Post by Harkovast on Dec 16, 2014 0:48:13 GMT
Wickedy Wah.
Wickedy Wah
Wickedy Wild Wild West!
I'll give Will Smith this much, the Wild Wild West theme tune was really catchy and had one of the most spectacular music videos of all time.
Yeah, it was completely ridiculous and over the top, but it sure was a lot of fun!
Unlike the movie.
The movie was absolute and total bullshit.
We're talking full on craptacular shitfest from hell.
I was so fired up for this film before it came out.
Old west cowboys and gunslingers... but with exciting steam punk inventions and mad cap science!
It all sounded so awesome, I couldn't wait.
Will Smith was in it as a bad ass gunfighter, and we had all just enjoyed seeing him in Men In Black, so he was clearly going to be butt kicking, smooth talking hero.
But then I talked to a friend of mine who had seen it before I had, and my concerns began to grow.
He told me quite flatly that the show was terrible.
He told me of a scene in which the hero and the villain traded insults.
The villain was insulting Jim West (Will Smith) for being black.
Meanwhile, Jim was retaliating by insulting the bad guy for having no legs.
I demanded further explanation.
A scene like that couldn't possibly exist!
No one would be so dim as to put in such an obviously offensive and stupid scene into their movie.
But he responded flatly that this was in the film, with no special reason or explanation...it just happens.
So I went to see the film with some doubts and some concerns.
My friend had not been fair to the film as it turned out.
It was much worse than he had led me to believe.
Oddly, it was also far, far more offensive.
This film is offensive to almost everyone.
Really, I am not exaggerating.
This film manages to show almost every small minded, ugly prejudice imaginable.
Lets go down the list of people this film sets out to insult.
1- Women
This film features six female characters.
The most important is Salma Hayek, playing some chick. She is captured a lot and serves as a love interest for the heroes, though she has no personality and no chemistry with anyone.
When we first meet her, she is in her underwear in a cage.
The heroes give her some different underwear to wear while she is staying with them. It's that long kind that men used to wear back then. It has a hatch at the back open so when she turns around we all get to see the top of her ass crack.
This is a deliberate addition to the film, and is given a lot of emphasis as the two heroes letch at her rear end like a couple of hormonal frat boys.
Then she gets captured again by the baddie, and put back in different underwear.
And that's pretty much what she does in this movie.
At the start of the film there is a naked chick in a water tower that Jim West has been porking (I don't know why you would find the water in a water tower a good place to have sex...and its pretty anti social to take a bath and fuck in water people have to drink.)
And that's her character.
The bad guy has four evil helpers that are women.
One of them is called "Miss East". She is asian....ya see? East? Asian people come from the east!
She gets it on with Will Smith....I mean Jim West....Aww fuck who am I kidding?
This film is just Will Smith playing the same character he always plays in every film he's in. He doesn't even attempt to speak like its 1869 or pretend for a moment he isn't just the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in a cowboy hat, so why should I be trying harder than him?
He does have one difference to the way Will Smith normally acts...but I will get to that later.
Miss East goes around in her underwear and wears a thong.
When she encounters Will Smith's character (remember, he's called Jim West...thats important for this next bit) Jim West she says "East meets West". See what she did there? Isn't that incredibly clever? No? You don't think so? Well the movies creators disagree as she actually says the line TWICE!
She then gets shot.
The other three women are the villains minions. They all go around in their underwear the entire movie.
This is a level of sexism so blatant that you'd think they were joking or being ironic.
No, they really aren't.
Oh I forgot, there is one other female character! A fat woman who Will mistakes for his friend in drag (all men in this film are incapable of telling men in drag from actual women...even telling a SPECIFIC man in drag from a random woman who looks nothing like him.) Will proceeds to, as he describes it "Drum on her boobies".
Yes this really happens and yes it is supposed to be funny.
Oh and the bad guy builds a giant pneumatic piston sex machine that he threats to rape Selma Hayek with.
Yes this was also meant to be funny.
So if you are a woman, well done...this film thinks you are a sex object.
