Wild Wild West

Plot

In 1869, four years after the end of the American Civil War, U.S. Army Captain James T. "Jim" West and U.S. Marshal Artemus Gordon in disguise cross paths in an unsuccessful attempt to apprehend ex-Confederate General "Bloodbath" McGrath. At the White House, President Ulysses S. Grant informs West and Gordon about the disappearances of important scientists and assigns the task of finding them together.

Aboard their train The Wanderer, the duo examine the severed head of MIT scientist Thaddeus Morton, discovering a clue which leads them to New Orleans. They infiltrate a plantation where Dr. Arliss Loveless, a legless ex-Confederate officer in a wheelchair, is hosting a party for foreign officials. West investigates Loveless and McGrath's plans, while Gordon rescues an imprisoned woman named Rita Escobar, who asks for help rescuing her father Guillermo - one of the kidnapped scientists.

Loveless demonstrates his amphibious steam-powered tank. Accusing McGrath of betrayal for surrendering at Appomattox, Loveless executes McGrath's soldiers and also shoots him before leaving by train. Gordon, West and Rita arrive soon after to find the carnage and a dying McGrath, who says Loveless was responsible for the massacre, here and at New Liberty. Upon catching up with Loveless on The Wanderer, a panicked Rita accidentally incapacitates West, Gordon and herself with sleeping gas disguised as billiard balls.

West and Gordon wake up entrapped with magnetic collars in a cornfield as Loveless pulls away in The Wanderer, announcing his intention to capture President Grant at the golden spike ceremony. After a narrow escape, West tells Gordon about his parents' murder at New Liberty. The following day, West and Gordon find Loveless' private railroad, leading to his desert complex at Spider Canyon, where they witness Loveless' ultimate weapon: an 80-foot-tall mechanical tarantula armed with nitroglycerin cannons. Loveless captures Grant and Gordon, while West is shot and left behind.

At his complex, Loveless announces plans to dissolve the United States and divide the territory among Great Britain, France, Spain, Mexico, the Native American people, while keeping some land for himself. When Grant refuses to surrender, Loveless orders Gordon to be executed, but West appears in disguise as a belly dancer to distract Loveless, allowing Gordon to free the captives; however, Loveless escapes with Grant.

Gordon, describing Bernoulli's principle, introduces his flying bicycle to West; they use it to catch up to Loveless' spider, where West battles henchmen before confronting Loveless himself. As the spider approaches a cliff, both West and Loveless fall; West survives by catching a chain dangling from the machinery as Loveless plummets to his death into the canyon below.

Grant designates Gordon and West as first agents of the newly established Secret Service, before departing on The Wanderer. Rita reveals Professor Guillermo Escobar is actually her husband, disappointing Gordon and West, who ride into the sunset on the mechanical spider together.

Cast

• Will Smith as U.S. Army Captain James T. "Jim" West
• Kevin Kline as:
  • U.S. Marshal Artemus Gordon
  • U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant
• Kenneth Branagh as Dr. Arliss Loveless
• Salma Hayek as Rita Escobar
• Ted Levine as General "Bloodbath" McGrath
• M. Emmet Walsh as US Marshal Coleman
• Bai Ling as Miss Mae Lee East
• Rodney A. Grant as Hudson
• Garcelle Beauvais as Belle
• Musetta Vander as Munitia
• Sofia Eng as Miss Lippenreider
• Frederique van der Wal as Amazonia
• Gary Carlos Cervantes as Professor Escobar
• Michael Sims as Professor Thaddeus Morton
• Jerry Potter as Plantation Owner George Washington at Gala
• Ian Abercrombie as British Dignitary
• Ismael 'East' Carlo as Mexican Dignitary
• Orestes Matacena as Spanish Dignitary
• Christian Aubert as French Dignitary
• E.J. Callahan as Allan Pinkerton
• Debra Christofferson as Dora Lookalike
• Scott Sandler as Young Joe Finnegan (uncredited)
• Derek Mears as "Metal Head" (uncredited)
• David Lea as Thug With Knife (uncredited)

Production

Development

Variety first reported in January 1992 that Warner Bros. had optioned the film rights to Michael Garrison's television show The Wild Wild West, and hired Richard Donner to direct a film adaptation written by Shane Black, with Mel Gibson in the role of Jim West (Donner coincidentally directed three episodes of the original series). However, Donner and Gibson left the project to work on a film adaptation of Maverick (another film based on a Western television series) in 1994. Despite this, the project continued in the development stage, with Tom Cruise rumored for the lead in 1995. Cruise instead starred in a film adaptation of Mission: Impossible the following year.

