Every Will Smith Movie, Ranked Worst to Best
Updated December 1, 2022 to add Emancipation.
First rising to fame in the 1980s as the non-DJ half of the hip hop duo DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Will Smith moved into acting in 1990 as the star of the hit NBC sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (soon to be rebooted as a Peacock drama series). He would make his big-screen debut a few years later in a few indie movies before quickly moving to above-the-title stardom with 1995's Bad Boys. He has been a major presence in film ever since, with roles in over 30 films, a pair of Oscar nominations, and a cumulative box office gross of over $4 billion.
His newest film, King Richard, is headed to theaters and HBO Max on November 19th and is expected to be an Oscar contender in multiple categories. How does it compare to his past work? In the gallery on this page, we rank every one of Will Smith's films in order from worst to best by their Metascores, which represent the consensus opinions of top film critics. Note that we have excluded titles where Smith's role was limited to a brief cameo appearance (such as in Winter's Tale, Jersey Girl, and Anchorman 2).
We wouldn't dare joke about I, Robot this Christmas. Nor should you: It's not really worth the effort. Directed by Alex Proyas (Dark City), this middling sci-fi action thriller very loosely inspired by Isaac Asimov's short story collection of the same name (so loosely that it borrows little more than a title and Asimov's famed "three laws of robotics") is set in a dystopian near future filled with intelligent robots. Smith stars as a Chicago homicide detective who investigates the death of the founder (James Cromwell) of a leading robotics company and identifies a robot (Alan Tudyk) as his prime suspect. I, Robot boasts Oscar-caliber visual effects (it was nominated) but not an award-worthy plot: Critics find it poorly paced and disappointingly rote and derivative.
“If you subtracted from the story and style components recycled from landmark sci-fi films of Hollywood past, you’d be left with Will Smith wisecracking over a box of unformatted floppies. I, Unimpressed.” —Aaron Hillis, Premiere
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