“When you’re a couple, there are certain things people don’t want to see you do. It becomes too indulgent, too personal,” says Angelina Jolie when she sits down for an interview in 2010 to talk about the film that conceived the most glorious couple Hollywood has ever seen, and soon after, did become too indulgent and too personal for the phenomenon that came to be known as Brangelina.
2005’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith not only broke up the 90s darling pair: Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, but also gave birth to the sensational Pitt-Jolie duo. The decade-long relationship, which has been called by many names and referred to as “an era” in the modern world of romance, came to an end in 2016. And yet, people often wonder what it would have been like to not only revisit but also have another go at a Mr. & Mrs. Smith sequel.
Angelina Jolie Advocates For a Sequel To Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Hollywood’s first female action movie star Angelina Jolie has hardly found the time to be irrelevant, despite marriage woes, FBI cases, and ugly custody battles. The Hollywood megastar has remained as much a public favorite now as she was 20 years ago with her swaggering rendition of Lara Croft in the eponymous movie. As such, when the actress starred as a killer suburban housewife going up against her killer suburban husband (before joining forces and taking down their respective shadowy organizations), the audiences couldn’t get enough. The chemistry was simply too sizzling on-screen, so much so that it inevitably filtered into the lives of the two stars as well.
Soon after, the demand for a sequel to Mr. & Mrs. Smith was heightened in its fan quotient. Everybody wanted to see those two in action once again, including Angelina Jolie. In an interview with MTV News, the actress claimed:
“We did ask somebody to look into Mr. & Mrs. to see if they could crack a sequel, but there wasn’t anything original. It was just, ‘Well, they’re going to get married, or they’ve got kids, or they get separated.’ Never great.
We’ve talked about it. We’d have to figure out who’s going to watch the kids, but it’s really about finding the right thing, because we’ve looked […] I don’t think people want to see people who are really together intimate onscreen.”
However correct she may be in her assumptions, it still doesn’t diminish the audience demand for a worthy follow-up to an already cult-classic fan-favorite movie. And even if the producers and writers do find a story that’s good enough to make a sequel work, the falling apart between the two lead stars of the film makes it impossible to ever have another Mr. & Mrs. Smith, unless in a remake/reboot form.
Brad Pitt Was Set To Go Up Against Ex, Gwyneth Paltrow
Before Angelina Jolie had stepped into the frame, the casting for Mr. & Mrs. Smith had boasted an incredulous roster of A-listers for the role of Jane Smith. The list included stars ranging from Catherine Zeta-Jones to Nicole Kidman to Cate Blanchett and even Pitt’s former girlfriend, Gwyneth Paltrow. Director Doug Liman had come up with a plan that seemed, at the time, quite brilliant to him: Pitt vs. Paltrow as his on-screen Mr. and Mrs.
“Think of the spectacle of that. Fireworks could really fly in that situation. Because I’m sure there’s some s*** one of them was mad at the other one for. You find out what that baggage is and bring it out at the right moment, with the camera rolling.”
But the idea was quickly shut down by the producers (of all people) for a surprisingly humane reason (considering it’s Hollywood of all places): “Brad is a human being. Even if he was game for it, it’s wrong for us to put him in a situation where he’s going to have to relive the demons of a relationship.”
Neither did Liman’s ingenious idea for a spectacle pan out nor did the audience ever find out what demons hide in the Pitt-Paltrow closet. Instead, the world was gifted with an insanely charismatic couple who forever redefined Hollywood red carpets and impassioned the hearts of millions with their drop-dead gorgeous presence powerful enough to overshadow every other celebrity in their vicinity for as long as they were together.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith is available for streaming on Vudu.
Source: MTV News
