• WarmSoda@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      Used to be one of The top movie stars in the world. Not even Tom Cruz has thrown it all away yet. Smith managed it though.

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        9 months ago

        Fucking seriously. Dude was a massive box office draw and on top of that had had a truly wholesome career. He was well respected. Could really act…had solid comedy chops. Very few true stinkers in his IMDB page. And he threw it all away for a bitch who LAUGHS about cheating on him.

        I hate the word because of right wing fucks but there is no other way to describe it. He’s a fucking cuck.

        • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          His wife even gloated about fucking thier kids friend. Dude could have had any woman in the world and he picked that bitch.

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            9 months ago

            Thats what I will never understand. Maybe sticking with her after cheating? but to LAUGH ABOUT IT IN AN INTERVIEW.

          • GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip
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            9 months ago

            Wasn’t she originally tupacs girl or something? And basically chose and treated will as second choice from the beginning

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              9 months ago

              Tupac didn’t want her, think he banged her a few times and realized how nuts she is.

              Only bullet Tupac ever dodged.

      • thrawn@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Ton Cruise is incredibly successful, vastly more successful than better people with no baggage. It’s kind of weird because Cruise’s cult is way, way worse than the slap. But Cruise also seems to be more talented and outwardly likable and his cult is pretty good at staying hidden.

        • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          Cruise can pull on that star power like no one else.
          Everyone knows the shit cult he’s in, but when he’s in a movie it doesn’t matter. Even basically kidnapping Katie Holmes didn’t stop him. I can only imagine how much of an insufferable asshole he is day to day, but he still rocks as an actor.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            If you’re one of the most charismatic men in the world, what you actually believe is much less important to people.

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            9 months ago

            From what I’ve heard he’s a legit nice dude.

            I think about that interview with Spielberg where he refused to make a comment about Julia Roberts. Julia Roberts only ever appeared in one Spielberg movie. He’s Steven Spielberg, he doesn’t have to work with assholes if he doesn’t want to.

            Tom Cruise has appeared in multiple Spielberg movies. I take that as a sign he’s not an asshole. He’s just in a fucked up cult.

        • freebread@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          Will and Jada have some suspicious ties to the Church and its beliefs too. They’ve denied being part of it but some instances are so overt that it’s likely true.

        • This is fine🔥🐶☕🔥@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Yeah it’s hard not respect his professional work. He is one of the few people making modern day action movies fused with old-school elements.

          Also, Cruise doesn’t go around championing his cult to outsiders as far as I’m aware so it kind of makes it easy for people to ignore it.

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            9 months ago

            Also Tom and Will are both Scientologists (or were, I don’t keep up) so that part at least cancels out.

          • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
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            9 months ago

            True, he doesn’t push it on outsiders. He is number two in the cult though and makes speeches and stuff for them regularly. His best friend is the head guy.

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          9 months ago

          That’s the thing. You see Tom in interviews and he’s actually talking to the interviewers and making jokes and stuff. He is likable.

          He’s also one of the only celebrities I’m okay with separating art from artist. He makes some goddamn entertaining movies.

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            9 months ago

            Dude understands what makes a movie work. So if Tom Cruise is involved with a movie it’s likely to be really good.

            It’s a kind of “say what you will about Tom Cruise, but the man knows story structure” kind of things.

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        9 months ago

        From pretty much all reports Tom Cruise is generally really nice to people. If you’re a nice weirdo then whatever, they’re Hollywood people, they’re all weirdos.

        But if you’re an asshole weirdo, that’s when people won’t like you anymore.

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      9 months ago

      Is it actually known that the slap had a negative effect on his career? I don’t follow these things, but most of the reactions I’ve seen were on the neutral/comedic side

      • EdibleFriend@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        People make jokes about it but… People also make jokes about Elon musk while at the same time hating the fucker. He’s not Elon musk level hated now but the reaction in this comment section seems to show that both people really don’t like him anymore. I know I’m one of them for sure and I grew up with the dude. So many huge things in my life were him.

        And then look at the facts… He’s done basically nothing since then. There’s this game. He has a few producer credits on his IMDb. And last I heard the only actual movie he works is a completely nonsensical sequel to I Am Legend.

        He fucking died at the end of that movie! They flat out said they’re just going to pretend the end of the movie didn’t happen so they could make a sequel lol.

