If you’ve been living in a cave in one of Tajikistan’s more remote provinces, there’s a small chance you didn’t hear about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the 2022 Academy Awards. The smack, issued in response to a joke about Smith’s wife, dominated headlines and social media chatter. Smith was banned from the Oscars for a decade, his ongoing movies were canceled or delayed, a 5,500-word Wikipedia page was written, and questions were raised about Smith’s continuing viability as a movie star. Then he starred in Bad Boys 4 and made a big bag of money.
This was not the first time Will Smith responded to career challenges by retreating to the Bad Boys-verse. The last few years of Smith’s work may have been framed around his viral moment, but he’d already been on shaky ground following a parade of crud that included Suicide Squad (the bad one), Bright, and Collateral Beauty. Remember the movie where Smith exchanges letters with Love, as personified by Keira Knightley? No? Only Bad Boys 3 righted Smith, and it arrived just a year after Gemini Man, a nadir that felt like Smith collectively slapping unsuspecting moviegoers.
