Lessons from The Matrix!

Hi everybody!
Will Smith has said that he turned down the lead in THE MATRIX because he could not understand the script. He said something like, "you see, you don't know that you're in THE MATRIX, but THE MATRIX exists so that you don't know that you're in THE MATRIX, but once you know that you're in THE MATRIX, only you have the power to destroy THE MATRIX, but once you have the power to destroy THE MATRIX, then THE MATRIX will do everything in its' power to destroy you, and, then, hey, say what?!"
First, for an actor who took the lead in MEN IN BLACK and THE WILD, WILD WEST, saying that logical narratives drive his acting choices is rather naive, but let us accept his premise. Next, considering that Jada Pinkett Smith was in the two MATRIX sequels but that he was not also begs the rationale, but, again, let us say his reasons remain true.
But for an actor who has once boasted that he was King of the BlueScreen; or even of the GreenScreen, I offer that the real reason that Will Smith turned down THE MATRIX was less about the script and more about his screen persona.
Let's face it, the only reason that an actor explains why he "turned down" a movie is because the movie that he did instead of the movie that he "turned down" was so lame that people ask him why wasn't he in the movie that he "turned down", right?
From the beginning of his acting career in THE FRESH PRINCE OF BEL AIR, it has always been about Will Smith all of the time. After SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION, Smith has only since played the Alpha Male. Be it the extended cameo in INDEPENDENCE DAY, the caddy in THE LEGEND OF BAGGER VANCE, the slickster in HITCH or the broker in THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS, he plays the guy who is The Man.
If you are Will Smith reading THE MATRIX script, then you have got to realize that it is Trinity (Carrie Ann-Moss) who is the motor of the movie, not Neo (Keanu Reeves). Well, Smith is not going to spend the entire movie in a fog while somebody else does the heroic stuff until the last gasp of third act.
But the reason that THE MATRIX is so effective is that Neo takes so bloody long to assert himself; it's as if Sleeping Beauty wakes up and is carrying an Uzi and an attitude. The entire movie is about passitivity and drugs and gamer fantasies. Neo actually dies before his girlfriend; Trinity; manages to pull his fat out of the fire: it's like the reverse of what happened to Uma Thurman after John Travolta plunged a hyperdermic into her chest in PULP FICTION.
Smith would never let himself get rescued like that on screen, does not need a mentor like Lawrence Fishburne, does not need an Oracle in the kitchen, does not need to be a supporting player in his own life.
Will Smith only does a certain kind of a movie and it has afforded him a long string of box office success, but there will come a day when he will be given a supporting role and then we will see his true mettle. Will he become, like Robert Redford, an actor who will insist on being the lead long after all of the good lead roles are gone? Will he become, like Paul Newman, an actor who brings star quality to small parts and vastly improves the movies that he participates in? Or will he become, like Jack Nicholson, an actor with idiosyncratic tastes who is mostly baffling but sometimes brilliant? I suspect he will go the path of Redford.
As an actor, Keanu Reeves has been more adventurous with his career than has Will Smith, and we the audience have benefitted from it. In films like CONSTANTINE and even SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE, Reeves has been better than expected when he could have just phoned it in. Ultimately, successful actors are like small businesses, and every movie is a serious risk to their entertainment portfolio. If every movie Reeves did after SPEED was a variation on SPEED, well, then, he would have never done THE MATRIX. And if Reeves never matches the success of THE MATRIX, well, very few actors ever go beyond the success of their franchise, now do they?
WONDER WOMAN is going to be a movie with mythic figures and modern conundrums all wrapped up in a golden lasso, woo woo! Because that's the way we do it!
Tomorrow, more goodies! Be good!
Brad