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re: Why are there so many bad westerns made?
Posted on 1/26/25 at 10:52 am to Havoc
Posted on 1/26/25 at 10:52 am to Havoc
I’m talking about westerns made in the last 25-30 years….usually the leading role is a washed out has been, and the plot is usually terrible. Of course there are exceptions. For those of you who haven’t seen it, American Primeval is a new western series on Netflix and it is good. There’s a thread on this site about it.
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Posted on 1/26/25 at 11:05 am to themetalreb
The heyday of the Western was probably th 50’s. Those movies romanticized the West and lacked realism, though.
Posted on 1/26/25 at 12:39 pm to Adajax
quote:
They aren't all bad.
I even enjoyed the Magnificent 7 remake.
And I like alternate takes on the genre. Firefly was a western set in space. Hell, the first season of Mandalorian was essentially a western set in space.
I think you can have it one of two ways. You can either tell a gritty story, or a campy story. You can make campy be gritty occasionally. But you can’t make gritty suddenly be campy. And it seems like this is what happens a lot. You get a westerny movie that’s full on stereotype camp when suddenly your hero becomes Rooster Cogburn at the end. That doesn’t work.
I mean, I love Searchers, but you’ve got to be in the mood to watch that. Liberty Valence is one of my favorites, as is Shane. But every once in a while you enjoy a movie like Support Your Local Sheriff, and Maverick is still a great example of fun camp that can dabble in seriousness.
And I don’t care, but A Million Ways To Die In the West is funny as hell. But you would’ve lost me if you make Seth into a badass gunfighter at the end of the movie instead of doing what they did. Liam Neeson definitely helps that movie a ton.
Posted on 1/26/25 at 7:21 pm to BigBinBR
quote:
What you want is a drama in a western setting which isn’t a western.
The Assassination of Jesse James ^
Posted on 1/26/25 at 7:54 pm to biglego
quote:
So it must be tough to come up with fresh creative stories.
Speed in a stagecoach
Die Hard in the Grand Canyon
Debbie Does Dodge City
Posted on 1/26/25 at 8:11 pm to biglego
I think the total glut of westerns on TV and cinema through the 1950s is the bigger problem but mainly through killing interest in it due to there being an overwhelming amount of them of varying quality.
The stories aren’t as big a deal because a lot of stories can be moved forward or back in periods with various changes. To give an example, Big Trouble In Little China was originally envisioned as a western before being transformed into a modern take on the western with Jack Burton as the clueless putz riding into town like Shane but having no clue what is going on and instead being the second banana to Wang, Egg Fu, etc, who knew what was actually going on.
To give another example, A Fistful Of Dollars was originally a Japanese Samurai flick, Yojimbo, and has subsequently been adapted to other periods such as the Prohibition era in Last Man Standing.
The setting itself limits things in some ways but there are always ways to fix writing around it. The bigger issues are that the western as a genre has low appeal these days and that the death of the western over the last 50 years makes it so that it isn’t nearly as cheap to make one as it was back then.
The stories aren’t as big a deal because a lot of stories can be moved forward or back in periods with various changes. To give an example, Big Trouble In Little China was originally envisioned as a western before being transformed into a modern take on the western with Jack Burton as the clueless putz riding into town like Shane but having no clue what is going on and instead being the second banana to Wang, Egg Fu, etc, who knew what was actually going on.
To give another example, A Fistful Of Dollars was originally a Japanese Samurai flick, Yojimbo, and has subsequently been adapted to other periods such as the Prohibition era in Last Man Standing.
The setting itself limits things in some ways but there are always ways to fix writing around it. The bigger issues are that the western as a genre has low appeal these days and that the death of the western over the last 50 years makes it so that it isn’t nearly as cheap to make one as it was back then.
Posted on 1/26/25 at 9:17 pm to mauser
If I remember right didn't Silverado kick off a new era of westerns?
Posted on 1/27/25 at 9:15 am to themetalreb
The "Wild West" era didn't really die until the 1890's-1900's, so when Westerns were being made in the 40's and 50's that period was still within living memory. Older people went to see Westerns because it presented an idealized version of their youth, and younger people went to see Westerns because it let them visualize things that they didn't get to experience themselves but that they had heard about from their parents and grandparents. As that period has faded into history, its ability to impact succeeding generations has begun to wane.
Westerns are also heavily connected to Manifest Destiny-style American patriotism. The underlying theme of just about every Western ever made is the superiority of American men and the ultimate (and rightful) victory of the American way of life over lawlessness and Nature. That mode of thinking is obviously waaaay out of style in Hollywood these days and has been since the end of the 80's, which not-so-coincidentally is the last decade that Westerns were still a going concern.
Westerns are also heavily connected to Manifest Destiny-style American patriotism. The underlying theme of just about every Western ever made is the superiority of American men and the ultimate (and rightful) victory of the American way of life over lawlessness and Nature. That mode of thinking is obviously waaaay out of style in Hollywood these days and has been since the end of the 80's, which not-so-coincidentally is the last decade that Westerns were still a going concern.
