Retro Nerd Girl Movie Reviews: The Wild Wild West 1999 Movie Review w/Spoilers

From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a film review for you.

Today I'll be reviewing the movie Wild Wild West released in 1999.

Starring:

Will Smith, Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh

Directed by:

Barry Sonnenfeld

Genre:

Action, Comedy, Sci-Fi

Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Rating:

PG-13

Budget:

$170,000,000 (estimated)

Current IMDb Rating When Reviewed:

4.8

The Synopsis is:

Two U.S. Marshals, James West and Artemus Gordon are assigned by legendary U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant to stop a madman, Dr. Arliss Loveless from dismantling the United States.

Story:

This is the feature film based on the The Wild Wild West television series that became popular between 1965 to 1969. The TV Series was set in the Old West and features two Secret Service agents, James West played by Robert Conrad and Artemus Gordon.

The show was notorious for being campy, having gorgeous disposable women each week, having inventions that didn’t exist in the late 1800’s, and was influential in inspiring "steampunk," a term that was coined in the 1980s.

The show was eventually cancelled for being too violent.

A television movie Wild Wild West Revisited was made in 1973 but a feature film was ripe for the making on the big screen in the late 90’s.

Richard Donner (who had directed three episodes of The Wild Wild West (1965)) was set to direct either Wild Wild West or Maverick, starring Mel Gibson. He chose Maverick which was released in 1994.

Will Smith set to star as James West with Barry Sonnenfeld to direct fresh off their Men In Black 1998 success pretty much guaranteeing the film a hot box office draw.

The story is credited to Jim and John Thomas. The screenplay is credited to 2 writers and rewritten by another 2.

When the film was pretty much done, test audiences didn’t laugh because it was more of a serious thriller. The film was rewritten by a seventh uncredited writer to insert more action, comedy, and a giant robot spider. (More on that giant spider a little later on in the review.)

The premise has good bones… a good structure to provide a good story… But the comedy is the biggest problem to the story.

The film wanted to address the fact that the lead character was African American and how he would deal with race issues in the 1800’s. I just don’t think that there is anything funny about that.

References to the show are sprinkled in, including the opening credits and the original Wild Wild West theme near the climax of the film.

Pacing:

At an hour and 46 minutes the pacing is pretty awful because there are so many things that don’t matter to the story, they are just ideas and incomplete characters that are part of an idea list with no context.

Challenge:

At the start of the film we are lead to believe that the main villain is general McGrath. And he is portrayed as the most physically vile person you could imagine, greasy, unkempt and donning a very nasty ear injury. He has a phonograph that was used for old record players attached to the unhealed wound. It’s pretty ridiculous, but one look at him and you know what you are getting into for the rest of the film.

General McGrath was a former Confederate general, responsible for an attack on a place called New Liberty, a settlement of freed slaves in Illinois, where he earned the nickname "Bloodbath" McGrath.

He’s seemingly trying to procure guns and ammunition for his legion of men. The reasons why are not explained, but we can guess maybe revenge on the Union. In exchange for the arms for his militia he is kidnapping the world’s scientist for his boss, Dr. Loveless.

The villain from the TV show was narcissist Dr. Miguelito Loveless and a person of a smaller stature. Loveless’ first name was changed to Arliss and is an amputee, who has lost his legs in the Civil War.

Dr. Arliss Loveless is the true evil in the film, using the world’s scientist to build him technology that will destroy the U.S. Army. He has also gathered diplomats from Spain, Mexico, and France to finance his desires and in exchange they regain their former U.S. territories. 13 colonies back to England, Florida to Spain, Texas new mexico california arizona goes to Mexico. It’s not a bad plan.

Loveless is surrounded by gorgeous women with dangerous talents and has a small arsenal of mutant assassins to do his bidding. Later on in the story we

Learn that the also has a city… yes a city, built at a place called spider’s canyon.

He is seeking retribution. As much as the audience understands his motivation, it is hard to understand how what he is doing and the way he is doing things will be successful, so the threat is not there for me.

Empathy:

Jim West is our protagonist and he is not likable at all even until the end, he barely has an arc. If he’s not making inappropriate jokes about race or amputees, he’s cocky and is just mean spirited sometimes.

A great example of this is a scene in which he gets on the train that his future partner, Artemis is on and as soon as he gets on, he wants to fight him just because he doesn’t like being paired up with him for the mission.

There are two moments where Jim explains that he was a runaway slave separated from his family and raised by Native Americans in the desert. His biological family was part of those slain in the battle of New Liberty.

So he has good motives to be a little angry as a character. Every once in awhile we get a bit of charm and some jokes.

Artemis is a likable character but the tension between he and Jim is so irritating in the beginning of the film. As it the story continues we see him really shine as an agent and inventor.

During the film he does mention that he resents his role as the sidekick and his label as the gadget guy. That is probably when I feel the tension is earned and it feels right.

The love interest, Rita, is inserted into the film to give our duo more unnecessary tension. She’s playing them both so she can find her husband, Escobar. She’s stringing them along by telling them Escobar is her father.

Rita does have a little intel for the boys, but other than that, her character does not impact the story as well as it could have.

