Will Smith might have included a small homage to the incident in his current film, “Bad Boys: Ride or Die.”Will Smith may have given a subtle allusion to his notorious Oscars slap incident when his character Mike Lowrey is repeatedly slapped by Martin Lawrence’s Marcus Burnett during a sequence in Bad Boys: Ride or Die.
For those who do not know, on March 27, 2022, during the 94th Academy Awards, Will Smith made his way onto the stage and gave Chris Rock a face-slap in front of a global audience. In the action sequence, Lowrey is about to have a panic attack when Burnett, his partner in the detective agency, slaps him repeatedly to stop him.
Despite being intended as lighthearted entertainment during the film, it elicited a range of responses from viewers and reviewers, with numerous individuals connecting it to the Oscars event. One clear example is Variety reviewer Own Gleiberman’s assessment, in which he called the scenario “a kind of pop exorcism” and called it a “direct allusion” to the Oscars event.
“It is ‘punishing’ Smith, making harsh fun of his sin, and maybe, in the process, allowing him to crawl out from under the picture of it,” the author continued in his writing. Will Smith called his actions that day “inappropriate” and issued an apology for the Oscars incident.
