We’re taking a look at the filmography of one of the biggest stars of the planet, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, then transitioned to film, moving from quieter independent dramas to game-changing blockbusters.
Over the course of 30 years, Will Smith became one of the most bankable actors in the industry. In 2007, Aladdin. On top of commercial success, Smith has two Oscar nominations and four Grammy Awards to his name. To this day, he remains one of the most successful Black actors in Hollywood history.
Smith’s career has had its ebbs and flows over the years. The past 15 years or so have been less popular than he ever was in his peak but box office blips have done nothing to dilute his status as a beloved and worldwide icon. His social media presence and YouTube channel offer regular reminders of his specific kind of bombastic dad-joke charm. Now aged 51, Smith seems to be entering another phase of his enduring career, focusing on smaller, more prestige-driven titles made by Black directors. Up next on his schedule is Antoine Fuqua. These are very different films for Smith, whose personality and on-screen presence is so distinctive that it dominates most of the work he releases. You know A Will Smith Movie when you see it: Cocky, slightly goofy, immensely charming, and just earnest enough. There’s a reason he remains so loved, even as his commercial power dwindled.
With that in mind, we’re taking a look at the filmography of Will Smith and ranking it from worst to best. This list will not include cameo roles or parts where he plays himself.
WORST: Bright
It was a big deal for Smith to head to Netflix with a high-concept R-rated action thriller combining the grit and realism of director David Ayer’s previous work End of Watch with the urban fantasy of World of Warcraft. Bright was hotly-hyped and seen as a turning point for the streaming service as it hoped to keep up with the traditional studio system and their event blockbusters.
infamous Max Landis never got past the first draft. Hearing Will Smith say, “Fairy lives don’t matter today” is a real low point in his career.
Suicide Squad
David Ayer has spoken candidly about how his adaptation of DC Comics’ Suicide Squad was ruined by reshoots, multiple edits, and studio panic, so it’s easy to be sympathetic about the mess that is the final product that landed in theaters. That doesn’t make it any easier to watch, however, as Suicide Squad is so technically and narratively messy that you can’t help but wonder how it ended up so bad. The shoddy attempts to marry Ayer’s bleak bad-guys-on-a-mission movie with a rushed neon overlay and uninteresting humor only exacerbates the inherent problems at the core of a film that never really got a chance to be its own thing.
Smith and cast like Viola Davis and Margot Robbie end up as its sole saving graces, but even Will Smith’s charisma can only carry Suicide Squad so far. He will not be returning for the sequel-slash-soft reboot, directed by James Gunn.
Seven Pounds
Smith has some great dramatic chops but his choice of projects to show off those skills hasn’t necessarily benefitted him as an actor. 2007's Seven Pounds is the worst example of his eagerness to be taken seriously as a prestigious actor. It's a near-pornographic misery fest designed to needle the viewer into crying, but the pure artifice of its approach to an already baffling story mostly elicited eye-rolls or fits of laughter.
Smith also simply isn't good here, having squeezed out every drop of his charm to play a cliché of a sad person. The ending also signifies one of the most insulting and potentially dangerous depictions of suicide ever committed to the big screen, It's that climax that stops the movie from being funny-bad and sends it into the realms of mere awfulness.
Collateral Beauty
If Seven Pounds is an example of Smith’s worst attempts to be serious, then Collateral Beauty is the most hilariously misguided flipside of that. Smith stars alongside a ridiculously talented cast that includes Helen Mirren, Edward Norton, Kate Winslet, Naomie Harris, and Keira Knightley, all of whom seem a tad embarrassed to be in this bonkers drama about grief.
Smith plays a grieving father whose business partners decide to push him out of their business by hiring a group of actors to play the manifestations of Love, Death, and Time and gaslight him until he can be declared mentally unbalanced. All of this is played completely earnestly and overloaded with saccharine sentimentality when in reality this would probably make a solid horror movie. Everything about Collateral Beauty is ham-fisted, contrived, and unbearably cheesy, but it's also far too unintentionally hilarious to write off as a simple flop.