Posted on 1/27/25 at 9:24 am to themetalreb
Few film makers understand how to make them nowadays.
Posted on 1/27/25 at 9:36 am to themetalreb
The best westerns are the ones based on real events.
Posted on 1/27/25 at 9:48 am to Master of Sinanju
Bone Tomahawk was cool. I recommend getting into some western adjacent movies.
Stuff like Logan, Seven Samurai, Dead West, Dead Birds, The Burrowers, Grim Prairie Tales, Ravenous, Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat, Curse of the Undead, From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter or Serenity.
You could always deep dive into the old classics like Death rides a horse or The Great Silence and the like. There's a bevy of them, but you're right, they aren't made as much anymore
Stuff like Logan, Seven Samurai, Dead West, Dead Birds, The Burrowers, Grim Prairie Tales, Ravenous, Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat, Curse of the Undead, From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter or Serenity.
You could always deep dive into the old classics like Death rides a horse or The Great Silence and the like. There's a bevy of them, but you're right, they aren't made as much anymore
Posted on 1/27/25 at 9:55 am to themetalreb
quote:
Why are there so many bad westerns made?
I think the ratio is on par with any genre. You have some good ones and some bad ones and a lot of mediocre ones.
Posted on 1/27/25 at 11:29 am to themetalreb
Absent signing a big star for the lead, westerns are incredibly cheap to make compared to most anything else.
Posted on 1/27/25 at 11:46 am to Gusoline
quote:
Yea. The bad guy " cutthroat bill" is a woman. They kill the main characters grandpa, kidnap his sister, and then bounty hunter peter dinklage helps hunt they/them down.
This is hilarious.
Posted on 1/27/25 at 12:03 pm to Sus-Scrofa
The problem is making them interesting. High Plains Drifter is one that comes to mind that took the normal formula and made it interesting.
Posted on 1/27/25 at 12:12 pm to Sus-Scrofa
quote:
Absent signing a big star for the lead, westerns are incredibly cheap to make compared to most anything else.
Eh, not necessarily. There's a reason they stopped making many of them for so long after the spaghetti westerns. The financial upside for westerns is pretty low. Very rarely do westerns pay off at the box office so they usually aren't worth the gamble.
Posted on 1/27/25 at 12:38 pm to Richleau
Most of the Clint ones after the Dollar trilogy are deconstructions of varying degrees.
High Plains Drifter, Outlaw Josey Wales, Pale Rider, and Unforgiven all qualify. And the latter three are all high quality.
High Plains Drifter, Outlaw Josey Wales, Pale Rider, and Unforgiven all qualify. And the latter three are all high quality.
Posted on 1/27/25 at 12:51 pm to iwyLSUiwy
Someone really should make a blazing saddles that rails against woke culture. Replace the black sherriff with a black tranny, Gene wilder with a Chinese woman, make the barber a gay, turn the saloon into a female run women’s suffrage style where the men are whored out, throw in Al Swearengen as the bad guy, who’s actually the good guy trying to save the town cause nobody wants to come to their backwards little hamlet. Call it Glazing Saddles.
This post was edited on 1/27/25 at 12:52 pm
Posted on 1/27/25 at 1:12 pm to goatmilker
quote:
If I remember right didn't Silverado kick off a new era of westerns?
Although it wasn't a traditional Western...I would go back a little earlier than that and say The Man From Snowy River started a new era of westerns.
Some good modern Westerns (I know I'm missing some):
1982 - The Man From Snowy River
1985 - Silverado
1992 - Unforgiven
1993 - Tombstone
2003 - Open Range
2007 - 3:10 to Yuma (remake)
2010 - True Grit (remake)
Posted on 1/27/25 at 3:33 pm to TheTideMustRoll
quote:My dad watches all of the Homesteading Alaska shows and the shows about logging because they remind him of his youth. The Alaska shows has them hunting & herding cattle like he did as a kid in Arkansas. The logging shows remind him of the 47 years he spent cruising timber for IP in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi. I'd watch TV with him if he watched Westerns, but I hate those reality shows set in the woods, with a full camera crew filming. They're just BS to me.
The "Wild West" era didn't really die until the 1890's-1900's, so when Westerns were being made in the 40's and 50's that period was still within living memory. Older people went to see Westerns because it presented an idealized version of their youth
I'd like to see more Westerns about logging or building railroads. Really liked the Hell on Wheels series that AMC did. Something like that, maybe without as much gun fighting, that shows the hardships and sacrifices those guys made would be interesting to me. Logging and building roads would be cool too.
Union Pacific (1939) with Joel McCrea is a good old one about that, but we need a new one depicting that life.A remake of Whispering Smith (1948), about a train detective hunting train robbers, might be a good story. Maybe I just need to watch Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) again, as it deals with trains coming to town. Maybe I need to rewatch the 1970's Kung Fu series again.
I watch my Encore Western channel nearly every day to catch Laramie, Tales of Wells Fargo, Cheyenne and Maverick!
ETA: Just found out the 1960's TV series The Wild, Wild, West is on Pluto
This post was edited on 1/27/25 at 4:16 pm
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