Now when it comes to "brangelina", many people may not know why - it refers to the hottest couple in Hollywood that year, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who were in and out of the limelight, and ** coined this combined word. It all started when they co-starred in Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005). It's a successful movie, but it's also presumably the most hated ** by Pete's original portrayal of Jennifer Aniston and her fans. 
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005) stills Now that Pitt and Jolie have long since divorced, if they appear together in the title again, it is basically about endless lawsuits and ruffles, but the term "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" has always been alive. As I get older and hear about the incredible battle of wits between various couples in my life, I will put a stamp on my heart: Mr. and Mrs. Smith. And in 2024, there will really be a remake of the same name. This may also show that any golden boy and girl is a short-lived myth, and marriage is a long penance after all - if not an endless battle. The drama version of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" won Amazon's ratings championship in more than 130 countries and regions this year. It is not like some popular dramas of the same period, "Ice Storm Season 5" or "True Detective 4: Night Country", but on the contrary, when everyone was not optimistic, the more you chase it, the more flavorful it becomes, and it completely detonates in the finale. Word-of-mouth has also counterattacked, and it has now rushed to 90% freshness on Rotten Tomatoes, surpassing the movie version. The reason why the drama version was not optimistic at the beginning was mainly because the classic image was preconceived, even though it was a movie almost twenty years ago. I still remember the posters at the door of many small shops selling pirated DVDs, with Pete and Jolie standing on either side, each smiling, and each holding up a long-legged poster. And the hero and heroine of the drama version, but their appearance alone, it is indeed difficult to compare with Bragilina at her peak. However, this is precisely what the drama version is intentional, and its focus is not on the love myth of handsome men and beautiful women, but on the flies and dogs of secular couples. Myths are outdated, but life never goes out of style. 
The orientation of the stills from the drama version of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" clearly informed the audience at the beginning of the play: a very handsome ** couple, tired of the life of the run, chose to be tough with the pursuers, and were both killed soon. This is actually quite surprising, the audience has become accustomed to the unspoken rules of the screen that "beauty is justice, and good-looking people will not die so easily". To deliberately arrange this way is to sign a new agreement with the audience:The new version of the Smiths cannot defeat the world with love, but their love and even their lives will be ruthlessly crushed by the world. The new Mr. Smith, John Smith, is played by Donald Glover, who is also one of the writers and directors of the show and has also won many awards in **. Audiences who are familiar with American dramas should have seen his cynical and slightly distressed face in the two major dramas "Scrapwood Alliance" and "Atlanta". Seeing him again this time, I feel that he seems to have become thicker and stronger, and he looks like a credible ** image. 
Atlanta stills The new Mrs. Smith, Jane Smith, played by Maya Erskine, is a bit more niche in comparison, but viewers will soon see that her acting skills are even more natural and comfortable than the male lead. This may also be because the complex social and psychological dilemmas faced by a middle-aged Asian woman give the actor more room for interpretation。At the beginning of the whole play, every ** has to be interviewed, and she admits that she is an a**intelligence bureau outcast, because she has a "**personality". In the interview shot, she is a tenacious and helpless female figure with almost no grease powder. She was confident that her professional skills would ensure that she would have a bite to eat, but she had not yet realized her worth – she had only $14,000 in savings. To accept this task, it is necessary to accept an involuntary marriage, and this seems to be a metaphor for the real plight of women in recent middle age, where work and marriage have become double shackles, but without them there is no way to establish themselves in the world。In this relationship, which is both fake and real, Mrs. Smith is actually the more tangled and tragic one. It is even ironic to say that in marriage, she is the lonelier one. After all, Mr. Smith still has his mother, and Mrs. Smith's financial contacts can only fill in her husband. 
The drama version of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" stills The marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Smith is fake, which is a cover for people's ears, of course, all the audience knows that the fake drama will be real. The TV series did not delay for too long in this regard, and it brought them into the stage of moving their true feelings very early, which was not their ultimate test, but only the beginning of the test. Who said that people who love each other will definitely make it to the end? The poster of the drama version of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" reads: Marriage is their most dangerous task. This is said in a joking way in the play, when Jane and John didn't know each other well, and she asked him, what if we failed? He said: Our marriage? She said: Our mission! - The audience soon discovers that the failure of the marriage and the failure of the mission will have the same final consequence, that is, the destruction of the mysterious organization that hired them. For most of the show, everyday life and dangerous missions flow seamlessly. There is no big scene of flying cars and gunfights in the movie version, but danger and even death will indeed come at any time, such as giving someone a birthday cake, and a big ** happened just after going out. This fills the Smiths' lives with a sense of tension between life and death. But on the other hand, this kind of adventure also injected excitement into the couple's life, allowing the internal conflicts between the two to be eased. In this regard, you can actually watch the popular drama "Long Time Haven't Done" in the same periodWhat binds men and women together is no longer physical passion, but the urge to make money. 