Discussions with Will Smith and Barry Sonnenfeld began in February 1997 after the two had wrapped up production on Men in Black for Columbia Pictures the same year. Smith declined to do the lead role in The Matrix in order to star in Wild Wild West. Warner Bros. pursued George Clooney to co-star with Smith as Artemus Gordon, with Kevin Kline, Matthew McConaughey and Johnny Depp also in contention for the role while screenwriters S. S. Wilson and Brent Maddock (best known for writing the Short Circuit and Tremors films) were hired by Warner Bros. to script the film between April and May 1997. Clooney signed on the following August after dropping out of Jack Frost, while the Wilson-Maddock script was rewritten by Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman (best known for writing the films Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Doc Hollywood). However in December 1997, Clooney was replaced by Kline after an agreement with Sonnenfeld: "Ultimately, we all decided that rather than damage this project trying to retrofit the role for me, it was better to step aside and let them get someone else."

Writing

The film featured several significant changes from the television series. For instance, Dr. Loveless, as portrayed by Kenneth Branagh in the film, went from a dwarf to a man without legs who uses a steam-powered wheelchair (similar to that employed by the villain in the episode "The Night of the Brain"); his first name was also changed from Miguelito to Arliss and was given the motive of a Southerner who sought the defeat of the North after the Civil War. Kevin Kline plays Artemus Gordon in the film, whose character is similar to the show's version of him portrayed by Ross Martin, except that he is much more egotistical than Jim West. The film depicted Kline's Gordon creating more ridiculous, humorous, and implausible inventions than those created by Martin's Gordon in the original series, as well as having an aggressive rivalry with West, unlike in the television series where he and West had a very close friendship and trusted each other with their lives. While Gordon did indeed impersonate Grant in three episodes of the series ("The Night of the Steel Assassin", "The Night of the Colonel's Ghost" and "The Night of the Big Blackmail"), they were not played by the same actor. Additionally, West was originally portrayed by Robert Conrad, a Caucasian rather than an African American, which serves a critical plot point as West's parents were among the victims of Loveless's massacre at New Liberty.

Jon Peters produced the film alongside director Sonnenfeld. In a 2002 Q&A event that appears on An Evening with Kevin Smith, filmmaker Kevin Smith talked about working as a screenwriter for Peters on a fifth potential Superman film in 1997. He revealed that Peters demanded, among other things, that Superman fight a giant spider in the third act. After Batman director Tim Burton came onboard, Smith's script was scrapped and the film was never produced due to further complications. He noted that Wild Wild West, with Peters on board as producer, was released a year later with the inclusion of a giant mechanical spider in the final act. Neil Gaiman also revealed that Peters insisted that a giant mechanical spider be included in a proposed film adaptation of The Sandman.

Filming

Principal photography was set to begin in January 1998, but was pushed three months later to April 22, 1998. The interior sequences on the trains of both Artemus Gordon and Dr. Loveless were shot on sets at Warner Bros. Burbank Studios, 4000 Warner Boulevard, Burbank, California, while the exterior sequences were shot in Idaho on the Camas Prairie Railroad. The Wanderer in the film is portrayed by the Baltimore & Ohio 4–4–0 No. 25, one of the oldest operating steam locomotives in the U.S. Built in 1856 at the Mason Machine Works in Taunton, Massachusetts, it was later renamed The William Mason in honor of its manufacturer. During preproduction, the engine was sent to the steam shops at the Strasburg Rail Road for restoration and repainting. The locomotive is brought out for the B&O Train Museum in Baltimore's "Steam Days". The William Mason and the Inyo (which was the locomotive used in the original television series) both appeared in the 1956 Disney film The Great Locomotive Chase.

Much of the Wild West footage was shot around Santa Fe, New Mexico, particularly at the western town film set at the Cook Movie Ranch (now Cerro Pelon Ranch). During the shooting of a sequence involving stunts and pyrotechnics, a planned building fire grew out of control and quickly overwhelmed the local fire crews that were standing by. Much of the town was destroyed before the fire was contained. The scene of the spider tank attack destroyed most of the buildings built for Silverado. As a homage, a chimney reading "Kasdan Iron Monger" after Silverado director Lawrence Kasdan is briefly shown at the start of the scene.

Music

The orchestral film score, including its main theme, was composed and conducted by Elmer Bernstein, a veteran of many Western film scores such as The Magnificent Seven. The score mainly follows the Western genre's symphonic tradition, while at times also acknowledging the film's anachronistic playfulness by employing a more contemporary music style with notable rock percussion and electronic organ. The score also briefly incorporates Richard Markowitz's theme from the original television series in one cue (uncredited in the film and not included on the album); ironically, this was one of the film's few elements that were faithful to the series, which also did not credit Markowitz for the theme. Additional parts of the score were composed by Bernstein's son Peter, while his daughter Emilie served as one of the orchestrators and producers.

