There be spoilers ahead for The Flash, so read on at your peril.
It’s not ideal for The Flash to be earning comparisons to one of the most infamous box office bombs of the last 25 years, but the connection between the struggling DCU blockbuster and the notorious Wild West West is simply too fascinating to ignore given the dots that need to be joined between the two.
Will Smith turning down the opportunity to play Neo in The Matrix in favor of instead headlining the most expensive movie in Hollywood history at the time has long since gone down as the stuff of legend, albeit for the entirely wrong reasons after the $175 million steampunk Western tanked at the box office on its way to winning five Razzie Awards.
However, with The Flash now playing in theaters and in danger of suffering a similar fate, it’s insane to draw the line that attaches one to the other. Kevin Smith famously revealed that when he was tasked by Warner Bros. to write a Superman story, producer Jon Peters demanded the third act feature the Man of Steel battling against a giant mechanical spider.
When that project fell apart, which Peters-backed flick ended up featuring exactly that? Wild Wild West, of course. In addition, what is Nicolas Cage’s multiversal Kal-El fighting when he makes his guest appearance in The Flash? That’s right, it’s a goddamned giant mechanical spider.
You couldn’t even begin to make up the way these things tend to resolve themselves in the long run, with the biggest bomb of Will Smith’s career that he actively detests ending up directly tied to the DCU’s most recent superhero spectacular in the most unexpected of ways ranking among the most incredulous.