ALL SCI-FI

[Bogmeister]

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This was the big budget feature remake of the '60s TV series about a couple of intrepid secret agents in the 19th century who work directly for the President (Grant, in this case).

Now, the thing is — and I'll say this up front — to me, agent Jim West IS Robert Conrad . . . and always will be. I mean, Conrad is THE MAN, all right? Modern filmmakers such as director Barry Sonnenfield, being the doofy flakes that they are, probably thought, "Is there any reason why James West cannot be. . . Will Smith?"

Well, I could have told them why; because for all these years he's been Conrad! And Conrad certainly brought a unique sensibility to the role. The way he carried himself makes it difficult to imagine ANYONE else as West, let alone an actor specializing in easygoing comedy.

Will Smith's comic timing worked well in Independence Day and great in Men in Black, but is totally inappropriate for this part. I think at this point in time, Smith was thought to be capable of anything and the biggest box office star (coming off Men in Black among others). So, he was considered a good bet for this, even though a black man being the top secret service agent just after the Civil War doesn't make any sense — unless it's some alternate reality.

They might as well have given him a different name, maybe as a replacement for the real Jim West.

___________ Wild Wild West (1/10) Movie CLIP


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Of course, modern filmmakers, being the doofuses that they are, also thought, "Is there any reason we cannot include a giant spider in this movie?:

But the other Smith (Kevin) has already explained enough on that subject (see trivia below).

Will Smith's chemistry with partner Gordon (Kevin Kline) is OK at first, but seems strained later and overdone — their back 'n' forth jabber becomes tiresome quickly and not at all amusing, just tired.

It also goes against the grain of the established relationship in the original TV series. The two characters respected each other in the origina. Here they just tolerate each other, and it's uncomfortable to watch.

Brit actor Kenneth Branagh plays villain Loveless with a thick Southern accent to the point of self-mockery. His role is mostly absurd and, for some reason, no one bothered to get a little person actor to play the role (essayed originally by Michael Dunn).

Salma Hayek is there as eye-candy, but I'm struck by how short she is, almost little-person size.

The FX are good, as should be for such a huge budget (last I heard, about $180 million!). Despite the camp, this also has its pluses as Steampunk adventure. And there's nothing really that bad about the plot. But there's no sense of real danger — and therefore, no real tension. Here's where Smith's limitations show. All the kidding around make for a pointless story. I guess it's supposed to be plain fun.

Hey, just for fun, let's get the real Jim West to beat up the Director.

__________ Wild Wild West (10/10) Movie CLIP


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Wild Wild Trivia: Writer-director Kevin Smith has made famous his recounting of how the film ended up with a giant mechanical spider; Smith was involved with producer Jon Peters about a possible other film project and found out that Peters was obsessed about having a giant spider in the film — any film, apparently. Robert Conrad had made no secret, either, about his dislike for this film version and refused a small role in the film. Smith — Will Smith, that is — issued an apology to Conrad some years later.

BoG's Score: 3 out of 10


BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Bud Brewster]

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I was never a big fan of The Wild, Wild West series, but I was a big fan of the Bond movies, so the series seemed like apples & oranges, premise wise. The appeal of the cutting age hi-tech stuff in Bond just couldn't be sandwiched into a series set in the 1800s, so I was not able to get into it.

Having said that, you'd think I'd like the Will Smith version because I didn't have any issues with "changing the original". The movie has it's moments, but mostly it suffers (for me) from the same problem as the series in terms of the era being wrong for hi-tech stuff and secret agents.

The villain with no legs who rides around in a steam-powered wheelchair while he spouts offensive racist jokes in a horrible version of a Southern accent was not a good idea.

The giant spider was well done, FX wise, but as a weapon of war it was a sitting duck for a nice even line of Civil War cannons if it ever tried to go up against the U.S. Army.

And Bogmeister is right about the relationship between West and Gordon. They should have been a strong, tight-knit team — not a couple that needed relationship counseling!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel]

I love the original TV series (and own the DVDs), but this movie was just a slap in the face — not only to the original series, but to all the movie going public. I saw it on cable, and felt robbed.

