Wild Wild West (1999) and Television Coming to the Movies

The golden age of television is upon the world.  At least, that’s what the people of the internet seem to be saying on a regular basis.  There is so much television programming out there that the quality has greatly improved on what it was thirty, twenty, even ten years ago.  The shows being produced now wouldn’t even have been thought of three decades ago.  Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Westworld, and Justified couldn’t exist in the same time as Cheers, Taxi, and the original run of Hawaii Five-O.  Television was a different world back then, and it wasn’t taken nearly as seriously or artistically as it is now.

In the current day, television is almost on par with film when it comes to the quality of the product.  A show like The Handmaid’s Tale looks as cinematic as most movies that come across the screen.  That wasn’t the case a couple decades ago.  There was a vast difference between the quality of television and the quality of film.  Of course, people would work wherever they could to get the money they needed to survive.  If that meant going to television, that meant going to television.  But the goal was to break out of the television box and onto the silver screen.  That’s why Tom Hanks went from Bosom Buddies to Philadelphia.  That’s why Denzel Washington went from St. Elsewhere to Training Day.  The movies were where a person wanted to be.

Television shows were also working their way into the film world.  Since the inception of television, there have been movies based on or continuing television shows.  This week’s film was one of the many movies based on a television show.  1999’s Wild Wild West was based on the 1960s television show The Wild Wild West.  The film told the story of James West (Will Smith), a U.S. Army Captain who was teamed up with U.S. Marshall Artemus Gordon (Kevin Kline) to try and catch Confederate General “Bloodbath” McGrath (Ted Levine).  They would end up instead trying to save President Ulysses S. Grant (Kevin Kline) from Arliss Loveless (Kenneth Branagh).

There are three main types of film adaptations when it comes to television shows.  The first, and the most common, is to simply reboot the show in a big screen form.  The second is when the film is a sequel to the television show.  This usually happens when the show is off the air, though that might not always be the case.  Then there are the movies that merge the two.  The movie ends up essentially being a reboot, while also connecting to the original television show.  Three different kinds of adaptations, each with their own successes and failures.

Digging into the first type of adaptation, there are many movies that have been based on television shows without being connected to them in any way.  Most of these adaptations come from shows before 2000.  The quality of television shows has been on the rise since then and it feels like less of an event to have a modern television show get a film reboot.  Why watch a Mad Men movie when there are seven seasons of quality Mad Men television show?  There would be a new cast to get acquainted to, the story could have been told over the course of two or three episodes on the television show, and there probably wouldn’t be a huge difference in the production quality.  It would feel kind of pointless.

Older television shows getting adapted to the modern big screen allows an update to happen.  There’s still the issue where the audience has to get used to a new cast.  But, in many cases, the older shows weren’t serialized.  The bigger stories would only play out during special event episodes, or else they wouldn’t happen at all.  There were no TiVo or PVR types of equipment for people to record and catch up on television shows, so the writing had to be very episodic and allow few changes in a short amount of time.  Therefore, there was a status quo each episode and the stories couldn’t continue to play out in a long form.  Making a movie based on the show allows for the longer story to play out in a way it couldn’t before.

Modern adaptations also allow for updates in the technology used.  The old story can be brought to newer audiences by having an updated style.  Whether that ends up being behind the camera or in front of it, that update can be reason enough for rebooting a television show in movie form.  Most of the time, there’s a cosmetic update being done.  The look of the television shows from the 50s, 60s, 70s, or 80s weren’t the greatest, so when they get brought to the big screen, they look much better.  Wild Wild West, regardless of what people think of its quality as entertainment, looked better than the televisual style of The Wild Wild West.  The only thing that hurts the look of Wild Wild West is the turn of the century computer effects.  Other than that, the visuals are better than in the television show.

There were definite problems with Wild Wild West, though.  Controversy came up surrounding the changes that happened to the characters.  Every reboot changes characters in certain ways.  James West was changed from a white man to a black man, which completely changes a character’s life in the Wild West.  A rivalry was added between James West and Artemus Gordon that wasn’t present in the series.  The humour was also heightened.  The gadgets that Gordon made in the film were more joke based than they had been on television.  The villain was also changed.  In The Wild Wild West, he was a dwarf.  In Wild Wild West, he was a man without legs.  These changes might have only affected die-hard fans of the show.  What affected film audiences were the dumb jokes and the giant mechanical spider in the third act.

