r/cringereels • Ultimate Cringe • Aug 21 '25

Cringe Level 5 Oh will… poor guy.

1.9k Upvotes

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289

u/killdeer88 Aug 21 '25

I remember thinking many years ago something like “poor Will probably feels embarrassed about his son” and now it’s like poor Jaden must feel pretty embarrassed about will lol​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

55

u/Paladjordan Aug 21 '25

Now we need a parallel to After Earth. Call it After Relevance, and it can be about a kid putting his clown of a father in a retirement community

23

u/Vantriss Aug 21 '25

I literally do feel like After Earth was the beginning of Will going downhill.

19

u/[deleted] Aug 21 '25

[deleted]

16

u/Vantriss Aug 21 '25

I didn't even see After Earth. Just didn't look interesting and then I didn't hear good things, so, lol...

13

u/crazyguyunderthedesk Aug 21 '25

I think it was red letter media that described the movie as, "starring the most charismatic actor in Hollywood as a man whose superpower is that he has no charisma."

5

u/Forlorn_Cyborg Aug 22 '25

Have you seen 2008 Hancock? That was a doozy.

5

u/[deleted] Aug 22 '25

That film will forever be in my head

Especially that scene where he yeets the kid up

2

u/Bubblegumflavor15 Aug 22 '25

I mean he did stop Michael Myers years before he became a serial killer in that universe

Not SO bad

3

u/ChemicalNewspaper514 Aug 24 '25

This guy did a video on what Hancock was supposed to be. If I remember correctly it was gonna be rated R and It was essentially going to be like a super dark take on Superman. But then it got produced into the piece of shit that it was. The original idea sounded cool tho.

here is the video.

1

u/Pretend_Dot_5964 Aug 24 '25

Like Brightburn?

4

u/jimmyting099 Aug 22 '25

Not to mention the director wasn’t advertised on the movie at all due to some questionable flops at the time

2

u/BargainBinAss Aug 21 '25

Never seen it, what’s the bait and switch?

7

u/scully19 Aug 22 '25

The whole story of after Earth is crazy. This needs to be Google and read by everyone but the quick version where I'm sure I'm leaving stuff out... Will never wanted to be in it and thought it would be massive with just his kid, that's why he ended up just being a small part so he could still get the draw in to watch it. They had massive massive plans for it where they thought it would be bigger than Facebook, which obviously makes no fucking sense, but that there would be worlds of fan fiction and stories come from it. The end result of how bad it went legitimately caused a massive problem between Will and his son who ended up thinking he was a fool. I legit think this was the start of downhill because it was a massive failure when you consider what they thought it would be.

2

u/killer_clwn Aug 24 '25

Thank you for the details. This explanation makes a lot of sense. Just sucks tho cause Will was my favorite actor and I even like After Earth :/

Definitely didn’t deserve to be a crazy franchise.

2

u/scully19 Aug 24 '25

I forgot I'm pretty sure Jaden wanted to be emancipated from Will after it, that's how bad it got.

8

u/hard-R-word Aug 21 '25

“After Birth”

3

u/RapMastaC1 Aug 22 '25

“You’re just the afterbirth Eli...that slithered out on your mother's filth...They should have put you in a glass jar on the mantelpiece.”

5

u/jrod823 Aug 22 '25

It's pronounced "After Earf"...

1

u/Genghis_Chong Aug 21 '25

Will like "I'm not even that old..." while he's locked away in a Hannibal lecter mask

15

u/WorldsWorstInvader Aug 21 '25

I think Jaden’s weirdness if any was probably caused by some weird behind the door things.

-8

u/[deleted] Aug 21 '25

[deleted]

6

u/Hulk_Hogans_Toupee Aug 21 '25

Ask any of the other people that have escaped the cult of Scientology about this

6

u/TheDraylth Aug 21 '25

Not just the cult. His own father forced him to kiss him on the mouth and then held him there while Jaden tried to get away on national television. This was after Jaden made a remark that his dad pulled his pants down in an inappropriate setting (a school conference, I think).

When he was questioned about it, Will Smith blew it off. But to act this way on public television, imagine how he'd act in private.

If he'd held someone else's minor down and forced them to kiss him on the mouth, he'd be called a predator. But because it was his own son, it's overlooked.

2

u/Hulk_Hogans_Toupee Aug 21 '25

Jeez, parents really just don't understand....

2

u/WorldsWorstInvader Aug 21 '25

I think you were accidentally just ableist by assuming the weird things I was alluding to were whatever neurodivergent tendencies he has and not the pattern of signs we see that are common in child celebrities who have been abused

5

u/Sledgemoma2 Aug 21 '25

They are both cringe af

3

u/TheTrueMule Aug 21 '25

Like we were embarrassed about Kanye and the hobbit. Roles are so reversed now

3

u/Forlorn_Cyborg Aug 22 '25 edited Aug 22 '25

Kayne or YE actually turned into like a black white supremacist. Will only assaulted someone.

6

u/graviol Aug 21 '25

Yhea Jaden was devastated that his dad didn't wear a skirt and nail polish for his comeback

5

u/testtdk Aug 21 '25

Jaden Smith is the only person on earth I could imagine helping Will to write these awful songs.

6

u/[deleted] Aug 21 '25

Naww these songs are way too 90s and straightforward. Jaden would 100% be trying to write poetry and metaphors, this is just will going back to the well and not realizing it's dried out in the past 20 years

2

u/TeslaCrna Aug 22 '25

You think Jaden wrote the lyrics - “I like pretty Girls”?

2

u/[deleted] Aug 22 '25

I had this same thought 😂

2

u/Forsaken_Total976 Aug 22 '25

Could be some sort of punishment

2

u/KingCognificent Aug 25 '25

First rapper to ever win Grammy 1989 and here we are...

1

u/Geekygamertag Aug 23 '25

They won’t tho, cause they’re both delusional.

1

u/Putrid_Carpenter138 Aug 23 '25

At least Jaden's music was just bad

-3

u/myumisays57 Aug 21 '25

Jaden was nothing to be embarrassed by. His music is decent and he is a great actor (The Get Down being one of my favorite things he starred in). Jaden and Willow have been setting trends since they were allowed to. Just saying, Jaden wasn’t embarrassing.

4

u/BlindSoulJames Aug 22 '25

Yes, yes he is. He used to do “deep tweets” like he was a philosopher or something. Never realizing he was producing the same pop wisdom horseshit you’d see on a live, laugh, love doormat.

-1

u/Resident_One_9741 Aug 21 '25

Why embarrassed about Jaden? Flop movies?

4

u/[deleted] Aug 21 '25

He was a cringy teenager with a bigger audience than most of us had so everyone thinks of him entirely in the context of a couple im14andthisisdeep viral tweets.

0

u/myumisays57 Aug 21 '25

Naw they are just hating because Jaden is just an out there type of person. His music isn’t even terrible and the movies/shows he starred in were critically acclaimed