After Earth
Most of the jokes about After Earth are rooted in the project being seen as a vanity project for Smith and his son Jaden. Alex Pappademas of After Earth seem far more interesting than it actually is.
For a costly vanity project, directed by The Get Down). In an interview with Esquire, Smith later called the film "the most painful failure" of his career.
Wild Wild West
Everything about the big-screen adaptation of the 1960s TV series The Wild Wild West seemed like a guaranteed hit in the making, from the casting of Smith, the biggest actor on Earth, to the directorial choice of Men in Black's Barry Sonnenfeld to the costly steampunk-style production design and VFX. What resulted was a film that Smith himself considers one of the biggest mistakes of his career. Wild Wild West is loud and overcrowded with stuff but depressingly lacking in laughs. Kenneth Branagh gives the worst performance of his life as a former Confederate general with no legs and a fetish for mechanical spiders, and Smith and co-star Kevin Kline’s chemistry feels mismatched.
Watching the comedy of this movie fall as flat as it does is often deeply uncomfortable, and those much-discussed action scenes feel derivative and oddly lightweight. What stops the film from being a total turkey is Smith’s end credits rap, which has a music video that does everything the movie does but much better.
The Legend of Bagger Vance
It must have been a huge deal for Smith to work on a film directed by the legendary Robert Redford, and The Legend of Bagger Vance certainly seemed like Oscar bait in the making. While it certainly looks and sounds good, thanks to cinematography and music by Michael Ballhaus and Rachel Portman, the historical drama feels hopelessly out-of-date.
Smith plays a mysterious traveler who becomes the caddy for a down-on-his-luck golfer, played by Matt Damon, trying to win a much-needed cash prize during the Great Depression. Through Bagger Vance's wisdom and advice, Damon finds his groove and becomes a better person. Many critics rightly noted the film's cloying and questionable use of the "magical negro" trope, making Smith a poorly-developed plot device to aid the white protagonist in his troubles. It's such a waste of Smith's power and a cliché that Hollywood should have put to bed decades ago.
Winter’s Tale
Smith only appears in screenwriter Akiva Goldsman’s directorial debut for a few minutes but he certainly makes an impression. How could he not when he’s playing Satan, and doing so while wearing a Jimmy Hendrix t-shirt during the turn of the 20th century? Winter’s Tale is the sort of bad movie that we only get once in a while, a wholehearted disaster that is endlessly entertaining to watch because of how baffling every aspect of it is.
Set in a magical New York City full of warring gangs, flying horses, and occasional bouts of time travel, Winter’s Tale is a tough film to condense into a mere synopsis. Still, it’s kind of a blast to see all of these actors, including Colin Farrell and Russell Crowe, give everything they have to total nonsense. It deserves to be a midnight movie favorite on the same level as The Room.
Shark Tale
2004's Shark Tale, courtesy of the then-rising powers at Shrek, and Shark Tale seemed to be more of the same: A sardonic family-friendly picture full of anthropomorphic animals, pop culture gags, and a starry voice cast more showy and expensive than anything at the House of Mouse.
Alas, the movie itself was simply bad, and a firm reminder to Hollywood that 3D animation didn’t automatically make a movie better. Everything about Shark Tale feels tired and the overwhelming number of fish puns proved exhausting rather than entertaining.
I Am Legend
In of pure performance, Smith could easily make the case that I Am Legend contains his finest piece of acting work across three decades in the business. He commands the screen alone for most of the running time, brings energy and weariness to a man forced to stay sane as he walks the streets of New York City alone during the day and fights off vampires at night.
It all falls apart when the sun goes down and said vampires are revealed to be some of the decade’s worst CGI creations. Infamously, the film of I Am Legend changed the ending from that of Richard Matheson’s novel, which entirely neutered the point of the narrative and left a lot of audiences feeling cheated. In of pure lost potential, I Am Legend is the biggest offender in Smith’s filmography.