Other television shows have also tried this type of film reboot, with one of the most successful being the Mission: Impossible franchise.  The sixth installment came out on Friday.  Based on the spy series of the 1960s and 1970s, the films see Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt going on various impossible missions that he makes possible.  They manage to capture the spirit of the show while blowing it out into a big budget, modern action movie.  The movies play out like an episodic television show, with different directors, different supporting characters, but a core group of main characters who continue to reappear.  It’s a fantastic update of a television series into a modern movie world.

Sometimes producers like to keep their ties to the original television franchise, though.  This means that they will create big budget sequels to television series in order to continue the stories of the characters that people know and love.  Many times, the actors will reprise their roles from the television show in order to keep a consistency.  Other times, some of them might be recast due to creative differences or contract disputes.  Whatever the case, a continuation of the story that audiences had been following seems like a sure-fire way to get butts in seats.

The Star Trek movies might be the biggest franchise to do the sequel thing, since the effects were directly felt until Star Trek: Nemesis in 2002.  The first bunch of movies brought back the cast from Star Trek: The Original Series, including William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy.  The movies varied in quality and critical reception, but some of them, such as The Wrath of Khan, have had a lasting impact.  The movies later brought in the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  There was one movie, Star Trek: Generations, which brought together the casts of the two series for the first time.  Each of the stories that were being told were bigger than what had been done on television.  Star Trek used the bigger budget and bigger screen to bring a bigger spectacle to the storytelling.

Star Trek brings about the third type of adaptation of a television show as well, with the newer films from J.J. Abrams.  Those movies work as both a sequel to what was seen before, while they also rebooted in a way that would bring a different cast, a different tone, and much more modern action.  These kinds of adaptations are a hybrid of the other two ways to bring television to the movie format.  They take the idea of a fresh reboot, and that’s the primary way they go about things.  There are new actors playing the characters that people have come to recognize.  This gets a new audience invested without having to watch anything else to get the background of what is going on.  Then there is a minor tie-in to the previous material so that it continues the stories that have already been told.  In the case of Star Trek, that connection is Spock.  Leonard Nimoy reprised his role as Spock, who went through some sort of space rift and ended up in an alternate timeline with the new cast, including Zachary Quinto as the new Spock.  It was an interesting way to tie everything together while being something new.

21 Jump Street also fell into this category of hybrid adaptation of a television show.  There were new characters and a modern update of the twenty-somethings going undercover in a high school storyline.  It was more comedic, and pointed out the absurdity of the concept.  It all seemed to be a fairly straight forward comedic reboot in film form, until a moment later in the movie where two bad guys were revealed to be undercover cops who had appeared in the original 1980s television show.  That placed the movies in the same universe as the television show.  They weren’t direct sequels, as they didn’t follow the characters from the show, but they were sequels in the sense of the same thing happening again years later.  It was a twist that nobody expected.  Cameos, sure, but not the same characters.  The sequel brought back another character, cementing the connection.

Those are the three primary ways with which television shows are brought to movie theaters.  They can be complete reboots like Wild Wild West.  They could be sequels to the television show, such as the Star Trek movies.  Or they could follow the way of the 21 Jump Street films and be a hybrid of the reboot and sequel.  Whatever method is used, television shows from decades past continue to find ways to make movies.  The continued success of the Mission: Impossible movies only serves to fuel the fire of studios and producers finding old properties to breathe new life into.

Newer television shows haven’t found the need to do this as often, since the actors feel so tied into the characters, and the stories feel so self-contained.  The serialized nature of many modern television shows makes it tough to necessitate a film version.  In fact, properties are going the other way to more success than they used to.  Lethal Weapon, Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, Minority Report, Twelve Monkeys, and Rush Hour have each seen television adaptations through the past few years.  The tide is shifting to the point where television is now the second home to properties that want to find new life.  That’s how things have changed in twenty years.  Which way will the balance shift next?

