Friday
20Jun2008
Can Will Smith Remain Bulletproof After 'Hancock'?
Friday, June 20, 2008 at 5:40PM 
Anne
Thompson at Variety has a great article
about movie stars and their box office reliability. That's a big topic in the
middle of summer. Launching giant event movies is easier when you know people
love your star. Her thesis is that some actors reach a point where they can do
no wrong, that even if
Will Smith made a bunch of hideous movies,
audiences would still respond positively because he's in what Thompson calls The
Fluke Zone.
As it happens, Smith hasn't made a bunch of hideous movies,
and it's untrue that most major movie stars do. I would say that Nicolas Cage
and Julia Roberts probably have the most litter on their lawns in that
department, but Tom Cruise, an in-his-prime Harrison Ford, and even Arnold
Schwarzenegger rarely made tremendous mistakes. We're talking something
catastrophic of the Love Guru vintage. They've all been in bad movies,
sure, but when they know who's paying to see them, more often than not, the big
movie stars meet those expectations. If not, well...they wouldn't be gigantic
stars, now would they?
Will Smith's movies, with one or two exceptions, have at
least been pretty good. He actually under-promises and over-delivers better than
anyone else in the movies. Hitch is a better rom-com than it should be,
I, Robot and I am Legend are better pseudo-sci-fi stuff than you'd
think, and The Pursuit of Happyness is one of the rare films you know
will be weepy and sentimental but just happens to be unavoidably fantastic, and
gets better every time you watch it.
So Thompson wonders if
Hancock will deliver, and I get where she's
coming from. Four months ago, it appeared unstoppable: Will Smith on the Fourth
of July playing a down-on-his-luck, surly superhero. That's great. But the
trailers haven't knocked us backwards and the talk of late re-shoots raise some
doubts. What I once believed would be the second or third biggest hit of the
summer I now think might struggle to finish in the top six.
If anyone can overcome a possible hiccup in terms of
quality and still sell $300 million worth of tickets right now, that person is
Will Smith. I mean, he's it. He's the biggest movie star in the world in
2008, which has as much to do with his magnetism and easygoing demeanor as it
does his versatility as an actor and acumen at choosing projects. Nobody else in
the business right now could take something that looks questionable and turn it
not only into something pretty good but also something very, very profitable.
So read Anne Thompson's piece. I like theories, and hers is
very good. She also has some revealing picks for who she thinks is "in the Zone"
and why.
Colin Boyd | Permalink | in Hancock, Summer Movies, Will Smith | Print Article | Email Article | 1 Comment | Share Article
Reader Comments (1)
You're right about Smith -- he's definitely the biggest, most reliable star out there right now. And before him, I'd say Tom Hanks was the biggest star with the Midas touch (with Tom Cruise slightly behind him). He couldn't go wrong between 1992 and 2003, and even 2004's "The Polar Express" and 2006's "The Da Vinci Code" were big hits.