Will Smith : Movie Star?

Why did Will Smith do Suicide Squad?

Don’t get me wrong, though not the best in the long line of superhero movies it was definitely better than it’s predecessor Batman vs. Superman and the Fresh Prince was fully responsible for that.

But I’m just pondering why he picked Suicide Squad over the sequel to Independence Day?

I’ve herd the rumors. “scheduling conflicts” as they put it. Will Smith is one of those guys that like to do one big movie a year and spend his time doing something else.

Or someone?

But really if he wanted to do more than one film a year he could. Like he did last year by doing both Suicide Squad and Collateral  Damage, two movies that were not as good as the hype around them but still good movies. I totally believe that Mr. Smith could have added a third movie.

So was it the money? I herd that will asked for 50 million to sign on tho do Independence Day: Resurgence and a sequel that would follow, and the studio would not agree to that.

Maybe they made the right choice? If I was in charge I think I would have given him the money. Would this have made Independence day 2 a better movie? My answer is….No!

The thing about ID4 2 is that I have a pretty good idea wear Will would have landed in this picture. William Fichtner  plays General Adams in the sequel to the 1996 hit. Now this is a bit of a spoiler (but that’s OK cause this film is not that good), but what happens is when the aliens attack they take out the heads of our government, this General Adams becomes next in line to be President of the United States. To me this part in the movie was built for Will, as a way to show the metaphor of his popularity. Of course their would have to be some sort of adjustments to allow Will’s character to get more into the action as the president of the United States (Just like what Bill Pullman did in the first film).

Now I could be wrong, but It would be cool if I was right. This way ID42 would be all about both Feminist(With Sela Ward playing the president) and black lives matter (With Will becoming the New President), and this would have been a good stepping stone for the Star Wars like Sequels that the film suggested would happen (but most likely will not)

Now, would having Will Smith in Independence Day 2 make it more  money? My answer is….absolutely!

As much as I love Jeff Goldblum, I’m sure far more people would have paid good money to see Will Smith take on the aliens, just like Suicide Squad made more money cause the Fresh Prince was killing it as Dead shot.

I actually herd that Will Smith wanted to play a bad guy  so maybe that’s why he did Suicide Squad as well, to get the opportunity to play a bad guy (sort of)

Rumor is he wanted to do something bad with this one as well.

I have another far fetch theory. He wanted to be in a Billion dollar movie and he felt Suicide Squad was the way to go.

Hear me out on this one. When Will Smith signed up to do ID4 20 years ago he was told that doing sci-fi movies is the best way to get on a movie with a hundred million dollar budget and as such be promoted to make massive amounts of money at the box office that would increase the worth of his stars points.

Going from TV stardom points to Movie Stardom points

It did the trick with ID4 being followed by Men In Black, both were top box office draws in 1996 and 1997, receptively

So now the idea is to go even further, right. That would be making a movie that makes a Billion dollars, and what genre of movie is making a billion dollars these days?

It was either Deadshot in Suicide Squad or…

Now, my theory is flawed due to the fact that no DC comics superhero movie has ever made a billion dollars at the box office, but maybe Will thought what would happen is that the half a billion he’s use to generating when he does his popcorn driven blockbusters would combine with the over half a billion dollars the DC superheroes would probability make.

Will’s best bet for that was already taken (Thank God)

Remember when Will Smith was becoming the biggest star in the world?

I had herd of DJ Jazzy Jeff  and the Fresh Prince while at the peak of his rap career as Parents just don’t understand and Girls of the world aint nothing but trouble were huge hits.

Very Legit (and old school) that the DJ’s name comes 1st.

Then I herd that the Fresh Prince was going to get his own show. This was a huge deal as the Fresh Prince being a black man met that the show that would revolve around him would put more black people on the air. At the time we had three sitxoms (the Cosby show, it’s spin off a different World both on NBC and Family Matters on ABC (those are the one’s I remember).

From the start of the show you could see the Fresh Prince was talented beyond rapping, which made the show a hit.

The looks, the charm, and the talent and you know he has to try movies. Just a little dabble at first with the Prince doing small supporting roles in Made in America and Where the Day takes you.

Then we take it to the next level

It was a smart move to team up the two black men on TV with hit shows in the action comedy Bad Boys, which put both Will and Martin Lawrence (who had is own comedy hit show Martin at the time) into the movie star stratus (What’s real funny is if you look up at the poster even though Lawrence and Smith’s names are on the same level technically you read  Martin’s first (it’s said first if you see the trailer too). It was director Micheal Bay’s 1st feature that cost on about 23 million to make and became the box office draw.

Then Smith follows this up with the hundred Million dollar Sci-Fi epic ID4, which blew us away, literally. Back when destroying cities actually got an emotion out of us they used this to advertise the movie. Everyone in America went to the movies just to watch these aliens destroy our monuments (mind you this was pre 9/11)

See the Twins back there standing tall?

Will Smith was the icing on the cake, playing an Air force Captain out save the world. Amazing!

Independence day would be hard to top, but Will Smith did it with another hundred Million dollar Sci-fi event that has Will saving us all from the Scum of the Universe, in Men in Black.

Once again, notice whose name does NOT come first, however.

Men In black started him on a spectacular path as Men in Black and Independence Day came out near the 4th of July (on that weekend or something) and people began to refer to the Holiday as Will Smith Day (serious) because he was dropping the biggest  blockbusters on that weekend.

This didn’t last long. We had no choice but to stop doing that.

Men in Black also started him down a new musical path, as his pop styled hip hop cross over from The Fresh Prince (of either Philly of Bel Air) To Will Smith of Hollywood, putting his DJ Jazzy Jeff in the background and being full center stage in his heavily sampled  hit songs based on his movies like Men In Black and Wild Wild West, the latter being a bigger hit than the movie was.

Will was on top of the world, and it was great. He was a movie star, a black man who could do any movie we wanted and people would go see it. That is amazing. From what I understand he did a movie called Enemy of the State that came out in 1998 and it was a film Tom Cruise was up for and they decide to give it to Will instead.  Back in 1998 that is pretty incredible  cause  back in the turn of the century, Cruise was so big it was like he invented the term movie star, and here comes Will, gaining on him.

Turning the Century, Will Smith was becoming a 20 million dollar man whose name alone guaranteed  big box office numbers. In-between these movie star outings like the next installment of Bad Boys and Men In Black he also did some more in-depth movies like Ali and the Pursuit of Happiness, which got him the nomination for best actor at the Oscars.

Although,  Will Smith is not the box office draw he use to be. It’s not that his numbers have changed it’s more that they have not changed. He took a break from acting and came back with Men in Black 3 and it made 600 million, which is more than respectable, but in a world where superhero movies are banking in a billion dollars world wide who would not want that kind of business?

The movie star is not what it use to be but Will Smith still has his hold on the title starring in movies that would do less if it was not for him, we still want to go out and see him do his thing. He still has the magic.

sucks that it’s not hereditary