Cannonball Run

It's not easy to get the drop on gadget-laden lawman James West. Just ask Eric Brevig, visual effects supervisor for Wild Wild West, which rolls into theaters July 2. When director Barry Sonnenfeld demanded a tank-train that could hoist itself right off the rails, his f/xpert started forging an ironclad fortress out of code and cold hard steel. "The audience gets an agonizingly direct look at this incredible mass lowering itself so fast it would be physically impossible," says the ILM veteran. "It took three months to do." Brevig got the shot rolling on parallel tracks, finally welding together a real, full-size train and the spiderlike CG extensions, and finishing it off with photographic elements of live steam. So who's in the driver's seat of this long-limbed locomotive? West's nemesis Dr. Arliss Loveless, who is short fused and then some. "We felt he'd have a bad case of 'leg envy,'" quips Sonnenfeld. But thanks to Brevig, he's got a full head of steam.