I remember reading interviews in magazines before the movie came out. I just couldn't understand it, as the Director and Will Smith said that even they didn't think it was going to work! Then why go though with it, if you knew it was going to bomb? Was it a giant tax write off?

The scene with West and Loveless trading insults was just cringe inducing.

The movie did affect another film. When they started filming "Red Planet", they were using a real robot, instead of the CG toon robot. The robot was spider-shaped, and after "TWWW" bombed, the studio had them scrapped the spider bot.

David.

[scotpens]

[Bud Brewster]

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You're right, David. Not a good movie, despite the fine cast. Jeez, what WERE they thinking? (As the saying goes.)

But this discussion got ME to thinking about The Wild, Wild West premise and why I didn't appreciate it at the tender age of seventeen when it first aired.

For one thing, I was not all that into Westerns back then. That's part of the reason for my lack of enthusiasm. And yet, I love 'em now. Go figure, eh?

But I was crazy about the Bond films — so much so that around 1963 I cobbled together a homemade shoulder holster using the thick cardboard from the package a new shirt came in, along with black electrical tape to cover the cardboard holster I cut out and glued together, and some elastic from my mother's sewing kit to fashion the strap that held it in place under my arm.

The gun was a little "starter pistol" for signaling the beginning of track races!

A few days later, I actually wore the shoulder holster under my Sunday suit when my family went to church. Seriously!

These days I'm not a juvenile Bond nut like I was back then, but I still like heroes with hi-tech gizmos. So, I think I'd really enjoy a remake of The Wild, Wild West if it presented the idea that Artimus Gordon was a genius who designed and built amazing devices that were far ahead of the 1800s technology (even more so than what we see in the originally series).



Furthermore, Artemus would be close friends with men like Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, the Wright brothers, and several less well known (but brilliant) people from the era. Theses folks would share with Artemus new ideas, new devices, exotic materials, and news about scientific advancements.



Yes, I know, I'm cheating on the dates some of those famous men were born, making them older than they actually would be at the time the series took place. But this isn't just fiction, it's science fiction, which means we can play the "alternate universe" card and fiddle with reality.

Arty would also be well known and highly respected by some of the richest men in America, like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, William Henry Vanderbilt, and Henry Ford. Their respect for Arty would permit him to do things like sending a telegram to any of those guys and receive $10,000 within twenty-four hours — no questions asked!

J.P. Morgan, the railroad magnate, would be a special friend, too, and Arty could request priority routing for the Wanderer across several states whenever Jim and Arty were in a big hurry to get somewhere.

Imagine a montage scene with the Wanderer thundering through little towns and right passed other trains sitting on the sidings just to let them pass by! All this would be accompanied by rousing music to give the scene lots of pizazz.



When the Wanderer needs to stop for water and coal, the procedure would look like a pit stop at the Indy 500, with a crew standing by before they even arrived. The men would scramble around in frantic haste to get Jim and Arty "back on track" (so to speak).

Concerning the train itself, I'd like to spruce it up a little while still keeping the traditional look. It's steam engine can be improved (somehow) by Artemus so that it would be the fastest locomotive in the world, run by an engineer and a coal stoker who were colorful characters themselves, master mechanics who are occasionally called upon repair (and sometimes upgrade) the Wanderer.

I found this picture of a train I think has the sort of look I have in mind.



As for the relationship between the two main character's, I really like the idea that the rough-and-tough Jim West would be a bit out of his league when it comes to some of the hi-tech stuff Artemus is completely familiar with. Arty would start talking enthusiastically about something he'd built for Jim or something he's working on, and he wouldn't realize that most of what he's saying is zooming right over Jim's handsome head!

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But Jim would be delighted to have the things Arty builds, and even though he might not always fully understand the science involved, he'd master the use of the devices quickly and expertly — which would annoy Arty the same way Bond annoyed Q.

