The greatest experience Will Smith ever had in a movie theatre: “It shaped how I look at the world”
Will Smith was born to be an entertainer. From his music career to his conquering of the movie business to his general demeanour, everything about the guy screams ‘watch me’. He is always on, always in the mood to spin an anecdote or get up and do a silly dance for the millions watching at home. Whether you love, hate, or don’t give a toss about him, you can’t deny that he is exactly where he needs to be in life.
Most people know that Smith got his big break as ‘The Fresh Prince’, a rapper who had a string of hits alongside DJ Jazzy Jeff. This transitioned into the similarly-named sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which introduced audiences to the star’s talent for comedy. The mid-1990s was when Smith really came into his own, however. Between 1995 and 1997, he made three movies—Bad Boys, Independence Day, and Men in Black, which he only did because Steven Spielberg told him to. That is one hell of a run.
You might have noticed that two of the three movies that made Smith a household name are from the science fiction genre. He would return to this realm a few more times across his career, notably in films like I, Robot, Hancock, and After Earth. Look, ‘notable’ doesn’t mean the same as ‘good’. Chris Rock’s best friend clearly has an affinity for aliens and spaceships, which makes sense when you realise that one of his first cinematic loves was one of the biggest sci-fi flicks of all time.
“The greatest experience I’ve ever had in a movie theatre was watching Star Wars,” he told Front Row. “It shaped how I look at the world. My imagination was so small before I went in that theatre, and there was an explosion in my head. I just couldn’t figure out how someone came up with it. How could they make me feel like that watching it? So, for me, there’s nothing more valuable than how people feel in a movie theatre about a movie. It’s more important to me than (getting) awards.”
Smith was born in 1968, so he would have been eight or nine years old when he first saw George Lucas’ masterpiece. This is the prime age to first experience Star Wars; old enough to grasp the story but still young enough to be wowed by it. He wouldn’t have been the only one blown away by this world of intergalactic rebellion and magical space wizards. Star Wars—later retitled Episode IV: A New Hope—was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before, and it changed cinema forever.
You can see the impact this experience had on Smith’s later career. His character in Independence Day, the wise-cracking pilot Steven Hiller, is basically a ’90s version of Han Solo. Both characters have the same cocky swagger and skills in the cockpit, and both end up becoming unlikely heroes of their respective stories. All Hiller is missing is a big, fluffy best friend.
Star Wars was such a seminal moment in late-1970s culture that millions of kids from that era probably experienced it as a life-changer. Not all of them could have gone on to be Will Smith, but the fact that one of them did speaks volumes about its impact on society.
