Wild Wild West

When Grant drives the stake in at the railroad ceremony, there is a clear shot of the flag in the background with 50 stars.

From 1867-1877, the US flag had 37 stars.

When Jim West is hanging over the abyss, before the nitro destroys the saloon, you can see human legs between the legs of the horses.

The second time the Golden Spike bounces out of the hole in the sleeper at Promontary Point, it falls to the right.

When the dignitary picks it up again to put it back in the hole, he picks it up from the left.

When Artemus "hammers" West onto the pool table in the train you can see the felt flex as West lands on it.

A slate top wouldn't flex, but the foam padding used to soften the landing would.

Initially, the horse cart filled with nitro is facing the saloon, horses on the near side, when West is dangling over the edge of a ridge.

Later, when Loveless detaches the cart from the horses, it is shown as facing away from the saloon with the horses on the far side.

During the fight between McGrath and West in an upstairs hotel/saloon room, McGrath's "trumpet ear" is missing (left side) when McGrath charges West.

(It's a very quick close-up of McGrath's head.

) West strangles one of the machine room fighters with a chain, then throws him out the door.

The chain's end is visibly loose.

When West and Loveless fall, West grabs on to the man, who is now hanging by his chain from the spider.

It's unlikely that McGrath would have been hypnotized so quickly.

The collar magnets, high powered as they were, should have either attracted or repelled each other from the beginning.

After Gordon hits West's collar with the rock, West's collar "reverses" polarity, causing it to attract to Gordon's.

However, if there was a complete reversal as is implied, Gordon and West's collars should have repelled each other from the beginning.

Therefore, Gordon and West should never have been able to jump into each other's arms, let alone stand next to each other in the small perimeter afforded them when they first woke with the collars.

In the movie, President Grant establishes the Secret Service in 1869, to protect the President.

In reality, the Secret Service was founded in 1865, to fight counterfeiters.

The agency started acting as Presidential bodyguards after the 1901 assassination of President McKinley.

The spider on West's arm/hand.

A track bend disappears after the first shot of the tank.

In the first panoramic shot of Washington, D.

, the dome of the Capitol is still under construction during the administration of President U.

Grant, after the Civil War.

The dome was completed in 1864, in time for the second Lincoln inauguration in March 1865.

West, Gordon, and President Grant are shown in the Oval Office, which was first constructed during the Taft Administration in 1909.

Grant's fake beard glue is obvious in a close up at the spike driving ceremony.

When Loveless and James West are hanging from the spider while the wheelchair supports their weight, there are several shots of Loveless' wheelchair release lever.

The first shot shows no hands on the lever.

The next shot shows Loveless' hand on the lever.

The next shot shows no hand on the lever.

The next shot shows James West's hand on top of Loveless' hand on the lever.

When Loveless and James West fall from the spider, James is able to slide down a chain and the body of the 'knife guy' he killed earlier.

When he stops himself, he is seen holding the person's right leg with both hands.

The next time he is seen, James is holding a leg in each hand.

James West left his black horse behind when he first boarded the moving train and has it later.

While normally a train would have to stop to board a horse, it's quite possible the train has, as it does in the series, a corral designed to board horses while the train is in motion.

If the magnetic collar rings are strong enough to drag Artemus along the desert toward a railroad, then he would never have the strength to separate himself from James West.

Before Miss East is shot, her right earring pops in and out of her collar.

When Jim grabs onto the rope during the hanging, the brief overhead shot reveals the much thinner stunt safety line running next to the rope.

The Golden Spike was actually 3 separate spikesa gold spike from California, a silver spike from Nevada, and a gold/silver/iron alloy spike from Arizona.

It was presented, but never driven into the roadbed.

Some accounts say it was driven in and immediately removed.

In one of the scenes when James West throws the "Knife Guy" from the spider you can plainly see the chain detach and fall.

In the next scene you can see the chain still being pulled up and over.

Later James West falls onto the knife guy and hangs there and he (Knife Guy) is magically reattached to the spider.

The same grocery store can plainly be seen burning in the old village and, in the next scene, getting blown up for the second time.

As the "tank" rolls up the riverbank (just before it massacred the Southern troops), you can see the "steel plating" bounce as if made of much lighter material and not soldered/welded on at all.

Much of the slang was not used in that time.

Officials of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads drove in the final spikes, not President Grant.

When Jim picks up the corset box with the pop out gun, the bullet is too big in diameter to fit the gun.

The states and territories of the U.

are incorrect on the map in Grant's office.

Loveless also describes them incorrectly to his delegates.

When James West visits Washington, there is an establishing shot showing the partially constructed dome of the Capitol Building.

The matte painting of the dome is clearly illuminated by the sun from the left of frame while the live action plate of the foreground, showing James West riding through town, is strongly lit by the sun, from the right of frame.

It is highly unlikely that chain mail (which is all Gordon's "impermeable" amounts to) would actually hold against a bullet fired from close range.

Even if it did, the impact would almost certainly break bones and cause severe trauma.

When Artemus and Rita arrive at the massacre, the horse drawing their carriage is centered when seen from above.

Before and after that, it is located to one side as the other horse drawing the carriage was ridden off by West.

When James and Artemus jump to each other and fall into the mud, James' hat is muddy.

In the next shot with him and Artemus walking along, his hat is clean.

When Gordon and West jump into the ravine and land in the mud, West's magnetic collar is almost completely covered with mud.

In the next shot, the collars are completely clean, yet their clothes are still covered.

When Jim's and Artemus' collars first clink together, the top plate of Jim's collar goes under the top plate of Artemus'.

In every shot afterward, they're attached the other way.

When West and Gordon are walking in the desert with the collars around their necks, the dirt on their clothing changes between shots.