2- People from the South of the USA
The film is about a villain who wants to destroy the USA and restore the Confederacy after their defeat in the civil war.
Every single southern character in this film is both evil and a racist. A lot of them are gross, disgusting and stupid as well.
If you fought for the South, you are an evil racist twat as far as this film sees it.
Now while history has come to judge that the South was in the wrong, the way this movie over simplifies the issues and people involved is massively insulting. There are no good southerners, they are just an evil horrible group who hate the USA.
Everyone who supported the South in this film did so because they are a shit. The idea that anyone who fought for the South did so out of noble reasons or a sense of loyalty to their home states is never even hinted at.
After all, hardly anyone fought for the South in real life except for reasons of being evil...aside from such minor historical figures as, oh I dunno, ROBERT FUCKING E LEE, the commander of the entire fucking confederate army, who was against starting the war but was loyal to his home state above all else. Ballots in some places to leave the union were open ballots, meaning you had to show which way you voted, meaning there would be repercussions if you voted against leaving. People were conscripted into the army back then. If you didn't like slavery or thought the union should stay together, you had the options to keep it to yourself and join the army or get a firing squad. But yeah, all just evil people, every one of em.
But in this film it is made very clear that people from the South are all just total shits.
Making every southerner racist actually makes things less interesting. if the main villain wasn't racist, and respected Will's character as a worthy foe, it would make an interesting contrast to his racist underlings. They seem like they are going for the "worthy foe" angle sometimes, but then he throws out weird racist word play which undermines this.
Honestly having the black guy fight racists is kinda cliche. I mean that is the most obvious evil group for a black hero to fight. The racists should have been the lower level bad guys that he fights early on before he gets on to the main bad guy who is smarter and see Will for the threat he is.
If you are going to make a film like this, where an entire class of people are the bad guys, its usually wise to throw in a none evil one, to show you aren't just shitting on an entire demographic.
The Civil War is over, maybe Will's partner could have been from the South? He could have been a spy against the confederacy, and that's why the President has great faith in him, but Will doesn't trust him, possibly not knowing he was a double agent the whole time, or knowing about some battles he fought in before he switched sides.
See? I am writing a more interesting movie right now!
Making all the white southerners horrible people and racists feels like other Americans exercising their countries demons by putting it all onto one group. All the bad Americans are the Southerners! It's all on them! The rest of us are good, its just them that fuck it up!
There's an ugly irony to stereotyping an entire group of people as all horribly evil racists.
So if you are from the Southern US....this film thinks you are an evil racist.
3- Disabled People
The bad guy has no legs. The film actually goes a step further and makes it so he is missing the bottom half of his body that he lost in a battle and has to use machines he built to stay alive.
Presumably he built the machines before being blown in half and was part way through attaching them when the mishap happened, otherwise I don't know how he managed to set all that up before bleeding out and dieing.
Villainous cripples are a long established cliche with lots of unfortunate implications.
This is very lazy way to imply the villain is evil. If there is something wrong with his body, it indicates to the audience there should be something wrong with his mind or his morals. Now you might think I am being a bit hard on the movie for this one.
Yes, perhaps...were it not for that one scene I mentioned at the start of the review where the hero and villain trade offensive slurs.
We are meant to leave this scene cheering for Will Smith for having 'won' the insult contest (even though his comments were all moronic.) Personally I think I don't feel comfortable cheering for a guy who likes to make fun of those who can't work.
So if you are in a wheel chair...this movie thinks you are evil AND its okay to call you names.
4-Foriegners
The movie takes a pretty broad swipe at foreigners during a scene later in the movie, where the villain reveals that he is getting help from various nations in his evil plans to destroy America.
It turns out that France, Mexico, Spain and Britain (we cant have evil foreigners in an American film without having a go at the British, can we? I am pretty sure it forbids that in the constitution somewhere.) are helping him because he has promised to give them back territory that used to be there's in America.
Also, to be clear it isn't that there is one bad guy from each of these countries, or that there are groups from these countries that support him.
