Development The music video for "I Wanna Go" was directed by
Chris Marrs Piliero and filmed in Los Angeles, California. Spears first contacted Piliero and asked him to put together a concept for the video. The main idea for Piliero came from the lyric "be a little inappropriate", which stood out for him, but he did not want to make a video about sexual inappropriateness. Marrs Piliero first asked actor
Kellan Lutz to co-star the clip with Spears; however, Lutz turned down the role, saying that "there were a couple of weird things about the part that didn't make sense", including the scene where he was going to pour milk on himself. Piliero then thought of asking one of the stars of
Half Baked,
Guillermo Díaz, to be part of the video, explaining that it "would make it come full circle." After all the paparazzi, revealed to be
cyborgs, have been knocked to the floor, they start crawling back with their eyes glowing red and their faces bursting with wires, reminiscent to a scene in
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). A car suddenly pulls up near to Spears, and the driver
Guillermo Díaz tells her to get inside. In the next scene, Spears dances in the passenger seat in a pink bikini top, as Guillermo drives. He attempts to drink some milk while driving but pours the carton of milk over his face. His chest starts to spark, and Spears pulls open his jacket to reveal that he too is a cyborg. The video then cuts back to the press conference, indicating that Spears was
daydreaming, due to being asked monotonous and inappropriate questions. Guillermo steps in and leads Spears out of the room following him putting seashells in Spears' hand. Then, he turns to the camera with his eyes glowing red, and his laugh is heard, referencing ''
Michael Jackson's Thriller'' (1983).
Release and reception On June 17, 2011,
Jive Records announced through a press release that an exclusive 30-second teaser would premiere on June 19, 2011, on
Bravo's
Watch What Happens: Live and on
VEVO simultaneously. Jen McDonnell of
Dose said, "damn if [the video] doesn't rock. [...] It all sounds very weird – and it is. But it's also buckets of fun." Megan Gibson of
Time stated that the video is "random, weird and intended to be funny" and that despite the lack of dancing "Britney seems pleasantly energetic and spunky in 'I Wanna Go' which is a comforting change from her usual blank-eyed look." Sarah Anne Hughes of
The Washington Post commented that the video "shows a much livelier Britney than the world has seen since the 'Toxic' years." Jason Lipshutz of
Billboard said that the video continues the visual representation of Spears' relationship with the paparazzi and her public image, as previously seen in the videos for "
Everytime" (2004) and "
Piece of Me" (2008), but "the new clip is arguably her most playful yet." Amos Barshad of
New York stated the video "is awe-inspiring in
almost exactly the way it intended to be" and that "the spirit of the song, as reflected in the video, is that of free will and dream fulfillment in the face of a repressive society." Jocelyn Vena of MTV commented that "Britney displays the sass and charm fans fell in love with a decade ago during performance shots, where she flirts with the camera, her eyes as big and wide as her smile." An editor for
VH1 called the video "fan-freakin'-tastic" and compared it favorably to the music video for
Katy Perry's "
Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)" (2011), saying that "they share a silly temperament, a flirty star, and funny cameos. Upon closer examination, though, Britney's video blows Katy Perry's out of the water." Devin Brown of
CBS News called it her best video from
Femme Fatale, and added that unlike "
Piece of Me", I Wanna Go' offers a bevy of pop culture references meant to ridicule the rumors about the star – and finally no 'dancing. An editor from
Rolling Stone said "The weirdness seems very calculated, but that doesn't make the video any less delightful." Another critic from
Rolling Stone noted that the press conference "is hysterical because she's one of the least media-accessible singers in the world. It's easier to get a sit-down with
Bob Dylan than it is with Britney." The video was Spears' first to be Vevo Certified, which means that it was the first of her videos to have received over 100 million views on Vevo. ==Live performances, remixes and other versions==