Wild Wild West - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Wild Wild West or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Wild Wild West

[bernice]

George Clooney was attached to play Artemus Gordon, but turned it down reportedly because it was a supporting part.

[ken]

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.

[tamara]

Sir Kenneth Branagh self-deprecatingly joked that his accent in this movie might be the worst American accent performed by a British actor.

[leo]

In the transition shot between Rita leaving West and Gordon and the two men riding the giant spider back to Washington, D.C., there is a sandstone butte shaped as though it is giving the audience "The Finger".

[harry]

Mel Gibson was set to star as James West, and Richard Donner (who had directed three episodes of The Wild Wild West (1965)) was set to direct, with a script by Shane Black, when Warner Brothers first announced production of the film in 1992. However, they both dropped out and went on to do Maverick (1994). Tom Cruise was later attached to star before dropping out for his role in Mission: Impossible (1996).

[alyssa]

In 1997, writer Gilbert Ralston sued Warner Brothers over the upcoming movie based on the series. Ralston helped create The Wild Wild West (1965), 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 on the same show." 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 James West who would perform secret missions for a bumbling President 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.

[ken]

Ted Levine grew up watching the original television series. Levine said he enjoyed working on the movie, but because there were so many writers revising the script, there was no center, causing the story to be all over the place. He attributed that to the movie's "failure", as well as Will Smith's miscasting.

[bernard]

Loveless kills McGrath's men with what he refers to as a "tank". In reality, tanks weren't invented until World War I, around fifty years after this movie takes place. However, since this is a fictional story, anything is possible.

[aaron]

Barry Sonnenfeld, Kevin Kline, Salma Hayek, Will Smith, and in fact half the staff at Warner Brothers hate this movie. Hayek in particular thought she was being underused, while Kline considered himself too good of an actor for the finished product.

[jessie]

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

[riley]

At an official $150 million (unofficial $170 million), it stands as the most expensive movie produced by Warner Brothers, and the most expensive movie released in 1999.

[bernice]

According to screenwriters S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock, their original script was re-written almost entirely from their draft. The duo, who have worked on several movies together, claimed their script was heavily re-written by Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman, with further re-writes by an uncredited Jim Kouf, in an attempt to add more action and comedy to a script that was a mostly serious, dialogue-driven mystery western. Entire additions, such as the villain, most of the jokes and action scenes, and the entire third act involving the giant spider, were new without their input. Wilson and Braddock tried to get their names taken off of the movie after seeing the final product, and they have since refused to work with a major studio because of the experience.

[kenneth]

The scene where Dr. Loveless' train was raised on four girders outside of the train tunnel was all done digitally. A real train was used when it was finally back on its tracks and the girders going back inside the train, which was also done digitally.

[kylie]

Belle was originally cast with, and filmed with, British actress Phina Oruche. Reportedly, the chemistry needed for the water tower love scene wasn't there. The scene was re-cast and re-shot with Garcelle Beauvais. However, Oruche was not told, and found out she was no longer in the movie at the premiere in Los Angeles.

[jesse]

Although the opening credits are styled after the opening of the 1960's television series, the decision was made to use a generic piece of music instead of the original Wild Wild West theme. The original theme, however, is heard on the soundtrack near the climax of the movie.

[elmer]

When this movie swept the 20th Annual Razzie Awards, winning five statuettes including Worst Picture, Robert Conrad, who played James West in the original 1960s television series, accepted three of the awards in person, as his way of expressing his low opinion of what had been done with his source material. He then delivered them to the recipients personally.

[kenneth]

This movie is featured in episode 257 of the "bad movie" podcast, "We Hate Movies".

[wallace]

This movie bears significant resemblance to Batman: The Animated Series: Showdown (1995) featuring Jonah Hex.

[claude]

The movie's villain, Dr. Arliss Loveless, is an amalgamation of two villains from the original series, the tech-savvy recurring villain of the original Wild Wild West television show named Dr. Miguelito Loveless (played by Michael Dunn), who was a little person rather than an amputee, and who appeared in 10 episodes total, and an amputee Confederate Colonel named Noel Bartley Vautrain (played by Ricardo Montalban), a popular one-off villain on the show who planned to go back in time and assassinate the Union army leader General Grant, believing that this would change history and ensure the victory of the South in the American Civil War.