The Film Strip: Will Smith On ‘MIB3′ Concept, Responsibility And Fatherhood

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*It was Will Smith’s idea to base “Men in Black 3″ on time travel. And true to form, Smith made sure to include time relevant issues of racism.

In the movie, he is pulled over in 1969 because he is black and driving an expensive car. At the Four Season Hotel in L.A. where he and cast members were promoting MIB3, he let it be known how he feels about living in the 21st century.

“I’ve always loved time travel and for this movie to actually dive into it, I realized that for Black people you really don’t want to do too much jumping into the past. Right now is like the best it’s ever been. So like with the time dial, if I could go forward with it, that would be a great thing.

“The thing that I’ve learned in my extensive study of time travel [laughs],” Smith mused, “is that if you change one thing you change everything. I am absolutely ecstatic about where my life is right now so I wouldn’t mess with anything. Everything that I’ve experienced, everything that has gone right or wrong in my mind, has turned out to be all right. So I feel like that’s the nature of energy. My life as I sit here today is absolutely perfect, so I’m not messing with anything [laughs].”

The choice to travel in time is like any other decision that affects everything around you. Fortunately for Smith, he chooses to think about how his movies are perceived.

“For me there’s nothing more valuable than how people feel in a movie theater about the movie. So, with awards that’s never been important to me. That’s what a small group of people thinks. It’s the maximum amount of people that can have an experience that will give them some little gem of something to think about, or talk about is all that’s important to me in making movies. The adjustment I’m making in my career right now is the clarity of what we’re saying with the movies. There has to be an idea. There has to be some message or some statement. Just because it’s a popcorn movie doesn’t mean you don’t have something to say. And to me, that’s hugely important.”

Another subject touched upon in “MIB 3″ is secrets. “In ‘Men in Black 3,’ we connected to the destructive nature of secrets,” Smith stated. “And that idea, whether you get that or not, when you look at it and think about it, it shows how a relationship can get repaired and go to another level through the exposure of a secret.”

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article courtesy of Eurweb.com