Oh no, it is literally all four governments have put aside their differences and united in the cause of destroying the USA.
So if you are not from America...this movie thinks you are evil and want to destroy America.
5-Black People.
There aren't all that many films with Black cowboys, at least not in the lead.
There was Blazing Saddles (Black Bart is DA MAN...though it was a piss take comedy) and Posse (complete balls), but that's probably about it outside of the blaxsploitation genre.
So seeing Will Smith as a stylish, well dressed, western hero seemed like it might be a bit of a breath of fresh air (from the Fresh Prince, no less.)
But no....no it really wasn't.
Unfortunately, the film makers noted the fact there had been a black cowboy hero in movies for a long time a little too much, and focus on it to an embarrassing degree.
The bad guys are CONSTANTLY being racist to Will, and he is constantly drawing attention to his own blackness, as if this is some sort of big achievement by the film makers (much like coming up with that whole "East meets West" gag.)
Will comes across as an insecure jerk, often accusing others of being racist when that was clearly not their intent. The best example is a scene where another goodie suggests sneaking into a ball held by former slave owners, with himself pretending to be one of the former slave owners and Will posing as his black servant. A pretty logical plan, you would think. Will responds with complete disgust at the very suggestion, as though the idea of PRETENDING to be a servant to trick the racist bad guys is a racist idea!
Now I mentioned before that Will is basically playing the same part he plays in all his movies (a pity his is so painfully type caste because he is really a quite talented actor when he is not playing the arrogant fuck wit he seems to play in every film.)
Now this is not quite true, as he does do one thing slightly differently.
In this film, he is a massive asshole and a bully.
He waves guns in peoples faces ALL the time.
When he is going to see the president, an officer asks for his gun and makes a racist comment about him having got "his mule" (freed slaves supposedly being given land and a mule). Will holds the handle to the man and then flips it around to point at him. He then offers it up again, but once again flips it around.
Yes, well done will. You have a gun drawn and the other man doesn't.
We are all really impressed with how macho that makes you seem.
Why doesn't our hero rise above it? He should be a cool bad ass he isn't angered by some petty comment from some guy he doesn't even know. But nope, straight to the threat of lethal force, cause I guess that's all our hero can come up with, fighting bullies by being a bigger bully.
I can redo the scene right now! The guy gets in a dig while asking for Will's gun. Will might raise and eye brow and look knowing as he reaches to undo his gun belt, but then the President comes out and says "stop bothering Jim West! He's my best man!" and the guy looks like a tool. Maybe Will makes some clever quip before going inside, I get paid a lot more than a mule or something like that. Will gets the best of him and looks cool.
I was reading a review of the Blade movies, and they said how something that was great about Blade is that hes totally a black in the way he talks, the people he hangs out with, his style etc but he never mentions it or draws attention to it. They refer to doing this as "Will Smithing." Hard to argue with! Blade isn't shy about his african American heritage, and totally downs it, but without having to constantly state it like hes trying to prove something. It is self evident!
Wild Wild West can't go five minutes without reminding us that its hero is black as if we forgot or it wants a pat on the head for this amazing revelation.
He also constantly waves a gun in the faces of his inventor side kick...because that just makes him seem like such a tough alpha male. I don't know much about guns, but even I know that people who knows guns don't point that at things they don't want to kill. Only a wannabe is always pointing them at people to try to seem tough.
The two partners are meant to have a typical buddy cop rivalry, but it is so badly written that it comes across that Will Smith is just a hugely insecure prick who wants to argue all the time.
Will Smith spends so much of the film trying to score with women (all of whom appear to be prostitutes. We don't see money change hands but I am fairly sure normal women tend to, I dunno, WEAR clothes) and waving guns around that one is left with the impression that...welll....it Kinda makes you wonder if he is over compensating for something.
Is Jim West's pistol of low calibre?
I would argue an alternate explanation for him being such an asshole.
Lets analyse the lyrics of the theme song a little more closely.
