Will Smith: American hero

“Wild Wild West” (1999)

This feeble adaptation of the sci-fi/Western hybrid TV series finishes  with comically mismatched suave gunslinger James West (Smith) and clumsy scientist Artemus Gordon (Kevin Kline) saving President Ulysses S. Grant (Kline again, in a pointless dual role) from a villain (Kenneth Branagh) in a giant, fireball-shooting mechanical spider.

Patriotic moment: There’s nothing more patriotic than rescuing the Commander in Chief from a crazed conspirator, and yet American audiences responded with relative indifference. (The movie grossed about $114 million, pocket change compared to Smith’s biggest summer hits.) It just proves that while Smith has become some kind of American hero, he’s far from an infallible one.