Like most of his films during this period, Will Smith recorded a hip hop song based on the film's plot, also titled "Wild Wild West". "Wild Wild West" was a number-one hit on the U.S. pop charts, though it also won a Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Original Song. It was produced by Rob Fusari, who lifted a sample from Stevie Wonder's 1976 hit "I Wish". The song also features guest vocals from R&B group Dru Hill, and was a star-making vehicle for Dru Hill lead singer Sisqó. Old-school rapper Kool Moe Dee had previously recorded a "Wild Wild West" single of his own in 1987, to which he re-performs the chorus from his old "Wild Wild West" as the chorus of this new "Wild Wild West". A performance of the song by Smith, Dee, Dru Hill, and Sisqo at the 1999 MTV Movie Awards also included Wonder performing a reprise of the chorus on piano.

Score

Score Deluxe Edition

Release

Upon release on June 30, 1999, alongside the R-rated film South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, another Warner Bros. film that came out (Paramount Pictures distributed the film in the United States), several news reports arose stating that adolescent moviegoers purchased tickets into seeing the PG-13-rated Wild Wild West in theaters, but instead went to see the South Park film. This was a result of a film industry crackdown that made sneaking into R-rated films tougher for children, as proposed by U.S. President Bill Clinton at the time in response to the moral panic generated by the Columbine High School massacre, which had occurred two months before the release of both films.

Marketing

Warner Bros. heavily promoted Wild Wild West as an anticipated summer blockbuster instead of Brad Bird's animated film The Iron Giant, which was released two months after Wild Wild West. This sparked controversy as The Iron Giant was becoming more critically successful than the critically-panned Wild Wild West upon release, despite eventually underperforming at the box office due to the studio deciding to spend their money on marketing for Wild Wild West among other films.

Home media

The film was released on VHS and DVD on November 30, 1999, on LaserDisc on December 28, 1999, and on Blu-ray on May 29, 2011.

Reception

Box office

Wild Wild West grossed $27,687,484 during its opening weekend, with a total of $40,957,789 for the Independence Day weekend and ranking first at the North American box office. It dropped into second place below American Pie in its second weekend, making $16.8 million. The film ended its theatrical run on October 10, 1999 after five months, having grossed $113,804,681 domestically and $108,300,000 overseas for a worldwide total of $222,104,681 against a production budget of $170 million, making it commercially unsuccessful.

Critical response

Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.

Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times gave the film one star out of four, writing that "Wild Wild West is a comedy dead zone. You stare in disbelief as scenes flop and die. The movie is all concept and no content; the elaborate special effects are like watching money burn on the screen." Janet Maslin of The New York Times gave the film a negative review, saying that the film "leaves reality so far behind that its storytelling would be arbitrary even by comic-book standards, and its characters share no common ground or emotional connection."

Original series star Robert Conrad was critical of the film adaptation. While he had no problem with changing Jim West to be African-American, he felt that Will Smith was wrong for the part and would have preferred someone with "a Wesley Snipes body with a Denzel Washington head". He also would have preferred either Kevin Spacey or Gary Sinise for Artemus Gordon, and despised changing Dr. Loveless from a dwarf to an amputee.

Accolades

Wild Wild West later ranked in the listed bottom 20 of the Stinkers' "100 Years, 100 Stinkers" list (which noted the 100 worst films of the 20th century) at #2, but lost to Battlefield Earth.

Soundtrack

Main article: Wild Wild West (soundtrack)

A soundtrack containing hip hop and R&B music was released on June 15, 1999, by Interscope Records and Overbrook Music. It peaked at number four on both the Billboard 200 and the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums.

Video game

An action-adventure video game titled Wild Wild West: The Steel Assassin was developed and released by SouthPeak Interactive on December 7, 1999, almost six months following the film's release.

Lawsuit

In 1997, writer Gilbert Ralston sued Warner Bros. over the upcoming feature film based on the series. Ralston helped create the original television series The Wild Wild West and scripted the pilot episode "The Night of the Inferno". In a deposition, Ralston explained that in 1964, he had been approached by producer Michael Garrison, who "said he had an idea for a series, good commercial idea, and wanted to know if I could glue the idea of a Western hero and a James Bond type together in the same show". Ralston said he then created the Civil War characters, the format, the story outline and nine drafts of the script that were the basis for the television series. It was his idea, for example, to have a secret agent named Jim West who would perform secret missions for a bumbling President Grant.

Ralston's experience brought to light a common Hollywood practice of the 1950s and 1960s when television writers who helped create popular series allowed producers or studios to take credit for a show, thus cheating the writers out of millions of dollars in royalties. However, Ralston died in 1999 before his suit was settled, resulting in Warner Bros. paying his family between $600,000 and $1.5 million.

References

References

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