As West rides down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House in 1869, 20th-century overhang highway lights are visible behind the trees in the background.

As West is riding in the cart under the train, the track is clearly continuously welded rail, which was first used in the 1950s.

When Jim is trying to talk his way out of the hanging, the wide shots show him with the noose around his neck, somewhat restricting his movement.

Close-up shots show him not only without the noose around his neck, but also standing freely, even casually gesturing.

When Jim gets on his horse at the White House, and Artie mounts his bike, he's on a black horse.

When he is passed by Artie on the bike, it's a bay.

When he's chasing the train, he's on his black horse again.

On the train when Rita comes in to say goodnight to Jim and Artemus, Jim is reclining on the couch with his hands behind his head.

When he says goodnight to Rita, he takes his hat off.

In the next shot, his hands are behind his head again.

Loveless claims he lost 35 feet of small intestine.

The large and small intestine combined are less than 30 feet long.

When pursuing Loveless' train, as James and Artemus' train approaches the end of the tunnel, the girders holding up Loveless' train are not visible.

As soon as the train leaves the tunnel, the girders can be seen on either side of the track immediately at the end of the tunnel.

When Grant is driving the stake in at the railroad ceremony, the brand new railroad has very old, weathered sleepers (the wooden part between the rails).

When the Golden Spike was driven, the two trains (Union Pacific's No.

119 and Central Pacific's "Jupiter") were brought together, with only the width of a single tie separating them.

In the movie, there is clearly a lot of room between them.

When Gordon projects Prof.

Thadeus Morton's last conscious image, Morton's head is seen to be rotated clockwise, but the projected image turns opposite to what it should.

When Jim and Artie are running though the field from the high power magnets, the corn is at least 5-6 feet tall.

We are to assume this movie takes place in May.

Corn never gets that tall until at least July-August.

At the end of the movie, West and Artemis are heading back to DC from Utah, which means heading east.

However, they travel toward the sunset, which is to the west.

When Artemus fires on Loveless' hydraulics (while Loveless is "stomping" on Jim with his mechanical "legs"), Loveless looks down and we see quite a bit of fluid squirting out of the mechanism.

In the next scene, as Loveless' "legs" fail and he sinks to the floor, there is no indication anywhere of the fluid.

In the first scene on the train, pushing the button at the back of the car led to a hammer coming down and the pool table turning over; the second time when West tells Artemis to push the button, it is obvious that no hammer came down.

The button should have done the same thing both times.

When Jim mounts the spider first time, and when he falls down, he wears laced leather pants - but never before or after during the whole movie (without a realistic chance to change clothes).

The movie is set in 1869 when the transcontinental railroad was completed.

But on the train, Artemis is seen next to a cylinder phonograph with a horn for sound.

Edison didn't invent the phonograph until 1877 and it was not marketed to the public until the late 1880s.

The type shown looks like the type sold in the 1890s.

The size of the spider is extremely inconsistent.

Sometimes is as big as a city, others it's only 2 stories tall.

While Gordon, and West are heading to catch the President's train (The Wanderer), modern day street lights are visible in the background.

Including one just as Gordon passes West on his bike.

When Gordon and West are having the argument in the valley, their magnetic collars are in different positions from shot to shot.

When Jim is being towed behind the train and the cable snaps, he is shown accelerating towards Loveless' train, but in reality he would have been traveling in the same direction.

At the film's beginning, after the scientist is beheaded by General McGrath's flying sawblade, the General picks the blade up and it is shown briefly with blood on just one section of it.

In reality, after having beheaded the scientist, the blade would have a trail of blood around its entire circumference, as it was spinning at the time.

Loveless' wheeled vehicle was referred to as a tank, but the name "tank" for such a vehicle wasn't coined until the British used it as a cover name in the First World War.

When West and Gordon are riding the flying machine, at one point they pass a full moon.

It is impossible for the full moon to be in the sky in broad daylight as it is on the far side of the earth from the sun during this phase.

West says he was in New Liberty with the 9th Cavalry Regiment one week before the end of the war.

The 9th Cavalry wasn't formed until July 1866, over a year after the end of the Civil War.

When Artemus is being pulled toward the railroad tracks by the magnetic collar a smooth trail from a previous take can be seen above his head.

After Gordon has flipped West under the train on the pool table, West was tied to table with 2 straps.

When Gordon and West come back up from under the train, the pool table rises straight up (it was turned on its side and flipped under) and there are no straps around West.

It's my understanding that Will Smith regrets his involvement with "Wild Wild West" (even going so far as to publicly apologize to Robert Conrad for desecrating the original TV show). I guess that might be necessary to the devotees of the TV series who were disappointed with the film.

When you go to see a Will Smith movie, you expect it to be entertaining and fast-paced. A movie with Kevin Kline might have your expectations leaning more in the direction of cerebral, tight-knit & solid entertainment.

I felt entertained by this.It is a very bonkers film, though it actually works stupidly well in my opinion - the steampunk theme helps it of course.

Nothing like another television show from the old days made into a movie. Wild Wild West stars Will Smith and Kevin Kline as a couple of government agents sent out by the president of the United States.

Depending on your age and how you feel about Will Smith. If you love him you'll like this, he's all over the movie.

Wild Wild West (1999, Dir. Barry Sonnenfeld) When a body is found and the killer is identified as General 'Bloodbath' McGrath (Levine), Capt.

Barry Sonnenfeld's Wild Wild West is a film that I have avoided for over 15 years. I have no frame of reference with the source materials, but even though I'm a big Westerns fan, it wasn't this, or the critical pounding it got on release, that kept me away.

Honestly do not understand why the low ratings from some people. This was a very funny, action packed movie and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

As if a movie has to be an Oscar award winner to be good.