History YMMV / WildWildWest

** For his part, Creator/KennethBranagh also never undersells the villain, never acts like the role is beneath him, and creates a villain you love to hate.

* ValuesDissonance: The RunningGag of West and Loveless engaging in VolleyingInsults about the other being black and disabled, respectively. Barely acceptable in the edgy late 90s, very much not today. It still CrossesTheLineTwice at points, though.

* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: There are some who think that when Rita lied when she said [[spoiler: Professor Escobar was her husband rather than her father]] in order to dispose of Jim and Artemus after stringing them along with the hint of sex if they succeeded.

* TookTheBadFilmSeriously: Creator/KevinKline put in a lot of work to portray UsefulNotes/UlyssesSGrant correctly by reading everything he could about the president and interviewing Grant scholars. He then put in a performance so distinguished from Artemis Gordon that many didn't realize he played two characters in the film.

* HilariousInHindsight: The Spider Tank looks a tad too much like [[VideoGame/MetalGearRising Metal Gear EXCELSUS]].

* CompleteMonster: [[BigBad Arliss Loveless]] is a former [[PoliticallyIncorrectVillain Confederate slaveholder]] and a technology expert with no allegiance to anyone but himself. He kidnaps a group of scientists to build new weapons of war for him (one of which is all but stated to be a ''rape machine''), [[OffWithHisHead decapitating one of them]] for trying to warn the President. He slaughters General [=McGrath=]'s men in front of him with a tank prototype as punishment for surrendering to the North during the [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanCivilWar Civil War]], using the General's men as target practice; he kills the General himself when [=McGrath=] demands that he stop the massacre. He plans to destroy the United States unless the President surrenders to his new alliance, and firebombs a random frontier town to prove his point. Despite his earlier slaughter of a former Confederate troop for their disloyalty, he [[{{Hypocrite}} sells out]] the Confederacy that he fought for when he presents his plan to carve up the whole country amongst himself and a collection of foreign powers. In addition, it's revealed that he previously used his tank to wipe out a settlement of freed slaves, [[YouKilledMyFather including Jim West's family]], also for target practice.

* EvilIsSexy: All of Loveless' BodyguardBabes are smoking sexy women.

* WTHCastingAgency:
** The painfully obvious one. RaceLift aside, Creator/WillSmith's NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent.
** Shakespearean thespian Creator/KennethBranagh as a wheelchair-bound evil {{Steampunk}} genius. It doesn't stop him from giving a good performance even with a bad accent that sounds more natural than anything his American costars use.
** Creator/KevinKline as StraightMan Artemus Gordon (which was hated by Kline, leading to rewrites that blurred the line with TheFunnyGuy Jim West) and President Grant in the same movie. And the same scene. And then they had Kline as Gordon impersonate Kline as Grant. The Symbolism, if any, is clearly [[FauxSymbolism Faux]].

* ValuesResonance: Despite the film's numerous shortcomings, this is one of the few high-profile Hollywood Westerns, that isn't named ''Film/BlazingSaddles'', that openly acknowledges the fervent racism of the setting and time that existed against African-Americans. Loveless is also a white supremacist who seeks to restore the Confederacy and these are unambiguously and unapologetically treated as villainous acts.

* ValuesResonance: Despite the film's numerous shortcomings, this is one of the few high-profile Hollywood Westerns, that isn't named Blazing Saddles, that openly acknowledges the fervent racism of the setting and time that existed against African-Americans. Loveless is also a white supremacist who seeks to restore the Confederacy and these are unambiguously and unapologetically treated as villainous acts.