Director Barry Sonnenfeld Knows Exactly What Went Wrong With Will Smith's Wild Wild West

It's hard to overstate just how popular Will Smith was in 1999. He's still one of the biggest movie stars in the world, but in 1999, he was everywhere. Fresh off his hit sitcom "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" and the wildly successful film "Men in Black," Smith was one of the hottest stars around. Oh, and his debut solo album, "Big Willie Style," was a multiplatinum hit. So imagine everyone's excitement when he reteamed with "Men in Black" director Barry Sonnenfeld for a movie reboot of the 1960's TV western "The Wild Wild West," co-starring Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh, and Salma Hayek. 

The hype was real, but unfortunately, "Wild Wild West" was a critical and box office disaster. It was a major hiccup in Smith's career, and he later admitted that he believes it's the worst movie in his entire filmography. So what happened? How could a movie with that director and cast go so very wrong? 

In Sonnenfeld's new memoir, "Best Possible Place, Worst Possible Time: True Stories from a Career in Hollywood," the director revealed that despite the level of talent present within the cast, there were some personality conflicts that he believes ultimately tanked the film. 

In the memoir, Sonnenfeld explains that he and Smith had a great time together on "Men in Black" and wanted to find another project. They settled on "Wild Wild West," despite some pushback from the TV show's original star, Robert Conrad, who Sonnenfeld said threatened the production with mob violence if Jim West was a Black man. They chose to ignore Conrad and carry on, but the next big source of trouble was that Smith was originally supposed to co-star with George Clooney, not Kevin Kline. Unfortunately, Clooney bailed when he allegedly felt like Smith had more funny lines than he did. 

So they brought in Kline, and that led to some serious problems. Sonnenfeld said that Kline was a "lovely, talented guy" but that he only took the job for a paycheck. (To be fair, Smith has said that he did the same thing.) He also clearly had a beef with co-star Kenneth Branagh, because "both actors thought they were the greatest living Shakespearean actor. Or at least Kline did." That meant that Kline felt the need to really overdo it in order to show up Branagh, which led to a lot of frustration on set. The biggest frustration? Kline simply couldn't play the straight man. 

Sonnenfeld noted that "there was zero chemistry between our two leads," and he's right. "Wild Wild West" is essentially a buddy cop movie set in the late 1800s, but there's nothing fun about the interactions between Smith and Kline. (They also have zero chemistry with Hayek, despite a weird love triangle the film tries to make happen.) Sonnenfeld explained that he had to take Smith aside and talk to him about the fact that Kline kept trying to upstage him and just had to be funny, which meant Smith now had to play the straight man. He said that Will agreed because "we don't want two funny people in our comedy and we'll never get Kevin to be the 'not funny' one," and that's brutal. 

Smith does his best work when he gets to be charismatic and larger-than-life, so forcing him to play it straight so Kline could take the spotlight in the sidekick role really hurt the film. It's really a shame, because "Wild Wild West" was one of the most expensive westerns of all time, and it had the potential to truly be something great. Oh well. At least it has a neat giant mechanical spider, which has its own Hollywood history tied to Kevin Smith and Superman.