There is an obvious, vulger line about "any damsel that's in distress, will be out of that dress when she meets Jim West." where he is clearly trying his best to assert his desire to have sex with women (and rather amusingly implying he might rape them. Especially if they are vulnerable.)
But then a few more subtle signs come through.
The song features the following lines (caps for emphasis by me)-
"Once upon a time in the west,
Mad man lost his damn mind in the West,
Loveless, givin' up a dime, nothing less
Now I must, PUT HIS BEHIND TO THE TEST"
Also it features the phrase-
"See where the bad guys are to be found and MAKE EM LAY DOWN."
And my favourite-
"If you have a riff with people wanna bust,
break out! BEFORE YOU GET BUM RUSHED!
Now I don't know what being "bum rushed" is exactly, and I don't know if I have to be made to lay down before or after it, but that is one test I don't think my behind could take.
Now I'm not saying his character is incredibly, unintentionally gay....okay I cant end that sentence without lying to you.
But seriously, you can dispute if he is secretly gay, but you cant dispute that he is a complete and total asshole and an insecure bully.
So if you are black...this movie thinks you must be an insecure twat with a persecution complex about it.
Now while this movie is offensive on pretty much every level possible, but it also manages to offend anyone who has any appreciate for good cinema. This film is total shit from a point of view of enjoyable films. Its boring, contrived illogical and was produced by a man with a wird fetish about giant spiders.
No really, that last part is true.
Jon Peters was one of the produces and he loves to try to get giant mechanical spiders into films.
He worked on a Superman project with Kevin Smith that was going called Superman lives.
The three main changes he wanted made to the script were that super man not wear his costume, superman not fly and superman fight a giant robot spider. (He would eventually work on Superman returns, which despite not using any of his bat shit moron ideas, was still bullshit.)
He also worked on a an adaptation of the comic Sandman, but that fell through because of all his goofy ideas....such as a giant robot spider.
I suppose on that small regard, Wild Wild West succeeded.
It finally brought a giant robot spider to screens.
I suppose the fact that the film the spider was in being total balls was just a minor concern by this point.
Despite what the theme song may say you don't want to go straight through The Wild Wild West.
Wickedy Wah
Wickedy Wild Wild West!
I'll give Will Smith this much, the Wild Wild West theme tune was really catchy and had one of the most spectacular music videos of all time.
Yeah, it was completely ridiculous and over the top, but it sure was a lot of fun!
Unlike the movie.
The movie was absolute and total bullshit.
We're talking full on craptacular shitfest from hell.
I was so fired up for this film before it came out.
Old west cowboys and gunslingers... but with exciting steam punk inventions and mad cap science!
It all sounded so awesome, I couldn't wait.
Will Smith was in it as a bad ass gunfighter, and we had all just enjoyed seeing him in Men In Black, so he was clearly going to be butt kicking, smooth talking hero.
But then I talked to a friend of mine who had seen it before I had, and my concerns began to grow.
He told me quite flatly that the show was terrible.
He told me of a scene in which the hero and the villain traded insults.
The villain was insulting Jim West (Will Smith) for being black.
Meanwhile, Jim was retaliating by insulting the bad guy for having no legs.
I demanded further explanation.
A scene like that couldn't possibly exist!
No one would be so dim as to put in such an obviously offensive and stupid scene into their movie.
But he responded flatly that this was in the film, with no special reason or explanation...it just happens.
So I went to see the film with some doubts and some concerns.
My friend had not been fair to the film as it turned out.
It was much worse than he had led me to believe.
Oddly, it was also far, far more offensive.
This film is offensive to almost everyone.
Really, I am not exaggerating.
This film manages to show almost every small minded, ugly prejudice imaginable.
Lets go down the list of people this film sets out to insult.
1- Women
This film features six female characters.
The most important is Salma Hayek, playing some chick. She is captured a lot and serves as a love interest for the heroes, though she has no personality and no chemistry with anyone.
When we first meet her, she is in her underwear in a cage.
The heroes give her some different underwear to wear while she is staying with them. It's that long kind that men used to wear back then. It has a hatch at the back open so when she turns around we all get to see the top of her ass crack.