        • Scubus@sh.itjust.works
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          9 months ago

          There’s two different endings. In one of them he survives, but accept that he won’t cure the disease because the camps are the next step in human evolution. Also, he realizes his experiments to cure the disease are horrific and he has become a monster.

      • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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        9 months ago

        Much is made about online cancel culture, but that’s just people making a lot of noise on the internet and doesn’t matter much.

        The real cancel culture is when most people simply don’t like an actor as much as they used to. If the majority of people like an actor just 10% less than they used to, they take a massive hit to their career. Just liking someone a slightly less means you’re just going to watch something else instead. But when a majority of people feel the same way then liking someone a little less means translates into a large percentage of people not watching something. It’s not like you are going to watch 90% of a Will Smith movie because you like him 10% less, you either watch a movie or you don’t.

        Real cancel culture isn’t “I HATE THIS GUY SO MUCH I’LL NEVER EVER WATCH ANYTHING HE’S IN!” as portrayed on the internet. The real version is “Will Smith? Meh… there’s probably something better to watch.”

        I don’t vehemently hate Will Smith for the slap. But The fact that I’m a little less likely to watch his movies now and the fact that there’s always other things to watch means it’s unlikely I’ll watch another Will Smith movie.

        And whatever, he’s got lots of money already, it’s no big deal if his show business career is over.

        • jacksilver@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Goes to show how much the slap stole the show, cause I can’t even recall what he was nominated for. Had to look it up, but he won for King Richard (the movie about Sernea and Venus Williams).

          • This is fine🔥🐶☕🔥@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            That reminds me. Some social media feminists were furious that movie about Williams sisters is named after a man.

            I was like, they’re both executive producers and their other sister (Isha Price) was also involved in the making of the film. Maybe they wanted to honour their dad?

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        I mean… Five minutes before the slap, he was sitting in his front-row seat at an internationally-televised award ceremony where he had just been nominated for two of the most coveted honors in cinema. I dunno if he was that bad off.

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        Eh…not really. He hadn’t done anything Independence Day level for a while but he was still cranking out popular shit. That movie about the Williams sisters was only 1 year before he threw it all away and that did pretty well.

    • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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      9 months ago

      I just checked the game out on the steam store.

      Outside of it looking like a game from 2012, it seems to be very much pay to win, clunky, and I watched their videos and looked through pics and read the description on the games page…Not a single picture or mention of Will Smith at all. Nothing.

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    I’d be careful to read too much into this. If they wanted it to be successful, it would have been Raid: Shadow Legends or Genshin Impact level promoted, especially with $140M sunk in dev.

    This seems like they had no confidence in the finished product so they didn’t even bother to market it, just shat it out to app stores probably to meet contractual obligations and it will be gone soon.

    Either that or there is some behind the scenes nonsense happening preventing it from being marketed. Think something like Will Smith having it in his contract that it has to release and giving him 25% of sales, for example.

    But for something to cost that much and bomb that hard, it’s essentially impossible without them basically cutting their losses before launch and expecting it to fail. It’s the mobile game equivalent of the “lowest grossing movie”, basically something that was only released because it has to be, and not a true reflection of product quality. Like I’m sure it sucks, but is it THAT much worse than 99% of mobile trash? Probably not.

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    9 months ago

    Zombie: “Rawrrr” munch munch nom nom

    Will: “Get my wife’s arm out of your fucking mouth!”

    </low hanging fruit>

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    I genuinely have no interest in anything he does any more. Not actively boycotting his projects or anything, more complete disinterest. And I’m not even saying all art has to be viewed through the lens of the artist. But there are people that have such memorable or distinct performances that afterwards they have trouble getting other roles… This is like that, but cranked up to 11.

    And I know he’s a meme and we joke about it… but because of his weird hangups he chose to use violence on another person on a world stage, with cameras on him. By his own actions he made it impossible for me to lose myself in any character he plays, instead I’ll only think about The Slap.

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      I genuinely have no interest in anything he does any more

      This was me when he started trying to shoehorn his kid into the spotlight with those cringe interviews and that really awful movie about not being scared of aliens or whatever. I care about it so little that I can’t remember the name of the movie and have zero interest in looking it up.