Here are some notes to finish things off here:

• Wild Wild West was suggested for the Sunday “Bad” Movies by @_hiLAURIous, a first time suggestion submitter.
• This was the second Barry Sonnenfeld movie to be featured, behind Nine Lives (week 228).
• Ian Abercrombie has now made four appearances in the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  Wild Wild West is the fourth, but he was also in The Ice Pirates (week 128), Sextette (week 141), and Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman (week 159).
• Musetta Vander made her second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance this week, having shown up previously in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (week 140).
• Two people from the film 54 (week 266) returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies with Wild Wild West.  They were Salma Hayek and Frederique Van Der Wal.
• Wild Wild West was the second Sunday “Bad” Movie to feature Gary Carlos Cervantes.  He was in 30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (week 10).
• James Lashly showed up in Wild Wild West.  He also showed up in a little movie called Howard the Duck (week 75).
• Wild Wild West had an actor named William Victor Skrabanek.  Another movie with that actor was Batman & Robin (week 138).
• Gigli (week 225) actor Scott Haslip popped up in Wild Wild West.
• One of the more memorable people in Wild Wild West was Bai Ling.  She was in Samurai Cop 2: Deadly Vengeance (week 241).
• Christian Aubert had a part in Wild Wild West, after having been in Godzilla (week 282).
• Finally, Wild Wild West starred Will Smith.  He had a small, yet important, role in Winter’s Tale (week 89).
• Have you seen Wild Wild West? What did you think?  What do you think of other film adaptations of television shows?  Use the comments to discuss anything related to this post.
• Let me know about any suggestions you might have for future featured films on Twitter or in the comments section.  I'm always scanning for movies I might not have known about that could make for some interesting posts.
• Sometimes, I will watch bad movies and share clips of them on Snapchat.  If that seems like your thing, add me (jurassicgriffin).
• Now to look forward at what’s coming up.  There’s a sequel on the horizon.  It’s a sequel to a movie that has been covered before.  In fact, it’s a sequel to two movies that have been covered.  Those movies were featured back in the first year and were called Dorm Daze and Dorm Daze 2: College @ Sea (week 40).  Next week, the movie will be Transylmania, the third movie in that franchise.  Come back in a week and you’ll see what I have written for it.

Dead Sushi (2013)

Horror is a genre where anything goes.  If there is an idea of something that could possibly scare someone, that idea can be made into a movie.  That’s why there’s such a wide range of concepts within each of the horror subgenres.  Slasher movies have leprechauns and dolls attacking people among other things.  Horror comedy has meta movies where slasher villains are killing people based on the movies they watch, or people end up in one of the horror movies they love.  Then there are the movies where food starts attacking people, causing them to fight back against whatever they would normally be snacking on.

One of the food based horror movies that fit perfectly into the Sunday “Bad” Movies was Dead Sushi, a 2013 Japanese film about sushi coming to life and attacking the people visiting an inn.  Keiko (Rina Takeda) was the daughter of a sushi maker.  She couldn’t live up to her father’s expectations, however, and ran away.  Her need for money took her to a job at an inn.  When the heads of a research business showed up at the inn, a disgruntled ex-employee decided to spoil the party.  He injected some sushi with a serum that turned them into flesh-hungry, human eating snackables.  The employees and guests at the inn had to defend themselves and try to survive.

Dead Sushi was one of the most balls-to-the-wall, no-holds-barred movie experiences.  It never held back on the insanity, instead choosing to lean into it with every moral of its being.  Writer/director Noboru Iguchi knew exactly what he was doing with every beat in the movie.  There were no wasted moments as the film’s cavalier, winking tone upped the insanity with every minute.  The whole movie was a contest of trying to figure out if it could go any further, and every time, it did.  The action and comedy blended together to create an hour and forty minutes of entertaining mayhem.