This is a deliberate addition to the film, and is given a lot of emphasis as the two heroes letch at her rear end like a couple of hormonal frat boys.
Then she gets captured again by the baddie, and put back in different underwear.
And that's pretty much what she does in this movie.
At the start of the film there is a naked chick in a water tower that Jim West has been porking (I don't know why you would find the water in a water tower a good place to have sex...and its pretty anti social to take a bath and fuck in water people have to drink.)
And that's her character.
The bad guy has four evil helpers that are women.
One of them is called "Miss East". She is asian....ya see? East? Asian people come from the east!
She gets it on with Will Smith....I mean Jim West....Aww fuck who am I kidding?
This film is just Will Smith playing the same character he always plays in every film he's in. He doesn't even attempt to speak like its 1869 or pretend for a moment he isn't just the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in a cowboy hat, so why should I be trying harder than him?
He does have one difference to the way Will Smith normally acts...but I will get to that later.
Miss East goes around in her underwear and wears a thong.
When she encounters Will Smith's character (remember, he's called Jim West...thats important for this next bit) Jim West she says "East meets West". See what she did there? Isn't that incredibly clever? No? You don't think so? Well the movies creators disagree as she actually says the line TWICE!
She then gets shot.
The other three women are the villains minions. They all go around in their underwear the entire movie.
This is a level of sexism so blatant that you'd think they were joking or being ironic.
No, they really aren't.
Oh I forgot, there is one other female character! A fat woman who Will mistakes for his friend in drag (all men in this film are incapable of telling men in drag from actual women...even telling a SPECIFIC man in drag from a random woman who looks nothing like him.) Will proceeds to, as he describes it "Drum on her boobies".
Yes this really happens and yes it is supposed to be funny.
Oh and the bad guy builds a giant pneumatic piston sex machine that he threats to rape Selma Hayek with.
Yes this was also meant to be funny.
So if you are a woman, well done...this film thinks you are a sex object.
2- People from the South of the USA
The film is about a villain who wants to destroy the USA and restore the Confederacy after their defeat in the civil war.
Every single southern character in this film is both evil and a racist. A lot of them are gross, disgusting and stupid as well.
If you fought for the South, you are an evil racist twat as far as this film sees it.
Now while history has come to judge that the South was in the wrong, the way this movie over simplifies the issues and people involved is massively insulting. There are no good southerners, they are just an evil horrible group who hate the USA.
Everyone who supported the South in this film did so because they are a shit. The idea that anyone who fought for the South did so out of noble reasons or a sense of loyalty to their home states is never even hinted at.
After all, hardly anyone fought for the South in real life except for reasons of being evil...aside from such minor historical figures as, oh I dunno, ROBERT FUCKING E LEE, the commander of the entire fucking confederate army, who was against starting the war but was loyal to his home state above all else. Ballots in some places to leave the union were open ballots, meaning you had to show which way you voted, meaning there would be repercussions if you voted against leaving. People were conscripted into the army back then. If you didn't like slavery or thought the union should stay together, you had the options to keep it to yourself and join the army or get a firing squad. But yeah, all just evil people, every one of em.
But in this film it is made very clear that people from the South are all just total shits.
Making every southerner racist actually makes things less interesting. if the main villain wasn't racist, and respected Will's character as a worthy foe, it would make an interesting contrast to his racist underlings. They seem like they are going for the "worthy foe" angle sometimes, but then he throws out weird racist word play which undermines this.
Honestly having the black guy fight racists is kinda cliche. I mean that is the most obvious evil group for a black hero to fight. The racists should have been the lower level bad guys that he fights early on before he gets on to the main bad guy who is smarter and see Will for the threat he is.
If you are going to make a film like this, where an entire class of people are the bad guys, its usually wise to throw in a none evil one, to show you aren't just shitting on an entire demographic.
The Civil War is over, maybe Will's partner could have been from the South? He could have been a spy against the confederacy, and that's why the President has great faith in him, but Will doesn't trust him, possibly not knowing he was a double agent the whole time, or knowing about some battles he fought in before he switched sides.
