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).
By far the worst film ever directed by the usually solid Ang Lee (Life of Pie, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon), Gemini Man is a 2019 action-thriller—released, in some theaters, at a distracting 120fps—that finds Smith playing both the government assassin Henry Brogan and (through the magic of CGI de-aging) Henry's much younger clone who is sent by a villain (Clive Owen) to take him down. As was the case for other Smith duds, many critics actually liked the star's performance and instead faulted the generic screenplay and not entirely successful effects. And a box office gross of nearly $175 million wasn't enough to make the expensive production profitable.
“It gives you two Will Smiths for the price of one, but you still might feel ripped off by its clunky dialogue, thin characters and underwhelming action. Encourage your younger clone to avoid it.” —Ben Travis, Empire
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