      This comment about not caring about Will Smith is the maximum effort I’m willing to put into anything related to him.

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        9 months ago

        His kid has been in a few movies now, and his daughter made that one song. I honestly don’t care that he is trying to promote his kids because I think they wanted that and Will had the sway to do it. I think most parents would use their privilege to help their kids. But I do agree that that alien fear movie was trash.

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      9 months ago

      I really only liked Will Smith as an actor because he seemed to be a likeable person. Now I know better.

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        9 months ago

        Eh, I think he’s a good person that was hit by a horribly misplaced attempt at chivalry. There’s a lot of stuff he’s done that I don’t like, but it’s mostly been in his attempts to protect and help his family.

        There are worse reasons to do bad things. It’s not an excuse; I just think he’s not a terrible person.

        • Squirrel@thelemmy.club
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          Oh, for sure. I don’t think he’s necessarily a bad person, he’s just not particularly likeable anymore. Maybe it’s age, or what life has thrown his way, but his personality no longer seems as appealing. That’s the main thing he had going for him, imo.

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            9 months ago

            Oh yeah, he deserves everything Chris Rock decides to throw at him. A mistake isn’t an excuse.

      • Kedly@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        I mean, the key part of that sentence was Dunkey. Its kind of funny too because I now feel similar about Dunkey as I do Smith. They did that one persona REALLY WELL, but its just one persona, and eventually it gets old

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          Agreed, I used to really like Dunkey, then i watched his videos on Death Stranding after immensely enjoying the game myself and found them a little played up for content while painting the gameplay in a less than generous light.

          That being said, I do realize it’s a persona, and even his “reviews” are called dunkviews, and at times he does certainly have some nice insight, and he’s funny for certain, I don’t think he’s a bad YouTuber or anything, but I hope people don’t use his videos as purchasing advice like you might a true review

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              I’m cool with dunkview, he calls it that for a reason. Some people will still use it as a review, like the original guy I commented to. It’s a shame if someone treats it that seriously, but I don’t think Dunkey is out there pretending to tell you the grand worth of games, it’s, in my eyes, obviously enough comedy.

              That being said, not even the zombie game video was called a dunkview, that was just… A video. So some people will use anything as a review, I suppose

  • Margot Robbie@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Celebrity endorsement has never been a factor in how well a videogame does either way, regardless of level of star power or degree of involvement for the celebrity: Keanu Reeves playing a heavy hand (heh) in the story of Cyberpunk 2077 did little to stop the game’s initial bad press, and the main reason Baldur’s Gate 3 did well isn’t because JK Simmons is playing Kethric Thorm. (still, he had a great performance). Gameplay matters a lot more for a videogame.

    It’s unsurprising then, that Oscar winning actor Will Smith’s involvement in a game in the oversaturated genre of zombie survival shooters did not become successful.

    Plus, I don’t think paying celebrities to promote videos on their YouTube channel is an effective marketing strategy, mainly because nobody really watches any celebrities’ own YouTube channel, with the exception of Jack Black’s gaming channel, of course.

    • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      JK Simmons is playing Kethric Thorm

      See I played Baldur’s Gate but I didn’t know that shit

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        9 months ago

        Says a lot for the quality of voice acting in BG3 that it had Jason Isaacs and JK Simmons and I didn’t really notice either of them standing out.

        Although I did notice Gale in an episode of Good Omens.

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          I have nearly 1000 hours in Baldur’s Gate 3 and JUST NOW learned that Jason Isaacs was the voice of Gortash… I did recognize JK Simmons but honestly wasn’t 100% sure it was him until the second or third time meeting him and finally looking it up on IMDB to confirm (and somehow still missed Jason Isaacs - I did learn about Matt Mercer’s role as Minsc which still blows my mind).

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      9 months ago

      I wouldn’t hold it against Keanu personally because its clear he really cared and did gave a good performance but i feel like his involvement with cyberpunk ruined a lot of things that could have been.

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        9 months ago

        CDPR effectively rewrote the campaign after Keanu Reeves told them that he’s game if CDPR wants to record more lines. I still remember the E3 demo where CDPR said that the campaign has been completed and they’re just in the polishing stages.

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        9 months ago

        No one will hold it against him personally, it’s not uncommon.

