Hollywood is the land of near-misses. For every iconic movie role that becomes a part of pop culture history, there are usually a dozen actors between whom the role gets passed around in the several years it takes from conception to release. One such instance occurred with the 1999 sci-fi classic The Matrix written and directed by the Wachowskis, which fundamentally changed the way Hollywood makes blockbuster movies.

The Matrix and its sequels all star Keanu Reeves as the lead character Neo aka The One. The role launched the actor into stratospheric success and became Reeves’ best-known role for decades. But The Matrix could have turned out very differently if the makers of the film had gone with Will Smith, who was their first choice for playing Neo. How might the casting of Smith have affected the success and legacy of the Matrix franchise?

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Will Smith Was the King of ’90s Sci-Fi

     20th Century Fox

For younger fans, it could be unthinkable to imagine anyone other than Keanu Reeves playing Neo. But things were very different back in the ’90s when the Wachowskis were trying to get The Matrix made. Will Smith had already established himself as a star both on television with The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air series and on the big screen with the success of 1995’s Bad Boys.

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More importantly, Smith was the star of the two most popular sci-fi movies of the ’90s, Independence Day and Men in Black. The back-to-back hits from 1996 and 1997 proved that global audiences were eager to watch Smith in sci-fi settings as a leading man. Thus, the Wachowskis reached out to the actor to offer him the lead role of Neo in The Matrix.

A Difficult Sell

     Warner Bros.

When Smith was told about the ambitious world the Wachowskis were imagining for their movie, the actor had a hard time wrapping his head around their plans. Specifically “bullet-time,” a groundbreaking new action filmmaking technique the Wachowskis intended to use in The Matrix to make certain scenes appear to “freeze” while the camera pans around the shot from different angles.

“They were designing those cameras to get those freeze-frames,” Smith explained in an Empire interview (via Yahoo). “And I was like, ‘If that doesn’t work, the movie looks ridiculous.’” The actor goes on to explain that he did not feel comfortable making a movie where such a strange, new, untested technique would be so crucial to its success. Ironically, Smith’s wife Jada Pinkett Smith starred in The Matrix after he turned it down.

Will Smith Would Be a Different Kind of Neo

     Sony Pictures

Ultimately, Will Smith elected to pass on The Matrix. Keanu Reeves was brought on board the project, and the rest is cinema history. For his part, Smith candidly admits in the same Empire interview that Reeves was better suited for the role than he was at the time. Specifically, Smith, who had his start as a comedic actor, might have tried to inject his role in The Matrix with some unnecessary humor.

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“I don’t think I was mature enough as an actor at that point to get out of the way [of the Wachowskis]," Smith states, “and just let it be and allow the directors to make the movie. I would have been trying to make jokes.” While Will Smith has one of the best comic timings of any A-list Hollywood star, trying to make Neo a jokey character would have been a massive misfire. What makes the bizarre, philosophical world of The Matrix so compelling is that its main cast sells the seriousness of their reality at all times, instead of poking fun at their own story with the kind of self-aware quips that Will Smith’s character was famous for in the Men in Black franchise.

The Matrix as a Will Smith Star Vehicle

Before the domination of franchise IPs, big-budget Hollywood movies were greatly controlled by their stars. Actors like Tom Cruise and Dwayne Johnson are famous for carefully curating every aspect of their films to cater specifically to their ‘star-image.’ Will Smith is another actor who is notorious for trying to dictate the direction of the movie to suit his characters, which was the main reason why the actor was replaced by Jamie Foxx in Django Unchained.

Thus, putting Will Smith in The Matrix would have turned the film into another starring vehicle for Smith, which in turn would have negatively affected the world that the Wachowskis were trying to build for their film. The story of the movie needed a central character who could command the audience’s attention without overwhelming everything else on the screen. Keanu Reeves was able to achieve that tricky balance thanks to his low-key acting style, which stands in stark contrast to Will Smith’s charismatically bombastic onscreen persona.

In the end, The Matrix got the lead actor best suited to the role, and was able to spawn a franchise that is still fondly remembered for its fascinating characters and world-building. For his part, Will Smith continued to be a part of acclaimed sci-fi movies like I, Robot in 2004 and 2007’s I Am Legend.