Wild Wild West (1999) on Netflix
PG-1319991h 46mActionComedyWestern
President Ulysses S. Grant sends the agents James West and Artemus Gordon after the nation's missing scientists. West blames General Bloodbath McGrath for the massacre that killed his parents.
- Netflix3.1/5
- IMDb5.0/10174,728 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes16%
Trailer
Plot summary
Four years after the Civil War ends, U.S. Army Captain James West and U.S. Marshal Artemus Gordon hunt ex-Confederate General Bloodbath McGrath, whom West blames for the New Liberty massacre that killed his parents. President Ulysses S. Grant reveals that the nation's key scientists have vanished and orders the two men to find them before he inaugurates the first transcontinental railroad. The pair, rivals forced into a partnership, work from Gordon's train, The Wanderer, examining the severed head of the scientist Thaddeus Morton. The clue points to Dr. Arliss Loveless, a legless ex-Confederate inventor, at whose gathering the agents rescue Rita Escobar, who seeks their help in finding her father Guillermo, one of the missing scientists.
Cast
- Mike H. McGaughyas Big Reb (as Mike McGaughy)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Wild Wild West (1999)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Discussions with Will Smith and Barry Sonnenfeld began in February 1997, after the two wrapped up production on Men in Black; Smith then declined to play the lead role of Neo in The Matrix in favor of Wild Wild West, which he later regretted.
- Kevin Smith revealed that while he was writing the 1997 project Superman Lives, producer Jon Peters requested that Superman fight a gigantic spider in the third act; Warner Bros. halted Superman Lives in 1998, but Wild Wild West, which Peters produced alongside Sonnenfeld, featured a giant mechanical spider.
- 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.
- Warner Bros. pursued George Clooney to co-star as Artemus Gordon, with Kevin Kline, Matthew McConaughey and Johnny Depp also in contention; Clooney signed on after dropping out of Jack Frost, but in December 1997 he was replaced by Kline, saying it was better to "step aside" than damage the project.
- Warner Bros. hired Richard Donner, who had previously directed three episodes of the original series, to direct with Mel Gibson in the role of Jim West, but the pair left in 1994 to make Maverick; Tom Cruise was then rumored for the lead in 1995 and instead starred in Mission: Impossible.
- In 1997 the writer Gilbert Ralston, who helped create the original series and scripted the pilot "The Night of the Inferno", sued Warner Bros. over the film; in a deposition he said producer Michael Garrison approached him in 1964 wanting to "glue the idea of a Western hero and a James Bond type together in the same show".