That tone came early in the film when a couple stumbled upon the disgraced researcher as he was eating his sushi.  The young man in the couple began beating the researcher, who countered with a squid.  The squid was already alive without the serum and chased the couple.  The woman was decapitated, and her head was stuck to the man’s by way of the squid.  They made out a little bit before the squid impaled the man.  If that didn’t get a person into the movie, nothing would.  It only gets crazier with that tone from then on.

Other highlights of the absurd heights that Dead Sushi went to were that a man transformed into a fish, and a bunch of sushi merged to form a giant sushi battleship.  There were many more moments, of course, but rather than list them off, there’s some deeper things to get into about Dead Sushi.  It was more than mere lunacy.  That was a large part of the movie, and most of the reason that it was made in the first place.  There were, however, bits and pieces to the storylines that added some depth.

There was a storyline mentioned above where Keiko was a disappointment to her father and left to work at the inn.  That storyline was the emotional core to the lead character.  She was missing the confidence that she needed to make the perfect sushi.  Throughout her experience fighting off the vicious sushi attacking the inn, Keiko became more self-confident.  She learned to believe in her abilities, and that translated from fighting to sushi.  The two went hand in hand, as she said in voiceover during the opening scene.  They were tied together in a way where her improvement in one would improve her in the other.

Another character with a deeper story than simply trying to survive was Sawada (Shigeru Matsuzaki), the caretaker of the inn.  He was a former sushi chef who had been disgraced and left his position to take up what was basically the janitor role at the inn.  He had an accident during his sushi days and ended up harming someone with his knives.  He vowed to never pick up a knife again.  It was another story of confidence, in which Sawada had to realize that it was an accident and he didn’t need to be afraid of it happening again.

One other story of confidence was in Dead Sushi, and it wasn’t from a place that would be expected.  Even within the zombie sushi, there were confidence issues.  Many of the characters did not respect the egg sushi.  They wanted fish.  That disrespect existed within the sushi as well.  When the sushi came back to life, there was a hierarchy.  The fish sushi bullied the egg sushi.  That’s probably why the egg sushi connected with Keiko.  Both of them felt like outcasts in their respective worlds, so they teamed up.  The egg sushi wasn’t an evil, human eating sushi like the rest.  It found its confidence later in the movie when it fought all of the other sushi during the final major battle.

Those stories about the characters finding their confidence in a crazy situation supplemented the comedy, horror, and action that took up the rest of Dead Sushi’s runtime.  They brought the audience into the characters as they had to chop, kick, and all around beat into submission a bunch of flying pieces of sushi.  The stories made the characters more relatable than the stars of a ridiculous action movie.  The audience could connect with them while seeing sushi suck a man’s face off.

Dead Sushi was a movie that knew exactly what it was: a food based horror movie.  But at the same time it was so much more.  A bunch of mostly unlikeable characters were picked off by sushi in increasingly bizarre ways.  The comedy worked.  The action worked.  It all came together in an entertaining goofball horror movie.  There are few like it, and no other group of filmmakers could have captured the same magic.  Noboru Iguchi made something special.  It might not be considered good by most standards.  It captured the fun that the people clearly had making it, though, and that fun came through the screen making for a great experience.  It showed that anything can go in horror.  That was Dead Sushi.

Now that that’s done, let’s get to the notes:

• Another food based horror movie that was watched for the Sunday “Bad” Movies was Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead (week 84).
• Dead Sushi featured Kanji Tsuda, who was in Funky Forest: The First Contact (week 182).
• Have you seen Dead Sushi?  Are you interested in seeing it?  What do you think about the movie?  Use the comments section below if you want to talk about it.
• If there’s a movie that you think should be covered for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, let me know.  You can do that in the comments, or you can get a hold of me on Twitter.  Either one works.
• When I watch bad movies, I like to share clips of them on Snapchat (jurassicgriffin).  Add me if that sounds interesting.  If not, whatever.
• Looking ahead to next week, there’s a pretty big bad movie coming up.  This one has a reputation as being one of the worst.  It brought a television show to the big screen in a way that nobody appreciated, except for my childhood self.  Having rewatched it for next week’s post, I kind of still like it.  That movie is Wild Wild West, and I’ll see you in seven days with another post.