Will Smith ratings:
Seven Pounds - 7.6/10 (26,764 votes)
Hancock - 6.6/10 (75,789 votes)
I Am Legend - 7.1/10 (124,709 votes)
The Persuit of Happyness - 7.8 (58,290 votes)
Hitch - 6.8/10 (51,294 votes)
Shark Tale - 5.9/10 (32,114 votes)
I, Robot - 7.0/10 (79,341 votes)
Bad Boys II - 6.2/10 (45,312 votes)
Men in Black II - 5.6/10 (56,495 votes)
Ali - 6.5/10 (25,672 votes)
The Legend of Bagger Vance - 6.4/10 (18,235 votes)
Wild Wild West - 4.2/10 (44,999 votes)
Enemey of the State - 7.1/10 (55,320 votes)
Men in Black - 6.9/10 (102,363 votes)
Independence Day - 6.4/10 (125,988 votes)
Bad Boys - 6.5/10 (42,668 votes)
Six Degrees of Separation - 6.9/10 (8,079 votes)
This averages a middling 6.56 score. Although as Tigger pointed out as its not a 'Will Smith Movie' Six Degrees really shouldn't be counted (and I didn't count Made in America for the same reason), so disregarding its high score his average drops to to a staggering 6.15! How is this man getting paid $20 million a movie plus 10% to 20% of the gross?
What about other actors?
I assume actors like Anthony Hopkins or John Malkovich would have a higher mean score, but nobody regards Will Smiff as being in their class. So what's the average of comparable popular A-list actors like Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie, etc.?
Or how about Denzel Washington, Will Smiff's predecessor as "Officially Designated Black Leading Man".
not really point
The point was really the middle-to-low opinion his films are held in, you can find an even more critical opinion on rotten tomatos - http://au.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/will_smith/ - but thats film critics while imdb is the general public.
This is rather peculiar considering his A-list status and $20 million + gross price.
A bigger problem than
A bigger problem than temporal mean ratings for Smiff is that few, if any, of his films are likely to be long remembered either as critical or cult favourites. Probably Independence Day will be the one that is most likely to be still watched in decades to come, given that alien invasion films never really drop out of sight, except that he was only one of an ensemble cast in that, rather than being the lead. Also there is Men in Black, which though it has an alien invasion theme, is a lame comedy with dated CGI.
there'll be two
Independence Day and Wild Wild West.
But West will be remembered for all the wrong reasons.
attempting turn around
Have you seen the trailer(s) for 7 Pounds? It appears to be another attempt to be a serious actor, following The Pursuit of Happiness and Ali, although it makes it look overblown and pretentious while the synopsis on imdb is ridiculous - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0814314/synopsis - and the poster is one of those annoying "actor headshot" with Smith making a really weird expression - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2d/Seven_Pounds_poster.jpg
I dont think he is done with these films, it seems he wants to make a film about the last Pharoh of Egypts infamous 25th Dynasty: http://jam.canoe.ca/Movies/Artists/S/Smith_Will/2008/03/23/5078376-sun.html & http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117991803.html?categoryid=13&cs=1
He is already a manufactured star, will he be able to manufacture critical praise?
Fantasy for the Oprah crowd
Well it is a fantasy film, as the very first sentence suggests, a black man called 'Tim'???? And a black 'gifted aerospace engineer'. If you can swallow that then you won't have any problem with anything else that follows, as absurdly pretentious as it may be. Oprah will no doubt love it, and urge her audience to go and see it.
As for Smiff wanting to play a Pharaoh, he has a hard act to follow in Sun-Ra, who asserted at various times that he actually was a genuine Pharaoh, albeit from outer space:
Denzel
Out of curiosity I just had a look at Denzel Washington's career: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000243/
It seems he attempted something along the lines of a 'respectable blaxploitation' career, playing long-suffering noble black men in 'Cry Freedom', 'Glory', 'Malcolm X', 'He Got Game', 'The Hurricane', etc., until he played a more traditional blaxploitation role in 'American Gangster'. Inbetween these racially aware films, he played in a few white-safe films as the generic leading man, as a proto-Will Smiff, but these are now largely forgotten, as I expect Smiff's ouvre will be also.
So the lesson here is that if a black actor wants to be remembered in the long term, do not stray too far from blaxploitation. This is what has elevated Pam Grier, Richard Roundtree, Fred Williamson, etc. to immortality.
Funny.
LamontCranston uses IMDB "USER" ratings as an argument to why WILL SMITH gets paid so much money for movies?
Then tries to tie it all back to BAD MOVIE POSTERS?
<@Venkman> his latest film seven pounds was better than most of his other performances<+LamontCranston> its got one of those "we dont need a poster we've the stars mug shot" posters
<@Venkman> now you're all upset about a fucking film poster?
<+LamontCranston> but it is indicative of the films quality
<@Venkman> are you seriously trying to tell this panel that all of the good films you have seen have had really good posters?
<+LamontCranston> indicative
<@Venkman> ROFLMFAO
<@Venkman> you are so silly on Saturday mornings.
<@Venkman> be gone now.
like a poor marksman
you keep missing the target
World's most incongruous film poster
I hereby nominate the Superman III poster as all time worst, and while it accurately represents the content of the film; an awkward amalgam of Superman and a goofy black comedian with an afro, it remains truly shocking to this day.
One of my favourite posters
I saw this memorable poster years before I finally saw the film, and needless to say the film was a bit anticlimactic.