        There are certain actors who performs great in every single movie they appear in, yet still have many of these movies flop. Many times, it’s out of the actor’s control.

        All we can do is our best.

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      9 months ago

      Wasn’t aware there were celebrities other than Jack Black on YouTube… TIL

    • lud@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      Keanu Reeves really helped promote the game though.

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        9 months ago

        Yes, he did. But neither the main praise nor criticism of the game was not directed towards him but on the overall buginess and removal of RPG elements from the game.

        • NoMoreCocaine@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Ok, what rpg element was removed? I just played it (without dlc), and it’s basically first person witcher 3 in cyberpunk setting, including all the faults. Basically true to type with CDPR.

          • Margot Robbie@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            They advertisd heavily on “complex branching storyline” and “every decision will have consequences” so the expectation was at the minimum a bigger Deus Ex Human Revolution, but then what they actually delivered is a worse GTA 5 with neon lights.

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              Right. But I just played it, and it has nothing to do with GTA. It’s literally witcher 3 in first person. Same level of branching, same slightly shallow rpg mechanics and shallow ish combat. It’s much more action, though and theoretically stealth is an option unlike witcher.

  • Chet_Awesomelad@kbin.social
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    9 months ago

    Lmfao the trailer doesn’t even include any dialogue from Will Smith’s character?! Imagine paying (I assume) millions of dollars to get an A-list Hollywood celebrity in your game and you don’t even show them in your trailer!

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      I watched a dunkey video for it, i dont think there is any dialogue from will smiths character. Like they didnt bother to record it. There was one or two instances where he spoke, and it wasn’t will smith.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Wait, so they just licensed Will Smith’s likeness?

        They couldn’t have just done a character that looks sort of like Will Smith?

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        What would be cringingly terrible, but entirely possible, is if Will DID record lines for his character, but content pipeline faults/laziness or programming errors mean it doesn’t play ingame.

        I even feel like that same circumstance has happened before…

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    9 months ago

    I’m going to assume that any game that a celebrity suddenly endorses out of nowhere is some low effort mobile thing that probably involves crypto.

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    9 months ago

    wtf I never heard of this game before. How come a game that cost ~$140 million had virtually no marketing except for Will Smith posting it on his youtube channel?

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      Rich People’s ego. He thinks his “name” is enough that he doesn’t have to market.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      9 months ago

      The post-apocalyptic zombie shooter allegedly had more than 300 developers on it and a budget of nearly 1 billion yuan (around $140 million)

      The word “allegedly” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. There is no way on this Earth that a mess like that cost $140 million to develop, unless somebody pocketed $130m of that and then just outsourced the rest to a tinpot Z tier studio.

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          9 months ago

          He wishes he got that from it, and looks like he was barely involved other than a quick poorly made advert and use of his face. It’s not even his voice in game.

          The whole thing looks like it was thrown together in Unity by a dozen people from mostly stock assets. If that figure is anywhere near accurate then Tencent got scammed.

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    Will Smith is a “past” celebrity, relying on his name, infamy, and horning in on already proven commodities.

    Bad Boys for Life, Aladdin, Suicide Squad, (oh, and “King Richard” lol, we’ve all seen that!)

    Those are his “popular” movies since 2009. Put a fork in him. He’s done. He should enter politics.

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    Maybe if you promote your game I’ll have heard of it…

    Looking at you Alone In The Dark 2024

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      Wait what? They’ve made another alone in the dark game and haven’t promoted it. Oh god.

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          I wouldn’t say 5 pieces of dlc totalling $20 is a lot. Not these days at least. Looks like they’re things you’d normally get in the “deluxe edition” of games past.

          Wouldn’t tempt me to open my wallet but it’s not as grotesque as a lot of dlc these days.

        • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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          for some reason only things already ubiquitous get marketed these days

          the reason you’re looking for is capitalism. why would I bet marketing money on anything but the most likely big return? this is also why such a huge portion of movies are either reboots, sequels, prequels or “homages”.

          • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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            Yes, but the point of adveritsing is to convince someone to buy a product… if I already consume and know about said product, then what does advertising do besides waste money?

            Fuck the Dorito’s “Anti-Ad” was as close as these corpos got to figuring it out

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    9 months ago

    It’s like Goldeneye except the only weapon setting is “Slappers only”

    (Too easy, I know)