Will Smith Would Be Nothing Without Pulp Sci-Fi

Image: Screenshot, MIB 3

Will Smith is the king of modern cinematic science fiction, even though sci-fi diehards and Smith fans alike won’t admit it. His latest vehicle, ‘After Earth’, opens today, and the film itself is already getting destroyed by the critics—it’s got a horrid 14% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes. However, it’s got an 83% audience approval rating, and analysts are again tempering the perceived awfulness of the film with Smith’s enduring star power.

This is a pattern we’ve seen before—though his reviews typically aren’t so bad. Will Smith stars in a sci-fi action film, reviews are mediocre, the box office is huge. And while it’s conventional Hollywood wisdom that Smith is the Last Leading Man—one of the few actors who can turn out a crowd based on his name recognition alone—fewer note that he rose to prominence and stayed there thanks to his bear hug embrace of pulp sci-fi. 

Independence Day was Smith’s first smash success; the 1996 film was also both panned by critics and a primo example of pulp sci-fi. Since then, Smith has starred in 17 films—10 of which where science fiction. Most of them were critically disliked, and all of which where major box office successes.

A quick sampling:

Wild Wild West: The critically loathed steampunk western has a 21% Rotten rating, but it raked in $220 million.

Hancock: With a 41% approval rating, the wholly unremarkable sci-fi action hero film still pulled in nearly $230 million.

I, Robot: The “adaptation” of Asimov’s classic robot stories was nothing of the sort; critics shrugged and audiences paid up. It made $144 million. 

Men In Black 2: The lackluster sequel was roundly hated-on—a 39% rating, but $190 million at the box office. Its successor fared a little better.

The original Men in Black installment is literally the only film that critics, audiences, and sci-fi fans all tend to agree on. I Am Legend and Enemy of the State are the only other contenders; critics were lukewarm on both, but each film pulled did about $250 million. 

But there’s certainly at least one common thread: these are all great examples of the pulpiest pulp sci fi. None are great films, even in concept (not counting the novel adaptations), and none really aim to be. Will Smith is a pulp sci-fi hero incarnate; tough, charming, wise-cracking, classically handsome. Except for maybe Men In Black, none of his movies are likely to be returned to much in the future; they’re escapist concoctions that probably won’t age well. Independence Day, once Smith’s most towering blockbuster, is a dated drag; it will fade in step with its floppy, model-rific special effects. 

Yet Smith is the undeniable sci-fi superstar of our time. For one thing, the persona he’s evolved is ideal for the intergalactic stage; the brash modern-day cowboy who laughs in the face of evil. But he’s bigger than a cowboy; he was also profoundly modern, witty, and urbane.

Cinema’s most boundry-less genre was therefore a natural fit, an ideal ecosystem for Smith’s outsized character and pitch-perfect bravado. Why waste swagger of Smith’s caliber on terrorists or mafia dons? Seemed like he was always most at home staring down our more universal foes and woes. Also, he’s black. Given that the majority of his ticket-buying fans are suburbanite middle class whites (or at least were for some time), Smith’s blackness itself likely imbued something of an alien quality into his extraterrestrial-trouncing characters. After all, Americans seem to seek out otherness in our sci-fi stars; Arnold Schwarzenegger kills robots whilst dropping one-liners in a thick Austrian drawl, and Tom Cruise, our oblivious motorcycle-riding minority report-filer is a full-on Scientologist. 

Smith also seems to have a bona fide connection with sci-fi, and he’s revealed himself to be something of a futurist off-screen. In a 2007 interview with Wired, he recounts exhorting the I, Robot cast to read Ray Kurzweil, machine-controlled futures, and his thoughts on Asimov. He also discussed being admitted to a pre-engineering course at MIT, but ultimately declining to go. “I’ve always dreamed of a computerized classroom. You’d come in and the teacher wouldn’t have to take roll – every desk would have fingerprint roll. They could track you from one class to the other. Computer engineering would’ve been the only way for me to go.” He thinks the singularity is nigh: “I think that machines will definitely get to the point that they become intuitive. Or they become what appears to be intuitive.” Science fiction seems like it runs in his blood.

Perhaps because his aspirations were so big, because he was so innately interested in the material, or just because he set an early precedent with a string of hits, Smith became our generation’s most visible science fiction star—and, savvily, he rode his pulpy instincts directly to the top of the box office. All we really wanted, it turns out, was someone we could believe in whilst they kicked robot and alien ass. If After Earth doesn’t tank, it will be because we still think Will Smith is the man for the job.