The only reason Old Wild West is not known throughout the world as the film where Will Smith showed his balls on camera because no one saw Old Wild West in the first place.
Certainly if The Wild Wild West had Had it been a considerable success instead of one of the most notorious failures of the last 50 years, this scene would have been extremely famous. Instead, online discussion of this unexpected moment is mostly limited to a collection of obscure Twitter threads and Reddit Pages like “How is Will Smith’s ass/testicles/penis on display in a PG13 movie?”
Good question! I’ll ask one more question: how is the scene where Will Smith’s ass/testicles/penis are on display available on YouTube? (I should note that this clip might qualify as slightly NSFW. Viewer discretion is strongly advised.)
Released 25 years ago this week, Old Wild West it is certainly not a secret masterpiece. Frankly, it’s a mess. But it’s a lot weirder than you might think — and not just because the Fresh Prince gets worked up about it in this particular scene.
In fact, leering at half-naked men and women is practically a theme of this film. The camera also repeatedly focuses on co-star Salma Hayek Pinault’s bare bottom in one sequence, and cuts to a close-up of Bai Ling’s butt in another. (She even lifts her dress so the audience can get a better look at him up close.) The bad guy, an inventor of steampunk monstrosities, has a machine that resembles a giant metal penis that rotates back and forth in an extremely sexual manner.
Old Wild West is certainly one of the most exciting films to receive a PG-13 (for “action violence, sexual references and innuendo” – not even a mention of all the butts!) and to receive a massive cross-promotional campaign with Burger King. The fast food giant marketed a line of “Big Kids Meals” around the film and sold children sunglasses inspired by the ones Will Smith wore in the film.
“Hey kids, ask your parents to buy you these cool sunglasses! And after that, ask them to take you to the movie where Will Smith (or maybe Will Smith’s double ass/testicles/penis?) is hanging!
The suggestive sexual humor is especially bizarre given Old Wild WestSource Material: A four-season CBS TV series from the mid-1960s about the adventures of a cowboy secret agent named Jim West (Robert Conrad) and his device and disguise creator, Artemus Gordon (Ross Martin). The Wild Wild West The TV series had some humor, and West’s character was clearly inspired by James Bond, then at the height of pop culture relevance. But The Wild Wild West was a network television series in the mid-1960s, which means it alluded to the kinds of innuendo and edgy violence of the 007 films in only the most subdued of ways.
The roadmap for Wild Wild West Moviewhich is credited to four screenwriters and a story by Jim and John Thomas (the men who created the Predator franchise) took the material in a much bigger, broader, more forward-looking direction. Instead of espionage and excitement, the film upped the bawdy humor and scale of the action until its versions of West and Gordon (played by Smith and Kevin Kline) were fighting a huge robotic spider in Monument Valley.
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If Old Wild West is remembered for anything in film nerd circles these days, it’s the spider. (In fact, if he’s remembered for anything, Smith might choose to replace him The Matrixhe could have played Neo, but decided it would be better to serve six shots, brother directing it rather than bending spoons.) For decades, writer/director Kevin Smith told a story about working on the never-filmed Tim Burton film Superman film, and his numerous meetings with the film’s producer, Jon Peters.
Despite the fact that Peters had already produced Burton’s film, bat Man, Peters apparently knew nothing about Superman and told Smith to write him a script where the Man of Steel never wore his signature costume, never flew through the air, and fought a giant spider in the third act. Why a giant spider? Because, Peters told Smith, spiders are “the fiercest killers in the animal kingdom.”
Smith was perplexed by the request, but agreed. Burton Superman lives eventually died and Smith moved on to other projects. A few years later, he was amazed when he went to watch Old Wild Westalso produced by Peters, only to see the heroes fight a… giant (robotic) spider.
It doesn’t make sense anymore Old Wild West than it would have been in Tim Burton’s film Superman. But then very little about Old Wild West it makes sense; it’s a collection of shockingly different tones. Some scenes are like Bond in the Wild West – but not the Sean Connery Bonds that inspired the original The Wild Wild West TV series. The film feels more like the late Roger Moore 007, where the franchise became a cartoon parody and Bond at times disguise yourself as a damn clown It is pigeons were surprised by their crazy antics.
This is never more in evidence than in the scenes involving the inventor of the film’s giant mechanical spider, the diabolical (and legless) Dr. Arliss Loveless, played by Kenneth Branagh with an accent that makes Foghorn Leghorn sound like a restrained Southern gentleman.
Other parts of Old Wild West openly confront the racism of 1860s America. Loveless’s henchman is a Confederate general who apparently massacred an entire African-American community that included Jim West’s family. Occasionally, characters will insert a racial epithet into their dialogue – but a few moments later, Kline’s Artemus Gordon will be talking about how to create the perfect artificial breasts to disguise himself as a prostitute.
Will Smith makes no attempt to act like a man who lived more than 100 years in the past; His speech is peppered with contemporary colloquialisms and he drops the most embarrassing phrases—just before defeating a guy with a knife, he proudly declares “No more Mr. Knife Face!” Then, in the blink of an eye, he will begin to burn with righteous anger at the racial injustices he has suffered in the past. The film jumps faster and harder than a wild horse.
Some parts don’t even add up according to their own flimsy rules of pseudoscience. That strange metal necklace that Smith wears in the image at the top of this article is an elaborate magnet that supposedly attracts a giant flying circular saw that will decapitate him. He and Kline end up trapped in these things, running for their lives through a field of corn, dodging these flying razors. They survive that certain death trap, then bump into collars, which suddenly attracts the two magnets towards each other, no matter how far they run away from each other. That’s not how magnets work.
And yet, in a strange way, this callous disregard for stylistic and logical consistency causes Old Wild West if not good, at least memorable. (OK, definitely is not good.) While I have no doubt that the film was produced by a committee of executives and creatives, and its final form was altered countless times by the whims of focus groups and test screenings, what arrived in theaters in June 1999 doesn’t feel like a homogenized modern blockbuster. It feels like a steampunk fever dream with over-the-top stunts and occasional flashes of nudity.
It sounds interesting when you describe it that way, right? Today’s most terrifying blockbusters – something like Lady Teia, for example – play much safer than that. And this was done on a much smaller scale than Old Wild West. (Lady Teia: Now there it was a movie where the hero fighting a giant spider would have made sense!)
Aside from its catchy end credits song, Old Wild West It didn’t have much cultural longevity. A few years ago, Smith called it the worst film he ever made and called it “a thorn in (his) side.” But I would happily watch it again, after some of Smith’s other critical failures, especially ones like Suicide squad where he plays against type as a stern and emotionally broken man. At least in Old Wild West he’s in full movie star mode.
Old Wild West was directed by Barry Sonnenfeldand was conceived as an attempt to recreate the lighting in a bottle that he and Smith captured two years earlier with the first Men in Black. They clearly didn’t succeed, but I can’t help but appreciate that they took a big swing at this – among other things that were spinning on camera.
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