See? I am writing a more interesting movie right now!
Making all the white southerners horrible people and racists feels like other Americans exercising their countries demons by putting it all onto one group. All the bad Americans are the Southerners! It's all on them! The rest of us are good, its just them that fuck it up!
There's an ugly irony to stereotyping an entire group of people as all horribly evil racists.
So if you are from the Southern US....this film thinks you are an evil racist.
3- Disabled People
The bad guy has no legs. The film actually goes a step further and makes it so he is missing the bottom half of his body that he lost in a battle and has to use machines he built to stay alive.
Presumably he built the machines before being blown in half and was part way through attaching them when the mishap happened, otherwise I don't know how he managed to set all that up before bleeding out and dieing.
Villainous cripples are a long established cliche with lots of unfortunate implications.
This is very lazy way to imply the villain is evil. If there is something wrong with his body, it indicates to the audience there should be something wrong with his mind or his morals. Now you might think I am being a bit hard on the movie for this one.
Yes, perhaps...were it not for that one scene I mentioned at the start of the review where the hero and villain trade offensive slurs.
We are meant to leave this scene cheering for Will Smith for having 'won' the insult contest (even though his comments were all moronic.) Personally I think I don't feel comfortable cheering for a guy who likes to make fun of those who can't work.
So if you are in a wheel chair...this movie thinks you are evil AND its okay to call you names.
4-Foriegners
The movie takes a pretty broad swipe at foreigners during a scene later in the movie, where the villain reveals that he is getting help from various nations in his evil plans to destroy America.
It turns out that France, Mexico, Spain and Britain (we cant have evil foreigners in an American film without having a go at the British, can we? I am pretty sure it forbids that in the constitution somewhere.) are helping him because he has promised to give them back territory that used to be there's in America.
Also, to be clear it isn't that there is one bad guy from each of these countries, or that there are groups from these countries that support him.
Oh no, it is literally all four governments have put aside their differences and united in the cause of destroying the USA.
So if you are not from America...this movie thinks you are evil and want to destroy America.
5-Black People.
There aren't all that many films with Black cowboys, at least not in the lead.
There was Blazing Saddles (Black Bart is DA MAN...though it was a piss take comedy) and Posse (complete balls), but that's probably about it outside of the blaxsploitation genre.
So seeing Will Smith as a stylish, well dressed, western hero seemed like it might be a bit of a breath of fresh air (from the Fresh Prince, no less.)
But no....no it really wasn't.
Unfortunately, the film makers noted the fact there had been a black cowboy hero in movies for a long time a little too much, and focus on it to an embarrassing degree.
The bad guys are CONSTANTLY being racist to Will, and he is constantly drawing attention to his own blackness, as if this is some sort of big achievement by the film makers (much like coming up with that whole "East meets West" gag.)
Will comes across as an insecure jerk, often accusing others of being racist when that was clearly not their intent. The best example is a scene where another goodie suggests sneaking into a ball held by former slave owners, with himself pretending to be one of the former slave owners and Will posing as his black servant. A pretty logical plan, you would think. Will responds with complete disgust at the very suggestion, as though the idea of PRETENDING to be a servant to trick the racist bad guys is a racist idea!
Now I mentioned before that Will is basically playing the same part he plays in all his movies (a pity his is so painfully type caste because he is really a quite talented actor when he is not playing the arrogant fuck wit he seems to play in every film.)
Now this is not quite true, as he does do one thing slightly differently.
In this film, he is a massive asshole and a bully.
He waves guns in peoples faces ALL the time.
When he is going to see the president, an officer asks for his gun and makes a racist comment about him having got "his mule" (freed slaves supposedly being given land and a mule). Will holds the handle to the man and then flips it around to point at him. He then offers it up again, but once again flips it around.
Yes, well done will. You have a gun drawn and the other man doesn't.
We are all really impressed with how macho that makes you seem.
