Why does Will Smith suck now?

He kinda always sucked. But he's cool and people love him, so he can get away with it.

Will Smith's "Bright" came out on Netflix late last year. Pretty much everyone says it's no good. It's at 27% on Rotten Tomatoes, 29% on Metacritic, and 6.5 on IMDB. Now, 6.5 doesn't sound bad, but anything getting that number on IMDB is usually lousy. That's a low number for them. EW gave it a D+, which is really an F-- cuz anything that gets a B- or less from EW is bad.

This isn't something new for Will Smith. Thirteen of his last 16 movies which have been rated on Rotten Tomatoes received a splat. For one of the good ones, The Karate Kid, Will Smith was only the producer. None of them are over 68%, which is just middling.

Plenty of his recent movies have been outright bad. Suicide Squad, Annie, Winter's Tale, After Earth, A Man's Story, and Seven Pounds are a murdered row, all under 30%. You have to go all the way back to 2007 to find success when I Am Legend became his second most successful movie financially with $256.4M (and really his most successful when you consider Suicide Squad is first, and that was an ensemble superhero movie).

I Am Legend capped a string of five straight well-received movies as actor or director for Smith. But it's been a steady decline over the last 10 years. And even that string looks like a blip when you consider between 1999 and 2004 almost every Will Smith movie tanked.

Will Smith's been living off The Fresh Prince success ever since. And that's OK. We all loved the Fresh Prince and we all love Will Smith because of The Fresh Prince. We want to see him succeed. So we keep giving him chances. Will Smith doesn't actually suck. But his movies do.

 

And to think, with all of that absolute garbage on the list even he didn't come back for Independence Day 2

 

I liked Concussion and Focus. Looks like he's got sequels to Bad Boys, Suicide Squad and Bright on deck and he's playing the Genie in Aladdin.

 

I didn't see Focus, but I thought Concussion was good. Collateral Beauty was okay, too.

 

If I had a beef with Smith's career is that he seems ultra aware of his image, and his idea of a "risk" is a dramatic Oscar-bait film that screams "this is me being serious."
He really should do a couple of low-pay independent films, maybe even a supporting role.

 

Looking at his filmography, there are three movies that I went to just because he was in them -- I Am Legend, Hancock, and Seven Pounds.

I hope I learned my lesson.

 

I really liked Focus, but yeah, he's not getting choice roles anymore. Part of it probably is age vs. his personality. He's aging out of some of the types of roles he played so effectively (the brash funnyman, athlete, action star), but he doesn't yet really "seem" old enough to play other parts even though he's 50.

Brad Pitt is in a similar position. Since "Moneyball" came out in 2011, "The Big Short" is the only good film he's carried (I think he only had like 5 minutes of screen time in "12 Years a Slave"). Like Smith, he seems younger than he is, but not so young as to be able to play some of those roles anymore and not old enough to play "elder" roles.

 

A lot of it is price. Special effects movies sell themselves, and studios will hire someone cheap (and young) because they're starmaking roles and they can lock the actors in for three or four films over 12 years.
And Will Smith's "generation" of movie goers don't go to the theater anymore.

 

I sort of thought he started going downhill when he began to pimp out his kids.

 

I'll watch 10 Will Smith movies before I watch one Nic Cage straight to Netflix movie, of which there are about 20 at any one time. Cage sucks out loud in Dolby stereo surround sound.

 

Will Smith is HOF, though. Beats Mark Buehrle all to hell.

 

I think part of it is also his focus on especially Jaden's career. When they're on set, him or Jada has to be there to be his guardian.