I Am Legend was sort of a wake up call for mainstream audiences, not only proving that Will Smith had the charisma and “it” factor to carry a blockbuster movie all by his lonesome, but also crowning him as the undisputed fresh prince of mercy killing his own dog on screen. It suddenly became clear that Smith did his best work acting against CGI monsters, cementing what we’d all suspected since his command performance in the music video for “Black Suits Comin (Nod Your Head)” in 2002. The general consensus: Not casting the Academy Award nominee in future entries to the rapidly expanding zombie film genre would be an enormous slap in the face.
Did it pan out? Well, that’s a complicated question, covering a career stretching all the way back to the 1980s. The answer is multifaceted. Like, don’t get me wrong, it’s a “no,” but it’s a blurry “no.”
Will Smith and the zombie movie spectrum
If you want to get technical – even obnoxious – Will Smith hasn’t been in any zombie movies at all. The novel I Am Legend, which serves as the basis for the movie of the same name as well as two previous adaptations (1971’s Omega Man starring Charlton Heston, and 1964’s The Last Man on Earth with Vincent Price) wasn’t about zombies at all. The pandemic that left Robert Neville alone and increasingly socially awkward was 100% vampire-based. The modern remake veers away from some of the more blatant goofiness of the book, eschewing crucifix- and garlic-based defenses for claymores and grenades. Still, you can see the leftovers bits and pieces of the concept in 2007’s I Am Legend, with the infected unable to survive in sunlight.
So if we’re calling I Am Legend a zombie movie and, again, being really aggravating to talk to, then there’s room for interpretation as to what a “zombie movie” is.
In Suicide Squad, Smith’s Deadshot deadshoots oodles of deformed, mindless soldiers under the power of an ancient sorceress. That’s at least zombie adjacent.
In 2004, Smith starred in the DreamWorks animated picture Shark Tale, in which all of the characters have dead, glassy cartoon eyes, putting them somewhere on the undead scale. In 2013, he was in Anchorman 2, a film widely viewed as an unholy attempt to breathe life into a long-dead franchise, as one might a corpse through the use of dark and unspeakable magics. That Aladdin remake, like all of the live action Disney reimaginings, is a soulless, shambling carcass of something that was once full of life. Does that count as a zombie movie?
No. Not really. Sorry if I got carried away.