| Wild Wild West | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Barry Sonnenfeld |
| Produced by | Jon Peters Barry Sonnenfeld |
| Screenplay by | S.S. Wilson Brent Maddock Jeffrey Price Peter S. Seaman (based, uncredited, on characters created by Michael Garrison) |
| Story by | Jim Thomas John Thomas |
| Starring | Will Smith Kevin Kline Kenneth Branagh Salma Hayek M. Emmet Walsh Ted Levine Musetta Vander Bai Ling |
| Music by | Elmer Bernstein |
| Cinematography | Michael Ballhaus |
| Editing by | Jim Miller |
| Studio | Overbrook Entertainment Peters Entertainment |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. Pictures |
| Release date(s) | June 30, 1999 |
| Running time | 107 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $170 million |
| Box office | $222,105,681 |
Wild Wild West is a 1999 American steampunk action-comedy film directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, and starring Will Smith, Kevin Kline (who appears in dual roles as both the protagonist Artemus Gordon and as President Ulysses S. Grant), Kenneth Branagh and Salma Hayek.
Similar to the original TV series it was based on, The Wild Wild West, the film features a large amount of gadgetry. The film serves as a parody, however, as the gadgetry is more highly advanced, implausible steampunk technology and bizarre mechanical inventions, including innumerable inventions of the mechanological geniuses Artemus Gordon and Dr. Loveless, such as nitroglycerine-powered penny-farthing bicycles, spring-loaded notebooks, bulletproof chainmail, flying machines, steam tanks, and Loveless's giant mechanical spider. While the film was popular at the box office, it did not live up to its creators' blockbuster expectations, as had Men in Black two years earlier. The film was received by negative reviews, and star Will Smith said he was generally unhappy with the movie.
Contents |
In 1869, Army Captain James West (Will Smith), hides in a railroad water tower while spying on a group of ex-Confederate soldiers working under General "Bloodbath" McGrath (Ted Levine). West follows them to a saloon where General McGrath is enjoying a loud party. McGrath is seduced by a large prostitute who attempts to hypnotize the general into divulging his plans. West breaks in, but is stopped by the prostitute, allowing McGrath to escape. West fights off McGrath's men and finds himself with the prostitute, who reveals himself as U.S. Marshal Artemus Gordon (Kevin Kline). In Washington, D.C., West and Gordon meet at the White House with President Ulysses S. Grant (also played by Kline), who tells them about the disappearance of America's key scientists. Grant charges the two with finding the scientists before he inaugurates the first transcontinental railroad at Promontory, Utah.
The two head to New Orleans, pursuing a lead about Dr. Arliss Loveless (Kenneth Branagh)— an ex-Confederate scientist in a steam-powered wheelchair since the literal loss of his legs-, who is hosting a party for the elite of Southern society. West mistakes a female guest for a disguised Gordon and makes an error that results in the guests wanting to lynch West. Meanwhile, Gordon roams the mansion and comes across a caged Rita Escobar (Salma Hayek), rescuing her. Gordon frees West from a lynching with an elastic rope, and the three escape to the The Wanderer. Onboard, Rita asks for their help in rescuing her father, Professor Guillermo Escobar.
Later, Loveless hosts a reception to demonstrate his newest weapon: a steam-powered tank. The tank uses General McGrath's soldiers as target practice, angering McGrath. Loveless shoots McGrath and leaves him behind. Gordon, West and Rita arrive at the scene and find the dying McGrath. West then reveals one of Loveless's past crimes: He used the tank to massacre a settlement of free slaves, including West's family. Loveless boards his armored train and heads to Utah with Gordon, West, and Rita in pursuit. Using steam powered hydraulics, Loveless maneuvers his train behind The Wanderer. West disables Loveless's train, but not before Loveless uses a locomotive-mounted cannon to stop The Wanderer. Rita, afraid of being recaptured by Loveless, accidentally releases sleeping gas, knocking out West, Gordon and herself.
