't resolve their script issues. Not everyone in Hollywood, particularly Black Hollywood is a fan of Tarantino's "style".

 

Depending on which Will Smith you believe he passed on Django for one of two reasons...

 

Reason One (according To Will Smith in 2013)

 

Why Will Smith turned down Django Unchained

EW.COM

---

Why Will Smith turned down Django Unchained

 

Reason Two (also according to Will Smith in 2015)

 

Will Smith Explains Why He Turned Down ‘Django Unchained’

WWW.HOLLYWOODREPORTER.COM

---

The actor was offered a role in Quentin Tarantino’s Oscar-winning film but declined due to differences in “creative direction.”

 

Neither reason had anything to do with a Family friendly image thing.

[Greatoneshere]

8 hours ago, skillzdadirecta said:

From what I've heard, he and Tarantino had issues with the script that couldn't be resolved so to me it seemed like more of a clash of egos and personalities. Tarantino WANTED Will Smith and Smith passed when he saw they couldn't resolve their script issues. Not everyone in Hollywood, particularly Black Hollywood is a fan of Tarantino's "style".

 

Depending on which Will Smith you believe he passed on Django for one of two reasons...

 

Reason One (according To Will Smith in 2013)

 

Why Will Smith turned down Django Unchained

EW.COM

---

Why Will Smith turned down Django Unchained

 

Reason Two (also according to Will Smith in 2015)

 

Will Smith Explains Why He Turned Down ‘Django Unchained’

WWW.HOLLYWOODREPORTER.COM

---

The actor was offered a role in Quentin Tarantino’s Oscar-winning film but declined due to differences in “creative direction.”

 

Neither reason had anything to do with a Family friendly image thing.

 

Yeah this was more my understanding as well. I still think he should have manned up, but sometimes things just don't work out I suppose.

[Guest]

On 8/25/2021 at 7:36 AM, skillzdadirecta said:

Not everyone in Hollywood, particularly Black Hollywood is a fan of Tarantino's "style".

Amongst many other things, there are still many Black people in Hollywood who felt Tarantino writing a character for himself to play that said “dead nigger” like eighteen billion times speaks of a person a little too eager and comfortable using the word, so for many folks QT got off on the wrong foot with them and he’s never redeemed himself.

[Fizzzzle]

QT straddles the line of ironic racism.  Like you hit a point where it's like it doesn't matter how self aware you are, it's just kind of racist.

 

It's kind of like Robert Downey Jr.'s character in Tropic Thunder. Like yeah, the whole point of the character is that he's ridiculous and Hollywood gone too far, but at the end of the day.... still black face.

 

There is a conversation to be had there, about the threshold at which parody becomes reality. Like at what point does making a joke about how "it would  be totally racist if we did [thing]", and then to make the point you just... do the thing. Like you just gave yourself a blank slate to make a racist joke, and then said "I knew it was racist, so it's fine."

 

I'm not saying there's a right or wrong, it's just when you get into that territory you reeeeeallllyy have to thread a needle. I still think RDJ's character in Tropic Thunder lands, but only because they did it so well. That could easily have gone haywire. QT I'd say trends positive, but there are definitely points where you go "ehhhhh... that ain't it, chief."

[Keyser_Soze]

26 minutes ago, Fizzzzle said:

QT straddles the line of ironic racism.  Like you hit a point where it's like it doesn't matter how self aware you are, it's just kind of racist.

 

I think he goes down the "my friends are black so I can say it" route. Like he cast Samuel L Jackson so if he's ok with him saying it he'll say it.

[skillzdadirecta]

8 hours ago, sblfilms said:

Amongst many other things, there are still many Black people in Hollywood who felt Tarantino writing a character for himself to play that said “dead nigger” like eighteen billion times speaks of a person a little too eager and comfortable using the word, so for many folks QT got off on the wrong foot with them and he’s never redeemed himself.

Exactly.

 

5 hours ago, Fizzzzle said:

QT straddles the line of ironic racism.  Like you hit a point where it's like it doesn't matter how self aware you are, it's just kind of racist.

 

It's kind of like Robert Downey Jr.'s character in Tropic Thunder. Like yeah, the whole point of the character is that he's ridiculous and Hollywood gone too far, but at the end of the day.... still black face.

 

There is a conversation to be had there, about the threshold at which parody becomes reality. Like at what point does making a joke about how "it would  be totally racist if we did [thing]", and then to make the point you just... do the thing. Like you just gave yourself a blank slate to make a racist joke, and then said "I knew it was racist, so it's fine."

 

I'm not saying there's a right or wrong, it's just when you get into that territory you reeeeeallllyy have to thread a needle. I still think RDJ's character in Tropic Thunder lands, but only because they did it so well. That could easily have gone haywire. QT I'd say trends positive, but there are definitely points where you go "ehhhhh... that ain't it, chief."

 

Well said.