WAIT. Phantom Menace did that? I remember seeing that on shirts and shit at the time, but this is (amazing) news to me.

I took an exceedingly brief series of film/media production classes as a younger man, and I always liked to think my thing would be making sure a Sega Dreamcast was at least visible at some point in every movie I made and/or making sure a song from "Loveless" was on the soundtrack.

WAIT WILL SMITH ONCE CALLED OUT WU-TANG IN A RAP VERSE THAT DIRECTLY REFERENCES WILD WILD WEST

I feel like it's worsened in this case because, except in truly extreme examples, there's generally no cultural record of a bad fart. Wild Wild West was pervasive to the point where I distinctly remember buying an issue of MAD Magazine just due to the WWW parody contained within.

I feel like Twister and Batman '89 were among the earliest ones, if I remember my readings right.

I'm like 99% positive that Antz was first but it was a super short margin, maybe a year or less. I specifically remember being put off by A Bug's Life just because it seemed too similar to Antz, until I finally watched it and also stopped having the opinions of a 12-year old.

I agree three-thousand-fucking percent with that last thing you said. Remember what a big goddamn deal MTV made of the video? And here was me as a young brain, camped out in front of the TV, wearing my stupid goddamn Burger King Will Smith sunglasses, so fucking stoked to see the funny one from Men In Black do another…

Jesus christ, he's the worst pick out of the three of them, were they just casting anyone who was in a movie between 1990 and 1996?

Wait, did he pick this or did he just not want to do The Matrix? I thought he just plain ol' shot it down, this little wrinkle makes the story that much better.

One of my favorite Bond novels ends with that. I could stand to see it more often.

Did it really? I will take back so many things about WWW if this is true.

whoa, holy shit

I was obsessed with finishing that set and never really did. A friend of mine on Instagram found all eight of them at a flea market, still sealed, and assembled them just for me so I could vicariously know what it was like.

I have a ton of those on my desk. They did a later series where the food turned into weird dinosaurs that wasn't as fun.

Fuck, those were all the same year? I remember loving Inspector Gadget, but in my defense at the point it came out I was some two, three months away from turning 12.

something something That Street Sharks Commercial

Kenneth Branagh was playing at the tone most of the rest of the movie should have been at. Wild Wild West sorta has that Jupiter Ascending problem where the good performances are all sort of going for the rafters but not EVERYONE is hitting that tone. Will Smith was just playing 1800s Will Smith - and the dude clearly…

I can't tell if that last line is sarcasm, but if it's not, I totally agree. Hearing you kinda pushed your kid into a movie everyone hates that probably tanked his reputation early and then hearing about a family illness? That does actually sound kinda shitty, even if it is in a "not problems most real people have"…

Cartman's version of the theme has managed to completely supplant the real one in my mind, somehow.

Yeah, wait, Wild Wild West is at least dumb, wrong-headed fun whereas MIIB fails at basically everything it attempts. And I say this as a guy who thought the third one was actually pretty fucking fun.