Why doesn't our hero rise above it? He should be a cool bad ass he isn't angered by some petty comment from some guy he doesn't even know. But nope, straight to the threat of lethal force, cause I guess that's all our hero can come up with, fighting bullies by being a bigger bully.
I can redo the scene right now! The guy gets in a dig while asking for Will's gun. Will might raise and eye brow and look knowing as he reaches to undo his gun belt, but then the President comes out and says "stop bothering Jim West! He's my best man!" and the guy looks like a tool. Maybe Will makes some clever quip before going inside, I get paid a lot more than a mule or something like that. Will gets the best of him and looks cool.
I was reading a review of the Blade movies, and they said how something that was great about Blade is that hes totally a black in the way he talks, the people he hangs out with, his style etc but he never mentions it or draws attention to it. They refer to doing this as "Will Smithing." Hard to argue with! Blade isn't shy about his african American heritage, and totally downs it, but without having to constantly state it like hes trying to prove something. It is self evident!
Wild Wild West can't go five minutes without reminding us that its hero is black as if we forgot or it wants a pat on the head for this amazing revelation.
He also constantly waves a gun in the faces of his inventor side kick...because that just makes him seem like such a tough alpha male. I don't know much about guns, but even I know that people who knows guns don't point that at things they don't want to kill. Only a wannabe is always pointing them at people to try to seem tough.
The two partners are meant to have a typical buddy cop rivalry, but it is so badly written that it comes across that Will Smith is just a hugely insecure prick who wants to argue all the time.
Will Smith spends so much of the film trying to score with women (all of whom appear to be prostitutes. We don't see money change hands but I am fairly sure normal women tend to, I dunno, WEAR clothes) and waving guns around that one is left with the impression that...welll....it Kinda makes you wonder if he is over compensating for something.
Is Jim West's pistol of low calibre?
I would argue an alternate explanation for him being such an asshole.
Lets analyse the lyrics of the theme song a little more closely.
There is an obvious, vulger line about "any damsel that's in distress, will be out of that dress when she meets Jim West." where he is clearly trying his best to assert his desire to have sex with women (and rather amusingly implying he might rape them. Especially if they are vulnerable.)
But then a few more subtle signs come through.
The song features the following lines (caps for emphasis by me)-
"Once upon a time in the west,
Mad man lost his damn mind in the West,
Loveless, givin' up a dime, nothing less
Now I must, PUT HIS BEHIND TO THE TEST"
Also it features the phrase-
"See where the bad guys are to be found and MAKE EM LAY DOWN."
And my favourite-
"If you have a riff with people wanna bust,
break out! BEFORE YOU GET BUM RUSHED!
Now I don't know what being "bum rushed" is exactly, and I don't know if I have to be made to lay down before or after it, but that is one test I don't think my behind could take.
Now I'm not saying his character is incredibly, unintentionally gay....okay I cant end that sentence without lying to you.
But seriously, you can dispute if he is secretly gay, but you cant dispute that he is a complete and total asshole and an insecure bully.
So if you are black...this movie thinks you must be an insecure twat with a persecution complex about it.
Now while this movie is offensive on pretty much every level possible, but it also manages to offend anyone who has any appreciate for good cinema. This film is total shit from a point of view of enjoyable films. Its boring, contrived illogical and was produced by a man with a wird fetish about giant spiders.
No really, that last part is true.
Jon Peters was one of the produces and he loves to try to get giant mechanical spiders into films.
He worked on a Superman project with Kevin Smith that was going called Superman lives.
The three main changes he wanted made to the script were that super man not wear his costume, superman not fly and superman fight a giant robot spider. (He would eventually work on Superman returns, which despite not using any of his bat shit moron ideas, was still bullshit.)
He also worked on a an adaptation of the comic Sandman, but that fell through because of all his goofy ideas....such as a giant robot spider.
I suppose on that small regard, Wild Wild West succeeded.
It finally brought a giant robot spider to screens.
I suppose the fact that the film the spider was in being total balls was just a minor concern by this point.
Despite what the theme song may say you don't want to go straight through The Wild Wild West.