On the other hand, when the action explodes and Jim West is knee deep in his native element — smacking the villains around with ease and improvising Jackie-Chan-like maneuvers that make HIM look like a genius in his own way — Arty would be dazzled by his partner's combat skills and very grateful when Jim saves his bacon!

When faced with a dangerous lady who's determined to kill them both, Jim's charm would go into high gear and he'd schmooze the pants off the lady (metaphorically speaking, of course . . . )

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Thus the team would respect their individual talents and merge them into a fighting force that couldn't be beaten.

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I can easily imagine comic moments, too, in which Jim tries to impress a pretty lady by explaining some amazing device he uses . . . but then he screws up the explanation while Arty stands nearby, trying to hide his giggles.

And if she happens to be some lady scientist who understands the device better then Jim does, that would be even funnier!

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Conversely, we'd see moments when Arty is confronted by ruffians in a dark alley and tries to act tough like Jim, even though he knows he's going get beat to a pulp. But the cocky, wisecracking henchmen suddenly start looking nervous, and Arty thinks he's pulling off his tough act.

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However, during this shot the camera slowly rotates around from behind Arty as he faces the men until it ends up pointing at Arty, with the dark alley behind him, where see a silent, shadowy figure — Jim West, here to make sure nobody messes with his buddy.

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Yes sir, I could sure have fun writing a script for a remake of The Wild, Wild West.

~ Click here to see the series' opening with it's wonderful theme!

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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IMDB has several interesting trivia items for this production.
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~ Will Smith turned down the lead role in The Matrix (1999) to star in this movie, being a fan of the television series. He later said this was the worst decision he made in his career.

Note from me: Bad news for Will Smith. Good news for the Matrix. Will was not right for that movie.

~ This movie underwent costly re-shoots in an attempt to inject some humor, after it was found that test audiences weren't sure if it was supposed to be a comedy.

Note from me: Maybe I'm wrong, but if those attempts to "inject some humor" hadn't been made, this movie might have been much better.

~ Though a box-office failure in the U.S. (it managed to turn a profit overseas), it's commonly joked that the only reason this movie earned any money at all is because unaccompanied minors would buy tickets to this movie, then use them to sneak into screenings of South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999) and American Pie (1999).

Note from me: Wow, that's a bold (and completely unprovable) claim! But it's funny as hell!

~ When Will Smith asked his mother what she thought of the movie, she replied "You've done better, baby".

Note from me: Sometimes father does NOT know best . . . mothers does.

~ Will Smith said that he knew the movie wasn't any good and he was embarrassed when it earned almost $50 million in its opening weekend. Years later, Smith apologized publicly to Robert Conrad (star of the original television series) and said now that he was older and more experienced, he understood Conrad's anger and criticism of the movie version, as well as Conrad's refusal to make a cameo appearance in it.

Note from me: This seems to prove that Will Smith is a decent guy.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel]

This movie also caused change in "Red Planet" (2000). When they started filming RP, they were using a spider-like robot in the movie. After the WWW crashed and burned at the box office, the studio made RP get rid of the spider bot (it was a real remote controlled robot) and designed the one you see in the finished film, which was mostly CGI.

For some reason the studio figured, that if one movie with a spider machine failed at the box office, then they didn't want one in theirs!

I remember reading in Starlog magazine that the director knew the movie wasn't going to work with Will Smith as the star, but went ahead anyway. Crazy, but then it wasn't his money.

David.

[Bud Brewster]

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There's a strange irony in this.

Red Planet had a cool spider robot all set to go, but they dumped it because The Wild, Wild West proved that spider robots had "bad opinion" cooties — which was bogus.

But they kept Will Smith as the star of TWWW . . . even though that decision actually did have bad opinion cooties!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

I am a huge TWWW fan. This film was bloody awful and never captured the fun and charm of the television series.

[Bud Brewster]

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I tried to find a picture of the un-used spider robot, but I struck out. In fact, I couldn't find any reference to the robot at all. Does anybody know of a site that has info and a jpeg?
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Maurice]