i want you to hit me as hard as you can... Looking back, the year 1999 had a massive impact on cinema
and is widely considered one of the best years in film history, with movies like Fight Club,
The Sixth Sense, Magnolia, The Blair Witch Project, Galaxy Quest, Toy Story 2 and The Matrix
all becoming immediate or eventual classics of their respective genres. And then there was Wild
Wild West. This expensive big screen adaptation of a 1960s western spy show would feature an actor at
the apex of his fame, along with some Oscar level supporting talent, a respected director and of
course a giant mechanical spider. How did these impressive ingredients result in a spectacular
disaster? Roll into the Wild Wild West and find out what the [ __ ] happened to this movie!
In 1992 plans were set in motion to adapt the stylish Robert Conrad/Ross Martin TV
series Wild Wild West. At the time, movie adaptations of popular shows were not exactly
a fresh concept - just one year earlier director Barry Sonnenfeld had helped demonstrate there
was an audience for such things with a highly successful screen update of the Addams Family,
so it wasn't surprising when Warner Bros tried to mimic that success by hiring Lethal Weapon
screenwriter Shane Black to write a script for their recently optioned western property.
The studio then wanted to bring on his fellow Lethal Weapon talent Richard Donner
and Mel Gibson. That plan collapsed when the star and director instead decided to make a different
adaptation of an old western TV show - Maverick. The studio then approached Tom Cruise to take
on the role of secret service agent Jim West, but once again a different TV series adaptation
would lure Cruise away from the project. After those back-to-back talent departures Wild Wild
West was put on the back burner for two years until Warner Bros brought in writers S.S Wilson
and Brent Maddock, who were responsible for Short Circuit and Tremors. The duo would perform a page
one rewrite of a previous draft by Predator screenwriters Jim and John Thomas. Around that
same time Will Smith was approached to star in the film. Oddly enough Smith turned down
the lead role of Neo in The Matrix because he wanted to get away from the sci-fi genre,
but apparently thought a western action comedy was a big enough deviation from his previous efforts.
Thanks for watching Joblo videos, if you enjoy our shows please like and subscribe and click the bell
to be notified when new videos go live, now back to the show. After Smith accepted the lead role,
his Men in Black director Barry Sonnenfeld was suggested and he jumped at the opportunity,
having grown up watching the original TV show. From there Sonnenfeld wanted
his friend George Clooney to star opposite Will Smith as Artemis Gordon, and the actor
agreed pending a new draft of the script. But after Clooney saw the rewrite he declined
because Smith had all the funny dialogue and he was not interested in playing the straight man.
But the problems were just beginning. The film had a notoriously eccentric producer in Jon Peters,
who started in the business as Barbara Streisand's hairdresser and romantic partner and transitioned
to producing with her 1976 film A Star Is Born. By the 1990s after successes like Caddyshack,
Flashdance, Rain Man and Tim Burton's Batman, Jon Peters was the walking stereotype of Hollywood
producers - a wealthy egomaniac prone to screaming, physical violence and bizarre
creative contributions. One famous story of Peters' outlandish input came from Kevin Smith,
who met with the producer to discuss the script for Superman Lives. Peters gave Smith
three non-negotiable mandates: Superman could not fly, would not wear the iconic costume,
and most prominently had to fight a giant spider in the third act. Smith was also required to read
his finished draft aloud to Peters. You want me to like tuck him in after I'm done? The producer's
brilliant ideas didn't stop there - screenwriter Brent Maddock said that they discussed a scene
where Jim West rides on horseback through the night to meet with the president. Peters instead
proclaimed that horses were "boring" and the movie should have motorcycles. Maddock explained
that those vehicles did not exist in the movie's 1868 setting but Peters persisted. Fortunately his
idea didn't make the final cut, or at least not exactly like we might expect. Curiously Maddock
and Wilson's draft had included the mechanical spider, which Peters surprisingly rejected,
instead suggesting yet another anachronism: a huge flying stealth bomber. It was actually Barry
Sonnenfeld who ultimately approved the massive motorized arachnid, although he later admitted
it was one of the factors that ruined the film. Either way, Peters finally got his giant spider.
Academy Award winner Kevin Kline came on board to play gadget inventing secret agent Artemis Gordon,
and also US president Grant for some reason. Salma Hayek would be the sexy potential love interest
and Oscar-nominated actor Kenneth Branagh would play the movie's villain Dr Loveless,
a dastardly engineering genius in a motorized wheelchair. When the cast assembled for a table
read, Branagh showed up with his beard shaved like his character and only spoke in his southern
accent the entire day. His performance was so convincing that a studio executive didn't even
realize it was Branagh and he thought Sonnenfeld should hire the guy in the room instead.
After yet another rewrite from a different set of screenwriters, filming on Wild Wild West commenced
in April of 1998 with the goal of having it in theaters for July 4th the following year,
a weekend that had proven to be enormously profitable for Will Smith's movies.
