The first movie that stunned Will Smith: “I couldn’t believe they made me feel like that”
Will Smith has delivered some truly awe-inspiring moments on camera. He’s defended Earth from all manner of bizarre extraterrestrials in the Men in Black series, engaged in high-speed chases and explosive gunfights as a Bad Boy, and faced off against zombies (and heartbreaking loss) in I Am Legend. And that’s just a small slice of his extraordinary cinematic career.
Even multi-billion dollar-grossing actors have to start somewhere. Most performers start out as little kids blown away by something they saw in the cinema or on TV before deciding that’s what they want to do with their life. Smith is no exception, and considering he grew up in the 1970s, it’s not hard to figure out which movie did that for him.
“Star Wars was the movie when I was growing up that [left me] stunned,” the megastar told Radio Free. “Sitting after Star Wars ended, I couldn’t believe that they could make me feel like that with a story and with these characters.”
He went on to explain that, alongside George Lucas’ genre-defining adventure, Michael Jackson’s Thriller album also played a big part in shaping his ambitions. “I think career-wise,” he explained. “The things I’ve been chasing are Star Wars and Thriller – the two pieces of entertainment that I’ve always been hoping to make something that matches for others how I felt when I experienced those.”
Smith has more than made good on his promise to follow in Lucas and Jackson’s footsteps. Though he hasn’t sold nearly as many records as MJ, he’s had an extremely successful music career, often writing and recording songs for his film projects. Though he’s never been in a Star Wars movie, he has often expressed his love for the franchise, and it’s clearly had a profound impact on the types of films he chooses.
He has appeared in a number of science fiction films, some better, some worse. Towards the top of the pile is easily Independence Day, Roland Emmerich’s epic tale of humanity’s fight to reclaim the Earth from alien invaders. Smith’s character, Captain Steven Hiller, is majorly channelling Harrison Ford’s Han Solo, a wise-cracking pilot who steps up to the plate to do the right thing. When the sequel, Independence Day: Resurgence, came along two decades later, Smith was absent from the cast. Nobody’s saying this is because he saw the Star Wars prequels and wanted to avoid a similar fate, but it’s not impossible…
Unfortunately, the genre of sci-fi hasn’t always been kind to Smith – or indeed his family. In 2013, the Oscar-winner starred alongside his son Jaden in the M Night Shyamalan-directed After Earth. Dreamt up by Smith as a father-son project, the movie pits the two main characters against an abandoned planet Earth after their spaceship crashes there in the distant future. It wasn’t the only thing that crashed. After Earth doesn’t just suck, it really sucks. The nonsensical script and plotline somehow fail to distract from the Smiths’ total lack of chemistry. It is an embarrassing ego trip and a far cry from A New Hope.
Even when his relationship with sci-fi has been on the rocks, Smith’s love of Star Wars has never faltered. Movies have the power to transport us back to a specific place. For Smith, it’s when he was a little kid, watching that iconic opening crawl for the very first time.