Technical:

I really enjoyed the ridiculous spectacle of this film. It’s a beautiful mashup of ideas. They didn’t hold back for anything, not even the lack of technology to fulfill the visuals.

On the most part, it all looked pretty good for 1998 and most of it still holds up.

A year prior Jon Peters hired Kevin Smith to write the screenplay for the abandoned movie “Superman Lives”. One of the requests by Jon Peters was to include a giant spider. The film was never made, however, the giant spider made its way into this film which was also produced by Peters.

As much criticism as the film gets, I personally feel as if the costumes and set design were particularly excellent. There was a lot of work and effort put into every scene and you can see it.

The score was pretty good and Will Smith contributed a very catchy summer hit song Wild Wild West with and Kool Moe Dee, Dru Hill sampling the song "I Wish" by Stevie Wonder.

Performances:

Will Smith plays Capt. James West turning down the lead role in The Matrix (1999) since he was a fan of the television series. He later said this was the worst decision he made in his career. He initially praised the film, performed the title song and promoted it heavily until it was obvious that the film was not doing well.

He said when he asked his mother for feedback said that he had done better in the past. You know how some Moms can be brutally truthful.

Kevin Kline played Artemus Gordon and President Grant. I enjoyed Kevin as Artemus providing the subtle humor we love from him as an actor.

I also get the feeling that their might have been some real tension or (maybe not so strong of a term like tension) but awkwardness between Will Smith and Kevin Kline being from two different schools of comedy. On that subject, Barry Sonnenfeld said in an interview that his rule from now on will be to not cast two funny guys in the same movie.

Kenneth Branagh plays Dr. Arliss Loveless researching the American Civil War to bone up on his character. Kenneth commented that he was mainly interested in this part so he could learn from watching Barry Sonnenfeld and how to handle a big budget studio film, which he went on to do with Thor in 2011 and Cinderella in 2015.

As expected Kenneth gives 100% in his performance kneeling within a metal device to create the illusion of being an amputee. He complained of often losing circulation in his legs, as they would constantly go numb.

His performance was most notably over the top but I thought it was utterly enjoyable to me. I love my villains really over the top and he delivered. Watching him in this film just puts a big smile on my face.

The rising star Salma Hayek played Rita Escobar giving her character all of her effort. She later said that she was not given enough to do and I couldn’t agree more.

Best:

The best part of the film for me was the spectacle of the giant spider. I loved that ridiculous thing! I am totally surprised that they kept it in the movie, but what really makes the spider awesome, is knowing its origin from Kevin Smith’s story.

The ending:

The ending is over the top and yet a little lackluster.

Wish List:

I wish that the film had more of a resemblance o the original TV series. Robert Conrad was approached to make a cameo appearance as President Ulysses S. Grant. And it might have been possible if the script had been to his liking. One of his complaints was that it did not carry any of the characteristics of the original series.

This led to a little bad blood between Robert and the film and acted as the recipient of three of the five awards at the 20th Annual Razzie Awards.

I wish that the jokes had been reigned in more. I was not a fan of all of the mean race and amputee jokes in the film. It crossed the line, so it’s really hard to enjoy the film with those glaring moments.

I wish Artemus had been given a backstory so he could truly be more than just the gadget guy. It's the irony of the movie to be so self aware, but not use the time to do anything about it. Why is he into gadgets and why is he risking his life?

I understood Loveless’ motives for being vengeful being injured in battle, but I don’t understand the benefit of splitting up the states. Why not just rule the world?

I also thought that a man with so much ingenious access to technology would probably have the lower half of his body rebuilt, instead of being beheld to a wheelchair.

I mentioned that pacing was an issue and the sense of threat was not there because we only get to see the most deadliest henchmen at the very end of the film and they serve no impact in the story. If they had come earlier in the film there would be a sense of victory at the end.

And I also feel as if General Mcgrath was killed too early in the film. In fact general Mcgrath should have been much scarier to put our heroes in actual danger.

I wish there was a love story for either one or both of our heroes in the film to bring out the charm in James West or bring out the hero in Artimus.

A scene with a love interest would have been a great opportunity to use the song beautiful song Bailamos performed by Enrique Iglesias so that could have a real purpose in the film instead of being nailed on at the credits.

Rita being the fake-out love interest is one of the reasons the ending doesn’t feel victorious. Not that she has to be a trophy or anything, but even if she wasn't tricking the boys and was honest. I don’t think I would have mind it if she was an agent for Loveless in hopes of freeing her husband.

Enjoyment:

For years and years, I had no idea that this film was so critically panned because every once in awhile it would show up on TV and I’d catch it then.

I was shocked that the film was marketed to kids with a line of toys when the first scene is of a guy getting beheaded by one of Loveless’ machines. And I think that is the problem. The film’s attempt to reach kids seems like an afterthought to be more commercial. However, it didn’t have the chutzpah to be mature enough for adults.

For me, some of the highlights was Loveless’ over the top personality and how he was shot on camera. I loved the gadgets and some parts of it were a little funny to me.

The film plays out like a fever dream, the spinning swooping zooming camera movement, beautiful women for decoration, completely improbable happenings, and that dazzling giant steampunk mechanical spider.