I haven't done it for a long time" stills The most interesting thing in the whole play, in addition to the finale, is the fifth episode: Mr. and Mrs. Smith went to see a psychological counselor. This bridge is also in the original movie, but it is only an embellishment, and it is greatly expanded in the drama version. In fact, as a newlywed couple, it should be wonderful every minute, and passion can anesthetize all kinds of unhappiness, so that they don't have to go to counseling. However, it is precisely because of the urgency of life that they have to face structural contradictions in advance, such as the problem of whether to have children or not. John wants children very much, while Jane is career-oriented, not to mention that career is so high-risk. Going to a counselor is precisely an effort to normalize their marriage, but they don't yet know that a so-called "normal" marriage is a beautiful fantasy in itself. They concealed their ** identity, consulted as software engineers, and told all kinds of quarrels in a distorted way. They have the courage to face their weaknesses and speak the truth, but the advice of the high-minded counselor who tickles the boot is not helpful. In the end, the conflict between the two was not resolved, but a consensus was reached on the fire that burned the counselor's home. Interestingly, in the background of the burning fire** is Yoko Ono's "I Feel Like Smashing My Face in a Clear Glass", which depicts the selfishness and ugliness of parents from the perspective of a child. If Mr. and Mrs. Smith really had a child, maybe the child's life would be just as angry and desperate, after all, this kind of ** is unlikely to be a good parent. But at the same time, the song may be the voice of the Smiths themselves, and their mischievous burning down of the counselor's house, which is filled with out-of-print artwork and labels of socially accepted "value," is also a childlike outpouring of overwhelm. 
I don't know if John experienced Jane's "** mood" when he set the fire to the stills from the drama version of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith".It was in this consultation that Jane said that she didn't know how to love because she had never been understood and loved since she was a child. I can't help but think of the famous words of teacher Beauvoir: women are not born. Then maybe "the woman of ** is not born either, before she ***, society was already anti-her." Before Jane distanced herself, her father had long since distanced her. Society is indeed changing, as can be seen from the status of "Mrs. Smith" in the past generations. In fact, the earliest version of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" was directed by Hitchcock, the master of suspense, in 1941. There is no suspense in this ** - except whether the wife really wants to leave her husband. The intrigue between husband and wife has nothing to do with spy wars, only for love itself. Mr. Smith addressed his wife as "kid," and he was shocked when she chose to leave the home to work. Moreover, the store at that time did not admit married women, and this was the employment environment for women of that generation. Mrs. Smith's only recourse against her husband was to find another man. But if Nala can only marry another of the same kind after she runs away, how can she ensure that her fate will not repeat itself? Of course, the whole film is a comedy sketch, and Mr. Smith is not a villain, so this issue is not delved into. 
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941) stills to the 2005 version of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Jane's status is on par with John's, both in terms of income and skill. When John asks Jane to "pass me the salt," Jane just tepidly replies: "Put the salt in the middle of the table." In this version, the status of the husband and wife is already equal - although Jane still has to be responsible for cooking (Jane later said that she didn't cook a day, and it was all made by the ** group). This is like in a fairy tale, where the status of princes and princesses is theoretically equal, and it does not touch the more realistic and specific aspects of marriage, such as whether to have children, whether to take high-risk jobs, and so on. Now let's go back to the original question, why does the organization have to match the marriage of strange men and women? And since all the Smiths will sooner or later fail and be wiped out? Can't the organization want two single killers, since the fans of the male and female protagonists are afraid that each other's efforts are not enough, and they are dragging their feet. If we think deeply about these kinds of questions, then we may only be able to come to this conclusionFrom an organizational standpoint, marriage, despite such a high failure rate, is still more effective than one-man assignments. Therefore, the organization deliberately arranged for two like-minded people to live under the same roof even though they knew that single men and women were prone to fake and can't help it. This kind of big data-style chaotic mandarin duck spectrum has its extremely absurd and even cruel side, for example, the reason why the male and female protagonists in the play are arranged into a group is not even because they read the same book, but maybe simply because they both like to eat Korean food. This little bit of fit, in fact, is far from enough to support two people to spend a lifetime together. Of course, for organizations, they simply don't have a lifetime to spend together. Love is just a matter of making human consumables burn a little faster. 
Stills from the drama version of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith".In reality, nothing can escape careful calculation. Not to mention anything else, the organization bought a mansion for the Smiths, which was also more cost-effective for two people to live in. It is said that many Shanghai couples do not divorce because they can't afford to buy a house after divorce. This may also be why this show is very heart-wrenching next to Mr. and Mrs. Smith's house, and arranges a neighbor who is engaged in real estate. At the end, he indifferently walks into the bullet-ridden, messy mansion of the Smiths, not caring what kind of life and death they have loved and hated inside. A real estate agent certainly doesn't care about what the former homeowner has eaten, dreamed about, had a cat, shed tears, or laughed (think back to Jane's trademark robotic laugh) ......But as viewers, we know that they've owned more than just a house. The reason why the last episode of the whole drama is particularly moving is that the screenwriter would rather join a real estate agent to satirize the indifference and fetishism of contemporary life"Kind"To give a hint, the Smiths, whom we have spent an entire season getting acquainted with and empathizing with, survived the final showdown. In fact, if we have to say a hint, it tells us that this man and woman are in a catastrophe after all. 
In this sense, the drama version is contrary to all its forerunners, giving us a tragedy. That is to say,"Marriage"It is no longer a beautiful utopian solution, where couples can simply repair the rift by being honest with each other, and there is no longer a never-ending shot in the arm for married life through external adventures. If the previous Smiths expressed in the end that as long as her husband is reliable, Nala doesn't have to run away, then the drama version of the Smiths has raised more severe questions about contemporary marriage, and a good husband can't save Nala. The small community of two people is extremely vulnerable and helpless in the high-pressure contemporary life. Please, writers, if there's a second season, keep the Smiths alive. We, the audience, are not forcing the continuation of the love myth, just for a little comfort in real life.