Wild Wild West

Science fiction is a strange balance. You need to project into the future, but the only tools you have are what you know. So we have crazy stupidities like the future of Star Wars. The idea behind Wild, Wild West, the TV show was to make a science fiction world as it would have been envisioned a century ago. Jules Verne with all the limitations made explicit for fun. It was placed in a `Maverick' context as a further conceit. This reverse `Flintstones' was one of the cleverest conceptions in TV history. It succeeded because it didn't have to do much, with the competition as poor and tired as it was.

Now come some of the thicker minds in Hollywood, who clearly don't understand the core appeal. They twist this into some Luddite manifesto by giving all the fancy inventions to the bad guy. The inventions are at core modern. Think about the notion of sexpedal locomotion and rayguns. Modern. Sorta cuts the guts out of the idea.

And spend all your credit with the audience on some `explanations' about racism, self-mutilation and misogynism. Even two of the best actors in the world can't save it. And no, Will Smith is not one of them.