(Credit: Gage Skidmore)

No genre has been as kind or as cruel in equal measure to Will Smith than sci-fi, with the star experiencing the highest highs and lowest lows of his career while battling against fantastical or extraterrestrial threats.

The year after Michael Bay’s Bad Boys elevated him from sitcom favourite to cinematic superstar, Smith took top billing in Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day. By the time it left theatres, the alien invasion epic was the second highest-grossing release in history and had cemented its leading man as an A-lister.

Smith underlined those credentials the following summer when he generated sparkling chemistry with Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black, launching a franchise that would bring in billions. I, Robot, and I Am Legend were another two massive hits in the same genre, with Smith and big budget sci-fi becoming a bulletproof duo.

All good things must come to an end, though, and in Smith’s case, his love affair with sci-fi took a turn for the worse when he received the first story credit of his career on M Night Shyamalan’s After Earth. A disastrous vanity project that did major damage to its director’s career, it was a critical and commercial disaster that saw the two key creatives sheepishly abandon their ambitious plans for an entire universe.

It would be years before Smith returned to the world of science fiction, and when he did, the results were once again dire. On paper, having one of the biggest stars of the modern era teaming up with a three-time Academy Award-winning director for a high-concept action flick that utilised cutting-edge technology should have been a sure thing, but it wasn’t.

When Gemini Man hit screens in October 2019, everyone was in agreement that it was much better off staying in development hell, where the story had been lingering since the late 1990s. The premise of a veteran assassin being hunted by a younger version of themself is a great one, but Lee became so preoccupied with his shiny new toys that he forgot to tell a decent story.

Smith’s digital doppelganger looks fine as long as it’s required to remain completely still, only for the illusion to shatter when Junior moves its face. By the time the dust had settled, studio Paramount confirmed that Gemini Man was in the red to the tune of $111million, which was the least it deserved.

However, because Smith is a big star and the film has a splashy and eye-catching hook, it’s been drawing in curious Netflix subscribers, with the dud currently the seventh most-watched title on the streaming service’s global viewership charts.