There are fewer and fewer moviegoers who will show up for a star-driven, original, adult-skewing studio programmer. The tragedy is that, like Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway’s Serenity, the bells and whistles of Gemini Man may have both sabotaged the movie and jeopardized the industry. Maybe if the film had worked better as a movie, Joker had been less of an all-purpose event, the movie star+high concept formula was still viable, and/or audiences weren’t either scared off by the high frame rate or chose to give up when unable to find a participating theater near them, Gemini Man might have survived. Why Gemini Man’s failure is such a missed opportunity. Since Joker and Addams Family got better reviews anyway, Gemini Man was only the “must-see movie” of the moment for those too young for the R-rated drama, those explicitly interested in how the movie looked and felt and die-hard Will Smith fans. And for those who wanted a kid-sized franchise/horror movie, well, that’s The Addams Family. Joker especially is a “problem” in that it is serving as a triple threat, acting as the big tentpole movie, the big adult movie and the big horror movie of the season. Like Gravity, The LEGO Movie and Black Panther before it, Joker has become one of those movies that’s hit it big in such a way that it actively hurts the competition. Joker and Addams Family were brutal competition.

Like The Walk in IMAX, the story behind Gemini Man was that you shouldn’t bother if you can’t/won’t see it as intended. With the caveat that the reviews for the movie were lousy, folks either were turned off by the high-frame-rate (perhaps they got burned by the first Hobbit prequel), had no interest in 3-D or were unable to find a nearby theater playing it at a high frame rate. However, conversations about how the movie was made dominated the media coverage, overshadowing what the movie had to offer in terms of meat-and-potatoes entertainment. It’s neat/noteworthy that Ang Lee chose to both make a movie starring a CGI double of “young Will Smith” and shoot that movie in the ultra-detailed (and thus visually unforgiving) 120 fps. The narrative was that it wasn’t worth seeing outside of the technology. Gemini Man joins Focus (which earned $150 million global on a $50 million budget), Collateral Beauty, After Earth and Concussion as wholly original star vehicles that couldn’t pull their weight in a branded/IP theatrical world. But the “star+concept” packages that once defined Hollywood are now (unless the budget is low enough) bad business. Ditto a “don’t need to leave the couch to watch it” Netflix movie like Bright. Cast him as Deadshot in Suicide Squad or as Genie in Aladdin, and he’s worth his weight in gold. Like almost other movie star today, save for Leonardo DiCaprio and (at a price) Kevin Hart, he is a high-level added value element for an already viable IP/franchise/brand pitch.

Will Smith is now a “regular” movie star.

Gemini movie will smith