Not just a bad movie. Not merely a disappointing summer blockbuster. According to popular memory, Wild Wild West was an act of violence against filmmaking itself. A loud, expensive, mechanical-spider-shaped stain on Will Smith’s otherwise untouchable late-’90s run.

Enough.

Shut the fuck up.

I am tired of pretending this movie is not great.

Now, before the Letterboxd defense attorneys arrive with screenshots of its Rotten Tomatoes score, let me explain what I mean by “great.”

I do not mean flawless. I do not mean respectable. I do not mean Wild Wild West should have beaten The Matrix for anything other than Most Audacious Use of a Giant Metal Insect.

I mean great in the way movies used to be fun before every blockbuster needed twelve years of lore, three post-credit scenes, and a YouTube video explaining what the ending means.

Wild Wild West is ridiculous, stylish, offensive, inventive, loud, committed, visually memorable, and completely unashamed of itself.

That is a great fucking movie.

There is no moment in Wild Wild West when the movie forgets that its job is to entertain.

It has gunfights. Gadgets. Trains. Explosions. Disguises. Beautiful women. Racist villains. Secret laboratories. Magnetic collars. A man with no legs operating a giant mechanical spider in the desert.

A man with no legs operating a giant mechanical spider in the desert while talking about how his “thing” still works.

What else did you need from a summer movie in 1999?

The film moves like somebody was standing behind the camera yelling, “Add something else.”

A normal Western was not enough, so they added science fiction. Science fiction was not enough, so they added spy gadgets. Spy gadgets were not enough, so they added buddy-comedy arguments between Will Smith and Kevin Kline. Then somebody apparently looked around the room and asked why the movie did not yet have a colossal steam-powered spider.

I’m stuck on the spider.

That person understood cinema.

There is a belief that movies become smarter when they become slower, darker, quieter, and more miserable. Everything has to end with some deep, moving moment as the screen fades to black.

Outside of not drumming on white women’s breasts, there are no lessons to be learned.

It knows exactly what it is.

It is a live-action cartoon with a hundred-million-dollar budget and one of the biggest movie stars in the world dressed like the coolest cowboy America had seen in years.

Will Smith Owns the Western

Will Smith’s Jim West does not waste time proving he is worthy of the hat. He enters already dangerous and already aware that he is the shit.

The movie’s attempts to address race are often clumsy. Some of the jokes are ugly. Some feel like the screenwriters mistook acknowledging racism for saying something meaningful about it.

But Will Smith made everything look cool.

Aliens? Cool.

Government surveillance conspiracies? Cool.

Fighting Confederate terrorists aboard a weaponized train while dressed like the sharpest cowboy in America? Cool.

Will Smith was the  blockbuster. You can’t rewrite this. Your little movie had motion but he was the wave. 

And it’s the fact y’all keep playing with the theme song, though.

The Wild Wild West theme song alone deserves its own Smithsonian exhibit.

Did the movie need a rap song sampling Stevie Wonder and explaining the plot? Absolutely not.

Was the movie ever going to arrive without one? Absolutely not.

That was the deal.

Even people who claim they hate the movie know the song.

That counts for something.

Loveless is a former Confederate scientist, an industrial genius, a flamboyant racist, and a man who refuses to enter a room when he can be dramatically revealed through machinery.

Every line arrives soaked in venom and Shakespearean grandeur. Kenneth Branagh plays him like a bitter Southern supervillain from a cartoon designed by someone who had recently discovered both Jules Verne and cocaine.

It is an enormous performance.

Thank God.

Too many modern villains speak softly, stare into the distance, and explain that they are not actually evil. They are simply trying to restore balance, protect the universe, avenge their family, or solve housing inequality through genocide.

Loveless does not need your sympathy.

He hates the United States. He hates Jim West. He hates losing. He has a collection of elaborate machines and women dressed according to themes. His primary goal is revenge, and his secondary goal is making sure everybody hears the speech he prepared about it.

That is villainy.

The Giant Mechanical Spider Is Not a Flaw

Whenever people discuss why Wild Wild West is supposedly terrible, they always mention the spider.

They speak about it like the machine crawled out of the screen and repossessed their home.

Yes, the movie ends with a giant mechanical spider walking through the desert.

That is why movies exist.

The spider is not evidence that the film went too far. Going too far was the entire creative philosophy.

Once you have created a steampunk Western starring Will Smith and Kevin Kline, the only responsible decision is to end it with a giant robot spider. Anything smaller would have been cowardice.

Imagine getting to the final act and Loveless reveals a regular cannon.

Imagine Jim West fighting a reasonably sized vehicle.

Imagine all that money, production design, and narrative foolishness leading to something tasteful.

No.

Give me the spider.

Give me the absurd scale of it. Give me Jim West climbing across its metal body while it stomps through the desert. Give me a villain who looked at the entire history of military technology and decided warfare needed more legs.

The spider is magnificent because it is unforgettable.

Cinema is an image-making art. People remember images.

They remember the shark in Jaws. They remember the T. rex in Jurassic Park. They remember the DeLorean. They remember the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

And whether they admit it proudly or through clenched teeth, they remember that fucking spider.

Wild Wild West is not secretly a restrained masterpiece waiting to be reclaimed by serious critics. It is too loud, too horny, too expensive, too offensive, and too obsessed with machinery to ever become respectable.

Good.

Respectability would ruin it.

The movie gave us Will Smith as a cowboy, Kenneth Branagh delivering Confederate supervillain Shakespeare, a plot-summary rap song, and the most unnecessarily magnificent mechanical spider in cinematic history.

More than twenty-five years later, people are still talking about it.

Sounds like a great fucking movie to me.