Wild, Wild West (1999)

So, I only thought to watch this because Tor.com did a story about this film, The Avengers (the one with Uma Thurman, not the super hero deal) and another one who's name is eluding me, but like these two was based on a 60s television show but became a 90s movie. I put all three on hold so I could watch them, with The Avengers being the only one that I've already seen.
They made Wild, Wild West sound like a horrible movie, apologizing for even picking it and apologizing again for Kenneth Branagh. Or maybe they were apologizing to him. I'm not sure. Now, this is the same place that loves the original Men In Black. Could it be that they only love M.I.B. so that they can contrast it with M.I.B. II? That could very well be, but I digress. They love M.I.B. but apologize for WWW? WTF?
Is this the greatest movie ever? Nope. But, it's pretty damn funny. The premise is completely ridiculous and I love it. This came out right after M.I.B. For the three of you who don't know, Will Smith stars in both movies. But in WWW, he's traded in Tommy Lee Jones and Vincent D'Onofrio for Kevin Kline and Kenneth Branagh. Oh, and they threw in Salma Hayek to sweeten the deal. The actors bring to their roles what you would expect. No real surprises, but that ain't always bad.
What really rocks about this film are that it doesn't take itself too seriously. I'm guessing that likely comes because they were trying out a Western version of M.I.B. But even more important is the Steampunk aspect. That aspect is pretty much the whole movie. Steam-powered jet-bicycles, giant steam-powered spiders that can blow up cities, ingenious gasgetry and men who are part machine. That's what I'm talking about!
I knew of Steampunk in '99, but I wasn't into it then (I'm a newcomer). I know this was the perfect opportunity to prove my hipster geek creds by saying that in '99 I had already been into it for a couple of years. But that would be a lie. I was into Cyberpunk, though. And Cthulhupunk. I wasn't an early adopter of Cyberpunk either, but that's because I didn't know about it. When I started to get into it, Gibson's books had been around for a while, but at least I was there before they put Keanu Reeves and Henry Rollins into a movie based on one of his books. Now Cthulhupunk, I have been into since the very beginning as far as I can tell. I learned about Lovecraft in like '87 or '88 when a teacher recommended to me that since I liked Poe, I should look to the man who inspired him. From the moment of the first short story I was hooked and have devoured all things Lovecraftian ever since. Which means I have read a lot of crap to be quite honest. When the Call of Cthulhu RPG came out in the mid-90s, I was all like, "Hell ya!", but even my hardcore gaming buddies, the ones that played every game of Vampire in full costume, thought it was a bit out there. I blame the game system on that one, not the Cthulhu. It was some point after this that the Cthulhupunk scene started popping up and now it's everywhere. Just today I was looking at something a buddy posted on facebook - a fake political poster in support of the big C in the upcoming election. I wanted to share with him my desktop background from 2004 - "Cthulhu 2004 - Why choose the lesser of two evils?" Wtih the big guy all Nixonesque in a red-white-blue motif. I wanted to share that with him and explain that even by that point, Cthulhupunk was being swallowed up into the larger geek community. Um, why am I talking about this? Oh my god! Behind you....quick run away!

Wild, Wild West on IMDb