Sonnenfeld had perceived the Artemis Gordon character as the straight man to Will Smith,
something that had worked so well on Men In Black with Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. But while filming,
Kevin Kline, who had won an Oscar for a comedy, had a hard time relinquishing all
the laughs to Smith so their scenes became a game of one-upmanship to see who could be more funny.
That skewed dynamic is so pronounced in the final film that it's practically impossible
to tell who's supposed to be the serious straight shooter and who's the wacky sidekick.
Actress Sophia Eng, who plays a lip reading henchwoman named Ms. Lippinreider, later said
that Kevin Kline was agitated that he did not receive the same attention and respect on the set
as Smith and Branagh. Sonnenfeld even fueled the rivalry between Klein and Branagh by pretending
to confuse their previous acting roles, hoping it would translate to their antagonistic relationship
on the screen, whatever that was worth. After production wrapped the film began having test
screenings, which were a catastrophe. Test audiences couldn't tell if it was meant to be
a comedy or an action film, they found that Smith wasn't funny enough and it felt more like a bland
PG movie rather than an edgy PG-13. The studio then sunk an additional 40 million dollars
into rewrites and reshoots, adding more innuendo and adult humor. Sonnenfeld disliked the tiresome
double-entendres and clunky rewrites, which he thought ultimately resulted in a jumbled mess
with no consistent tone and turned the Loveless character from pure evil into more of a joke. Upon
seeing the re-edited film with Warner executives he honestly thought it could not be salvaged.
One scene that to Sonnenfeld best encapsulated the entire mess is when Jim West suddenly appears in
disguise as a belly dancer to distract Loveless. The director found the sequence baffling and
unnecessary and it exists because Jon Peters loved it and refused to let them remove it. This seems
to be a running theme with Peters, who got Kline in drag earlier in the movie and had also insisted
on Kurt Russell wearing a dress in Tango and Cash. Sonnenfeld suspects the ridiculous scene is the
last straw for audiences and cringes at how little sense it makes in the context of the film, but at
the time he just didn't have enough Hollywood clout to go against the powerful producer.
After an extravagant world premiere party, Wild Wild West opened on June 30th 1999. The film had
an uphill battle from the start with a cost that had ballooned to a rumored 180 million dollars,
which at the time was one of the most expensive ever made. The movie earned just 27 million for
its first three-day weekend. Unlike Will Smith's previous dominance over the July 4th holiday,
Wild Wild West was shaping up to be a box office bomb. Audience word of mouth was terrible and
response from critics was even worse, calling it exhausting and smutty with comedy that completely
missed the mark. Roger Ebert said that Smith and Kline lacked any semblance of chemistry
and that the special effects in the film were "like watching a bag of money burn on the screen."
The movie did finally manage to take in 222 million dollars at the worldwide box office,
although it has been speculated that at least in the US many teenagers were
buying tickets and then sneaking in to see the R-rated South Park Bigger Longer and Uncut.
Perhaps unsurprisingly the movie was popular at the Razzie awards that year winning five out of
eight nominated categories. Robert Conrad, the star of the original series, actually appeared
at the ceremony to accept the awards and express his disappointment with the finished product.
If the film had a bright spot it was the funky hit title track by Will Smith, which now seems
like a relic from a time when summer blockbusters all had tie-in songs by major artists. Since the
movie's release everyone involved - except Jon Peters of course - have publicly acknowledged
its questionable quality. Kevin Kline has stated that he's a better actor than the movie indicates.
Salma Hayek rightfully felt underused and seems to be present only for the men
to comment on her curves. It's nice having her on board, she's a breast of fresh air.
Kenneth Branagh has proclaimed that his southern drawl is perhaps the worst American accent by a
British actor in film history. Nice of you to join us tonight and add color to these monochromatic
proceedings. And the movie has become a punchline for Will Smith, who has admitted he did the film
for all the wrong reasons, because he had set his sights on becoming the world's biggest star,
ignoring good storytelling in the process. I just made that up. The movie's original writers Wilson
and Maddock, who were invited to the premiere only to find that nothing on the screen resembled their
original script, actually tried unsuccessfully to have their names removed from the film.
While they admit it was the highest paying job of their careers they also
feel the credit on such a monumental flop obstructed future Hollywood opportunities.
Wild Wild West would go on to be considered one of the worst films of the 20th century
among company like Battlefield Earth and Batman and Robin. Still, that notoriety must count for
something - many better movies are forgotten about within months but Wild Wild West has
remained a talking point for over 20 years. Sure we all revisit classics like Fight Club and The
Matrix to see the greatness from the year 1999, but an exorbitantly expensive genre mashup with
talented actors and a lumbering steam-powered spider can't really be that bad... can it? When
you're telling the story to your grandkids you make sure that you leave this part out.