The Mr. & Mrs. Smith Series Makes One Major Change From The Movie
This article contains spoilers up to episode 4 of "Mr. & Mrs. Smith."
The opening to director Doug Liman's "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" set the tone for that movie, following a pair of super-spies for opposing agencies who, through sheer coincidence, happen to be a married couple living secret double lives. After the framing device places Brad Pitt's John Smith and Angelina Jolie's Jane Smith in couple's therapy, we flashback to the sultry circumstances of their original meet-cute and the whirlwind romance that ultimately resulted in a marriage that's now on autopilot. We quickly realize that they're both impossibly good-looking, extremely proficient at their jobs and basically never make a single mistake ... until their last assignment puts them on a collision course with one another, at least.
Now, it's Prime Video's turn to revitalize this concept through its own series, as spearheaded by Donald Glover and Francesca Sloane. In place of Pitt and Jolie, Glover and Maya Erskine are our new leads and the entire nature of their relationship has been completely recontextualized in this reboot. Rather than having a pair of lovestruck movie stars end up in each other's orbit, the series premiere smartly positions them as applicants for a mysterious organization (referred to as "the company" in the show's early episodes) that selects "John" and "Jane" as partners in a pretend marriage. But as much as this alone diverges from the 2005 film, that's not the most noteworthy change.
In a stark departure from the frame of reference most viewers would be familiar with, the show makes the bold choice to make neither Glover's John nor Erkine's Jane an expert spy. They mess up, doubt themselves, and even fail missions — and "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" is all the better for it.
Grounded and more relatable
Look, it's no insult to say that there's only one Brad Pitt and one Angelina Jolie. The 2005 "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" is defined by two of the biggest A-listers in the world who simply don't know how to do anything less than perfectly — from how they look to how they fight to how they drop each and every one-liner. The entire appeal is entertainment through wish fulfillment, inviting audiences (predominantly white ones, at least) to live vicariously through two affluent, model-like icons who are good at, well, everything. That's not to say that anybody ought to be questioning the talent or charisma of Glover or Erskine, to be clear, but their casting instantly sends a much different message to viewers.
While our new co-leads could easily pull off a similar sort of action-hero vibe, the "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" writing team wisely lean into a more relatable sense of chemistry between them. It's not mere happenstance that the season is structured around the typical milestones of a romantic relationship (episode 1 is titled "First Date," episode 3 is titled "First Vacation," and so on), taking full advantage of the down-to-earth nature of John and Jane's much more grounded dynamic. This instantly makes what could've been a tired premise feel lively and reenergized ... even as they're caught up in high-risk missions that usually end with dead bodies piling up.
Spies in disguise
And what about John and Jane Smith's actual skills in spycraft? Let's call it a "work in progress." As early as the premiere, our heroes barely pull off a simple mission involving tailing a suspect, intercepting a package, and delivering it to a given location. Despite such a simple task, they only narrowly escape with their lives after some frantic improvisation to distract their target (an old lady), obtain the cardboard box (containing a cake bomb, as it turns out), and walk away mere seconds before their delivery blows up a house.
Their relative inexperience takes an even deadlier turn in episode 2, titled "Second Date." With strict instructions not to allow any casualties, John and Jane must inject their mark with truth serum and report back with any intel. Things go horribly wrong, of course, and it ends with the two accidentally killing their target. (RIP guest star John Turturro.) And when the couple goes on an all-expenses-paid skiing trip in episode 3, the two are unable to keep their personal feelings for each other from bleeding over to their professional lives. This, too, leads to more dead bodies and wild scrambles to accomplish their missions on the fly. Sensing a theme, yet?
The thing is, however, that all of this only makes the series much more thrilling than it'd otherwise be. Episode 4, "Double Date," presents a weird mirror into John and Jane's alternate selves when they meet a rival "Smith" couple who've been through all the wars together — but are as uncool and boring as it gets. Is this meant as a direct stand-in for Pitt and Jolie's movie characters? Maybe not but, much like our bumbling protagonists, it's fun to think about.
"Mr. & Mrs. Smith" is currently streaming on Prime Video.