West and Gordon wake up as Loveless pulls away in The Wanderer, announcing he intends to capture President Grant at the "golden spike" ceremony. They find themselves fitted with the same metal collars from earlier in the movie. West crosses a ground level wire that triggers a nearby machine to release the lethal flying disks, forcing West and Gordon to run as the disks are magnetically attracted to the collars. The two leap into a mud pit from opposite directions, causing the discs to collide. After removing the collars, the two stumble across Loveless' private railroad track, which leads them to his industrial complex. Here, they witness Loveless' ultimate weapon: a gigantic mechanical spider armed with powerful weapons. Later, Loveless uses the spider to capture Gordon and Grant at the inauguration ceremony at Promontory Point, while West is seemingly killed by one of Loveless's bodyguards.
At his industrial complex, Loveless reveals his plan to destroy the United States with his mechanized forces unless President Grant agrees to divide the states among Great Britain, France, Spain, Mexico, and himself. Loveless demands that President Grant surrender, but he refuses. Loveless threatens to execute Gordon but is interrupted by a belly dancer, who turns out to be West in disguise, having used a concealed layer of chain mail during his "death." West, disguised as a woman, uses an exotic dance to distract Loveless while attempting to free his captives, but Loveless escapes with the President.
Gordon and West, inspired by an incident in the desert where they saw a wasp kill a tarantula, use a flying machine to catch up with the spider and bomb it with nitroglycerin before crashing onto it. West is dropped into the engine room to fight the spider's crew, all of whom have bizarre prosthetics. West defeats the crew and Loveless himself descends into the engine room to defeat West. Loveless, now on hydraulic mechanical legs, pins West to the floor and stomps on him until Gordon incapacitates the walking apparatus. Pleading for his life, Loveless drags himself back to his wheelchair as the spider approaches a canyon. Loveless attempts to shoot West with a concealed gun, but hits the spider's control lines, locking it up just before it plunges into the canyon. This sends West and Loveless almost over the edge, with the wheelchair getting caught in the railing. West deliberately pulls a lever that will release them, sending Loveless to fall to his doom, while West grabs a chain hanging outside the engine room.
After the second ceremony at Promontory, Grant promotes Gordon and West to the first two agents of his newly-formed U.S. Secret Service. Gordon and West meet Rita again, both of them planning to court her, but she crushes their hopes by announcing that Professor Escobar was, in fact, her husband and not her father. The film ends with Gordon and West riding Loveless's steam-spider into the sunset.
In January 1992, Variety reported that Warner Bros. was planning a theatrical version of The Wild Wild West directed by Richard Donner, written by Shane Black, and starring Mel Gibson as James West. (Donner directed three episodes of the original series.) Donner and Gibson instead made a theatrical version of TV's Maverick in 1994. The Wild Wild West motion picture continued in the development stage, with Tom Cruise rumored for the lead in 1995. Cruise instead revived Mission: Impossible the following year.
Finally, in 1999, a theatrical motion picture loosely based on the series was released. Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, the film Wild Wild West (without the definite article used in the series title) made substantial changes to the characters of the series, reimagining James West as an African-American (played by Will Smith), which included, to a small degree, some of the racial issues that certainly would have made it difficult for a black man to be a United States secret service agent in the late 19th century. (However, at the end of "The Night of the Returning Dead", West and Gordon did invite an African-American character played by guest star Sammy Davis Jr. to join the department.)
Significant changes were made to Dr. Loveless (played by Kenneth Brannagh in the film). He went from a dwarf (TV) to a man without legs (film); his name was also changed to Arliss Loveless and he was given the motive of a Southerner who sought the defeat of the North after the Civil War. Kevin Kline plays Gordon, whose character was similar to the version played by Ross Martin, except that he was bitterly competitive with James West, and much more egotistical. The film script had Kline's Gordon invent more ridiculous, humor-related, and implausible contraptions than those created by Martin's Gordon in the television series. The film also depicted West and Gordon as competitive rivals (almost to the point of a mutual dislike and distrust of one another), whereas in the television series, West and Gordon had a very close friendship and trusted each other with their lives. Also, while Gordon did indeed impersonate Grant in 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.
