The year 1999 had a massive impact on cinema with movies like Fight Club, The Sixth Sense, Magnolia and The Matrix. And then there was… Wild Wild West. This expensive big-screen adaptation of a 1960’s Western spy show featured Will Smith at the apex of his fame, some Oscar-level supporting talent, a respected director and of course, a giant mechanical spider.
Indeed, Will Smith has always called it his worst film ever. How did it go so wrong? It seemed promising on the surface. It was a remake of a well-loved western show that mixed James Bond-style spy antics with the Old West. It would re-team Smith with his Men in Black director Barry Sonnenfeld, and the studio pumped a ton of money into it, expecting it to be a blockbuster. Was it that the chemistry with co-star Kevin Kline just wasn’t up to snuff? Was the legless bad guy, Kenneth Branagh’s Dr. Loveless, too weird? And what was the deal with the giant mechanical spider? How did these impressive ingredients result in such a spectacular disaster? Saddle up and find out in “WTF Happened to WILD WILD WEST!”
