Overview of Wild Wild West w/ Kevin Smith (Classic)
In this classic How Did This Get Made? episode, Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, Jason Mantzoukas, and guest Kevin Smith dissect Wild Wild West (1999)—a famously expensive, wildly overstuffed Western sci-fi action comedy that had all the ingredients to work on paper, but collapsed under bad rewrites, tonal chaos, and a very strange obsession with giant spiders. The conversation is equal parts movie teardown, production history, and Kevin Smith storytelling masterclass.
Main Takeaways on the Movie
- The hosts argue that Wild Wild West had a dream team package:
- Will Smith at his peak
- Barry Sonnenfeld directing
- a beloved TV property as source material
- major studio money
- Despite that, the film feels like a mishmash of incompatible ideas:
- Old West action
- steampunk gadgets
- spy comedy
- racial satire
- romance
- giant mechanical spider finale
- The movie is criticized for being:
- overwritten
- narratively incoherent
- tonally all over the place
- surprisingly and awkwardly racialized for a movie that doesn’t know what it wants to say
- The panel notes that the film repeatedly undercuts itself:
- inventions are mocked even when they work
- action scenes are stretched out but somehow feel rushed in story terms
- major character beats appear without setup
Kevin Smith’s Big Production Story: John Peters and the Spider
One of the episode’s best segments is Kevin Smith’s long anecdote about producer John Peters, which explains why the giant spider in Wild Wild West matters so much.
The John Peters origin story
- Smith explains that Peters was a major Hollywood producer with a reputation for being eccentric and powerful.
- Peters had previously been involved with Smith’s unmade Superman project.
- During that development process, Peters insisted on bizarre personal notes, including:
- he didn’t want Superman in the suit
- he didn’t want Superman flying
- and he wanted a giant spider in the third act
Why the spider matters
- Smith says Peters was obsessed with spiders because he’d watched Discovery Channel documentaries about how terrifying spiders are.
- When Smith later watched Wild Wild West, he realized Peters had finally gotten his spider—just in a more expensive form.
- The hosts connect this to the film’s ridiculous ending, where the giant spider is treated as if it’s a world-ending superweapon.
Production and Screenwriting Chaos
The episode spends a lot of time on how the movie’s structure shows signs of endless rewrites.
Key points discussed
- The film had multiple writers and clearly went through heavy studio intervention.
- The hosts believe the race-related rewrite of Will Smith’s character is especially visible:
- his character is an undercover agent in the post–Civil War West
- yet the movie seems to barely account for the practical implications of that casting choice
- Kevin Smith explains how test screenings can warp a film:
- studios often react to one audience’s notes and then overcorrect
- by the time a film is re-tested, it’s answering a different audience entirely
- The group believes Wild Wild West was likely shaped by this process, resulting in a movie that tries to satisfy everyone and ends up satisfying no one.
Character, Tone, and Comedy Problems
The hosts highlight several recurring issues:
- Will Smith and Kenneth Branagh’s banter is treated like old-school sparring, but the dialogue is so arch it becomes exhausting.
- The movie swings between:
- serious historical violence
- slapstick inventions
- sexual innuendo
- cartoonish villainy
- Some scenes are singled out as particularly bizarre:
- the fake breast-touching bonding moment between the leads
- Kenneth Branagh’s sexually charged monologue about mechanized anatomy
- the film’s tendency to introduce an invention, joke about it, and still rely on it to save the day
Notable Running Jokes and Side Tangents
As usual for How Did This Get Made?, the conversation also veers into hilarious digressions:
- Robert Conrad and the original Wild Wild West TV series
- old Hollywood publicity and hype machines
- Barry Sonnenfeld, Barry Levinson, and other director/producer lore
- Will Smith’s star power in the late ’90s
- comparisons to other studio-blockbuster disasters like Godzilla and The Matrix marketing
- the absurdity of product commercials and celebrity endorsements
The hosts also riff on:
- batteries
- spiders
- trapdoor sexual contraptions
- mechanical inventions that somehow always work except when the script needs them not to
Second Opinions: Amazon Reviews
A recurring segment features over-the-top Amazon user reviews praising the film, which the hosts mock for being unintentionally hilarious.
Some review takeaways:
- one reviewer calls it a top-100 all-time favorite
- another calls it “the greatest and most funniest movie in the world”
- another says the film has “comedic cinema history” level interactions
- the hosts laugh at how even bad grammar can’t fully hide the sincerity of these glowing reviews
Final Thoughts and Plugged Projects
The episode closes with a warm wrap-up for Kevin Smith, including a plug for his Hulu show Spoilers, which the hosts praise for being a fun, conversational movie-discussion format.
They also mention:
- Kevin’s Adult Swim work with June and Jason
- upcoming episodes and shows from the How Did This Get Made? crew
- the podcast’s usual sign-off with a reminder to check out their merch and future episodes
Bottom Line
This episode argues that Wild Wild West is a spectacular failure of ambition: a movie with major talent, major money, and major studio confidence that still becomes a confusing, overly elaborate mess. The standout takeaway is Kevin Smith’s story about John Peters, which helps explain how the movie’s infamous giant spider became less a plot point than a Hollywood obsession made manifest.