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Tom Cruise has turned enough impossible dreams into reality to make him a real-life miracle man. But the movie star’s obsession with defying death and his own mortal strength has also made the world respect him even more than they love him. In recent years, fellow movie star Will Smith too has felt the effects of the fan craze that theMission: Impossiblestar leaves in his wake.
Not to be a stickler for details but Tom Cruise isn’t made out of rocket fuel, as much as he would like to believe otherwise. However, that little fact has never stopped Cruise from scaling the world’s tallest skyscraper, neither has it impeded his desire to ride a motorcycle off a cliff – multiple times in one day. Unlike us fans who have simply accepted Cruise as superhuman, Will Smith learned the hard way that the momentum that drives the Hollywood star is a hard act to follow.
Tom Cruise Casts a Large Shadow Over Will Smith
Since the 1990s, bothWill SmithandTom Cruisehave graced the Hollywood landscape with their tastefully acquired filmography. FromMission: ImpossibletoBad Boys, Cruise, and Smith have infused the movie industry with an action movie bug that has been hard to shake and harder to let go of. 3 decades later, fans are still rushing to their nearest movie theaters to watch the next adventure of superspy Ethan Hunt and Miami detective Mike Lowrey.
While more somber action thrillers have kept our bad boys busy in between their subsequent franchise sequels,Gemini ManandAmerican Madejust don’t have the same ring to them as the films that made the two movie stars famous. Meanwhile, flicks likeIndependence Day,Men in Black, andI Am Legendbolstered Will Smith’s confidence enough to make him believe he too was on par with Tom Cruise when it came to his action figure identity. The fact that he was 6 years younger than theTop Gunlegend was a much-needed confidence booster.
This Can Easily Compete Against John Wick- Best Action Scene From Bad Boys 4 Did Not Even Have Will Smith In It
However, the first mistake that Smith made when he climbed back on the saddle for his thirdBad Boysiteration was to emulate Tom Cruise. No matter one’s age, strength, or physical fitness, an actor simply doesn’t wake up one day and decide to mimic Cruise in the hopes of actually being like him. While Cruise keeps delivering increasingly impressive stunt sequences much to the fans’ astonishment, Will Smith’s desire to pull off his own stunts inBad Boys for Lifeearned him a cruel reality check instead.
Bad Boys for LifeCrippled Will Smith’s Confidence
In his excitement, or perhaps through sheer will, Will Smith returned 17 years later to pick up where he left off. Alongside Martin Lawrence, the pair revisited their glory days in the buddy cop sequelBad Boys for Lifedirected by the fresh-faced duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. Perhaps it was the same excitement that made him believe that he could pull off his stunts without the help of stunt doubles if Tom Cruise couldhang from the side of a Boeing mid-take-offdespite being older than him at the time of performing said stunt.
Suffice it to say, the action sequences inBad Boyscome nowhere close to the ones inMission: Impossibleas Cruise could do them with a hand tied behind his back while Will Smith realized he overshot his abilities by a mile.
I’m trying to hang on. There were a couple of the action sequences that I was like ‘oooh.’ I started and I told myself I was doing all of my stunts. I was doing – you know, Tom Cruise was just hanging on the side of an airplane at 50. I was like ‘Man, I’m better than Tom Cruise!’ And I did like two stunts and I was like ‘I’m not better than Tom Cruise!’
REVIEW: Will Smith & Martin Lawrence Carry The Dated Bad Boys for Life’
In 2024, Will Smith returned for the fourth installment ofBad Boysin the ambiguously titledBad Boys: Ride or Diebut with a bit more conviction. In abehind-the-scenes videothat has gone viral since the film’s release, Smith can be seen strapped to a complex camera contraption that he operated while simultaneously performing an action scene in a closeup one shot. Although it doesn’t compare to the Burj or the Boeing, Smith’s skills are still something to balk at.
Bad Boys for Lifeis available to buy/rent on Prime Video or Apple TV.
Diya Majumdar
Senior Writer
Articles Published :2410
Diya Majumdar is a Senior Content Writer at FandomWire with over 2000 published articles on the website. Since 2022, she has been working as an entertainment journalist with a special focus on films and pop culture.Among the countless genres and themes of Hollywood, the ones that particularly favor Diya’s tastes include Game of Thrones, DC, and well-aged thrillers and classics.
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Bad Boys for LifeTom CruiseWill Smith
