As revenge for the recent, renewed media speculation that he and Jada Pinkett Smith are divorcing,Will Smith is threatening to reboot The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Kinda like how Ben Savage and Danielle Fishellaunched a girl-centric sequel to Boy Meets World, a.k.a. Girl Meets World, for the Disney Channel last year. I wish the 1990s would stop trolling me like this.
By any means necessary, we must prevent Will Smith from proceeding with this reboot. My generation's credibility hinges on our ability to let popular entertainment franchises from the 1990s just die already.
While I'm quick to acknowledge Fresh Prince's importance to the golden era of black television in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it's difficult to get excited for a reprise of the show's goofy origin story, cheap set design, and hilarious fashion. When compared to this contemporary wave of prestige dramas and realistic comedies, the whole Fresh Prince concept seems like a relic—something you'd watch on TV Land or TV One on a Saturday morning. The days of dry ice comedy, post-curfew plots, and hilariously outsized satellite phones as savvy props are, literally, decades behind us.
Worse yet, we must wonder whether a Fresh Prince reboot will just end up being a vehicle for Jaden Smith to mimic his father's endearing rise, at his father's insistence. I mean: If that's what Jaden wants for himself, fine. But after the box office failure of After Earth, in which Will and Jaden co-starred in 2013, and given Jaden Smith's #rare #based talents as a fledgling rapper, why not just let the kid rap to empty food courts in Dubai? Without following his father's footsteps too closely, Jaden seems to be doing fine for himself so far. He's the greatest gift to hip-hop since Lil B. Protect Jaden Smith at all costs!
With or without Jaden Smith, a Fresh Prince reboot is the chilling medical extreme of my generation's grand, infantilizing bout of screen-induced nostalgia, a disease for which scientists have yet to discover a cure. In related news: I bet you fifteen trillion double-dollars that this Twin Peaks remake is finna be a catastrophe. And what about Bad Boys 3? Will it really be worth the 14-year wait to watch 46-year-old Will Smith and 49-year-old Martin Lawrence play-act at being bigger, badder, and deffer than ever?
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Boy Meets World, Bad Boys, Twin Peaks, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z—enough already! We must save Will Smith from himself.