Jon Peters served as producer along with director Sonnenfeld. In a 2002 Q&A event that appears in An Evening with Kevin Smith, writer-director Kevin Smith talked about working with Peters on a fifth potential Superman film in 1997, revealing that Peters had three demands for the script. The first demand was that Superman not wear the suit, the second was that Superman not fly, and the third was to have Superman fight a giant spider in the third act.[1] After Tim Burton came on board, Smith's script was tossed away and the film was never produced due to further complications. A year later, he noted that Wild Wild West, with Peters onboard as producer, was released with the inclusion of a giant mechanical spider in the final act.[2] Neil Gaiman has also said that Jon Peters also insisted a giant mechanical spider be included in a film adaptation of The Sandman.[3]
The sequences on both Artemus Gordon's and Dr. Loveless' trains interiors were shot on sets at Warner Bros. The train exteriors were shot in Idaho. "The Wanderer" 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 pre-production the engine was sent to the steam shops at the Strasburg Railroad 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 Disney film The Great Locomotive Chase (1956).
Much of the 'wild West' footage was shot around Santa Fe, New Mexico, particularly at the western town set at the Cooke Movie 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.[4]
The film received generally negative reviews from film critics, with a 21% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 102 reviews.[5] It grossed $222,104,681 worldwide, against a $170 million budget.[6]
The film also won five Razzie Awards including Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screen Couple (Kevin Kline and Will Smith), Worst Screenplay and Worst Original Song ("Wild Wild West"). It also earned nominations for Worst Actor (Kline), Worst Supporting Actor (Kenneth Branagh) and twice for Worst Supporting Actress (Salma Hayek and Kline as the prostitute).
In 1997, writer Gilbert Ralston sued Warner Brothers over the upcoming motion picture based on the series. Ralston helped create The Wild Wild West television series, and scripted the pilot episode, "The Night of the Inferno." In a deposition, Ralston explained that in 1964 he was 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."[7] Ralston said he then created the Civil War characters, the format, the story outline and nine drafts of the script that was 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 Ulysses S. 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. Ralston died in 1999, before his suit was settled. Warner Brothers ended up paying his family between $600,000 and $1.5 million.[8]
A soundtrack containing hip hop and R&B music was released on June 15, 1999, by Interscope Records. It peaked at #4 on the Billboard 200 and #4 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums.
The film's orchestral score including its main theme was composed and conducted by Elmer Bernstein, a veteran of many straight western movie 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 television series in one cue, uncredited in the film (and not included on the album) - ironically, this was one of the few elements to be faithful to the original series, which also didn't credit Markowitz for the theme. Additional parts of the score were composed by Elmer Bernstein's son, Peter Bernstein, and his daughter Emilie A. Bernstein served as one of the orchestrators and producers. Thirty minutes of the film's orchestral music were released on CD from Varése Sarabande in 1999. Elmer Bernstein won an ASCAP Award in the category Top Box Office Films.
Track listing of the score album (italics indicate Peter Bernstein):
Like most of Will Smith's films during this period, a hip hop single by the rapper/actor, called "Wild Wild West", served as the promotional theme song for the film, despite its incongruity with the Western tone of the film, where it is only heard during the end titles. Wild Wild West was a #1 hit on the U.S. pop charts, but also won a Razzie Award. It was produced by Rob Fusari, who lifted a sample from Stevie Wonder's 1976 hit "I Wish". The song features guest vocals from R&B group Dru Hill, and was a star-making vehicle for Dru Hill lead singer Sisqo. Old school rapper Kool Moe Dee had recorded a Wild Wild West single of his own in 1987, and re-performs the chorus from his old Wild Wild West as the chorus of this new Wild Wild West.
The song "Bailamos", sung by Enrique Iglesias, is also heard during the film's end titles. The music videos for both end title songs are featured on the DVD.
Several songs not heard in the film itself are featured on the promotional CD album Wild Wild West: Music Inspired By The Motion Picture (released by Interscope Records on June 15, 1999). This includes the song "Bad Guys Always Die", which marked the first collaboration between Dr. Dre and Eminem. ("Wild Wild West" and "Bailamos" are the only songs on the album to be heard in the film.)
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn |
Razzie Award for Worst Picture 20th Golden Raspberry Awards |
Succeeded by Battlefield Earth |
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