Astro Space Laboratory wasn't nearly as good as the poster had lead me to expect.
recycled?
Looks like they might have reused a vintage pulp scifi magazine cover
Original Artwork
I think it is original artwork, as the astro zombie in the poster does feature the battery pack on its hip (in red), and the solar cells on its forehead. In one notorious and incomprehensible scene the astro zombie is terrorising someone at night, but its batteries run down, so it grabs a torch and holds it up to its forehead, so it can continue operating on the solar power derived from the torch. When I first saw this I had no idea what was going on, until I saw a documentary about the director, Ted V. Mikels, where he explains how this all worked, as any explanation was rather lacking in the film itself.
You would say that...
Considering you're the one being targetted.
Brad Pitt
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - 8.3/10 (72,006 votes)
Burn After Reading - 7.4/10 (57,873 votes)
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - 7.7/10 (41,722 votes)
Ocean's Thirteen - 7.0/10 (59,804 votes)
Babel - 7.7/10 (75,407 votes)
Mr. & Mrs. Smith - 6.4/10 (79,194 votes)
Ocean's Twelve - 6.0/10 (71,921 votes)
Troy - 7.0/10 (105,252 votes)
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas - 6.5/10 (6,224 votes)
Ocean's Eleven - 7.6/10 (115,981 votes)
Spy Game - 6.9/10 (37,257 votes)
The Mexican - 5.9/10 (31,405 votes)
Snatch. - 8.2/10 (135,400 votes)
Fight Club - 8.8/10 (306,203 votes) - imdb Top 250
Meet Joe Black - 6.8/10 (45,329 votes)
The Dark Side of the Sun -4.9/10 (1,067 votes)
Seven Years in Tibet - 6.7/10 (23,281 votes)
The Devil's Own - 5.8/10 (18,173 votes)
Sleepers - 7.3/10 (42,311 votes)
Twelve Monkeys - 8.1/10 (138,430 votes) - imdb Top 250
Se7en - 8.6/10 (224,091 votes) - imdb Top 250
Legends of the Fall - 7.0/10 (32,858 votes)
Interview with the Vampire - 7.4/10 (64,389 votes)
The Favor - 5.1/10 (1,050 votes)
True Romance - 7.9/10 (60,271 votes)
Kalifornia - 6.6/10 (17,755 votes)
A River Runs Through It - 7.1/10 (16,650 votes)
Cool World - 4.2/10 (7,040 votes)
Johnny Suede - 5.8/10 (1,311 votes)
Oddly enough this averages out to just 6.89 – but Brad Pitt having worked more consistently in a similar span of time as Will Smith who seems to prefer a single film a year its natural that Pitt will make some not so goo films, but remove just one stinker like Cool World for example and the average goes up to 6.99.
Pitt has undeniably stared in some good films and this is reflected. Three films on the imdb Top 250, quite a few have respectably high ratings, higher number of voters than a Smith film.
The secret of success.
This suggests that Brad Pitt occupies the traditional leading man role in the fashion of stars of the past, like Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, etc. And being a bankable star permits him to bring an audience and funding to films that wouldn't otherwise be so likely to be green-lit.
Will Smiff however occupies the much more precarious position of being the 'officially designated black star', and only one is allowed at a time, so if he involves himself in risky projects, he can't bounce back like Pitt can, and could easily be replaced by a new officially designated black star. Also since Smiff can only speak 'black', scripts must be tailored for his delivery style, and serious directors are not likely to allow their films to be changed by the studio to accommodate this limitation, so Smiff is mostly limited to generic action/comedy roles.
This is the basis of Morgan Freeman's success, as he learned to convincingly speak white he can be cast in roles that are normally off-limits to blacks, thus serious film-makers can hire Freeman knowing that they can meet their black-quota, while avoiding damaging script rewrites.
but...
...there exists other black actors, Will Smith is not occupying a vacuum.
We need some serious discourse here not your usual Tiggerisms.
While there are other black
While there are other black actors, they are all B-list to the last.
Spoke.
He spoke quite normally in Six degrees of seperation.
Smiff spoke in a
Smiff spoke in a stereotypically gay voice in Six Degrees, why he was able to do this so well is also the reason why he has embraced Scientology in hope of a cure.
refused
He also refused to kiss Anthony Michael Hall in a scene.
It's also notable that Smiff
It's also notable that Smiff has appeared in an unusually large number of films that were in 'development hell' for years, including "I Am Legend", "Hancock", "I, Robot", and "Ali". Such films have typically gone through a large number of directors, writers, and lead actors before finally landing in Smiff's lap. By this time nobody connected to the project would care very much if rewrite #14 is written in 'black'.
A similar development curve can be seen with the flop, 'Catwoman', which initially started as a Michelle Pfieffer film directed by Tim Burton, and after nearly a decade of going through the rounds ended up with a black star (Halle Berry).
IMDB lists the writers involved in the project at various times:
production company shenanigans?
Could his producer partner James Lassiter http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0489876/ be looking around for these sorts of films to pick up cheaply, dust off and take to the studio with Smiths name attached?
Also...
In his latest film, Seven Pounds he speaks clearly as well.
seen the trailer?
He speeks with this forced earnestest, like he'd memorized the entire script - not just his own lines but everyones.
So he was doing a Morpheus?
So he was doing a Morpheus? Where a black actor delivers their lines in a fashion that they imagine to be Shakespearian.
I wouldn't know.
Watch the trailer(s) on youtube maybe?