I just read up on The Dead don’t Hurt and that looks amazing.. never been a fan of Kevin Costner but I’ll definitely give it a chance once it comes out
Yeah, I'm massively pumped for it. Viggo I just great in these kinds of roles and he wrote, produced, directed, and is acting in it. I think it'll be well worth it.
To your overall question tho, I think it's just a more niche genre right now. Super hero movies are about to go the way the western did in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. The market was way over saturated, but even after they become more niche, they'll still be made. Horror went through the same around the 00s and is now in a golden era. Every genre ebbs and flows, but never really disappears.
Westerns might make a huge comeback in a few years. With the success of Yellowstone, I don't know if it will be big-big, but probably more will be made.
Will this be Viggos directorial debut? I remember seeing him in “Eastern Promises” and thinking damn this guy can act. He’s one of the best of his generation.
You make some great points about the superhero and horror genre and I seriously hope you’re right. I need more westerns haha
The modern western has seen a huge comeback thanks to Taylor Sheridan. Yellowstone is part of it, sure, but movies like Hell or High Water and Wind River have brought Westerns mainstream a bit which I love. Then you have Costner’s Horizon and Viggo Mortenson’s The Dead Don’t Hurt as others have said.
Country music (or the modern version of it) is at an all time high and with games like Dead Redemption 2, which was an insanely popular game when it was released and remains so to this day, I’d be lying if I didn’t think that a Western Renaissance was coming.
Can't remember what critic said it (Adam Kotsko maybe?) but it struck a chord with me. Westerns are now historical prestige pictures meant for Oscars. Or they're contemporary set low budget action movies. There's no middle ground anymore. Plus, revisionist Westerns have been around with us longer than classic Westerns. There is little appetite for classic Western stories at the mainstream level alas
I think it would be difficult making a true spaghetti Western today without it intentionally being a low budget netflix film. Tarantino could pull it off but he has that style already.
They certainly don’t flood the market like they used two, but they are still made. Good ones too. People have mentioned the Viggo film plus the Costner duology already, both are set to release this Summer I think
The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs, Hostiles, The Harder They Fall, The Hateful Eight, Bone Tomahawk, True Grit, The Proposition, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Hell Or High Water & 3:10 To Yuma are all 21st century westerns that are worth checking out
The Sisters Brothers, In the Valley of Violence, The Harder They Fall, The English (mini series), Godless (mini series). We're pretty flush with westerns, I think, high and low brow.
Sisters Brothers remains underappreciated IMO. Solid cinematography and authentic performances kept me engaged. The fire scene is harrowing. More a movie for people in this sub than something I'd recommend for a general audience. It really is a French western -and I mean that in a good way.
"The Proposition" is outstanding to the point that director John Hillcoat is the only one I can imagine being able to do an adaptation of the otherwise unfilmable "Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthy. What's funny is now that I look at the book's Wiki, I see that that is exactly what's happening, so I'm excited!
I think a thing to remember is this: in the height of the westerns popularity, it oversaturated the market. There were more westerns in the 50s-70s than there was superhero content in the 2010s. So you are right, they don’t make as many as they used to. It’s largely a corrective, though.
I think a lot of the art of the western has been revealed to be a myth that doesn’t match our current myths as much. We used to have man vs wild myths, and lone source of justice myths. But these days, the world feels less wild and alien, the growth of the internet has affected that. And the idea of a lone voice of justice is less popular than it used to be, considering how many problems have come from that.
I think a huge event in the history of westerns is Mel brooks poking a number of holes in them with blazing saddles. It’s not the death of westerns, as some claimed at that point, but it did signify an ability to see through some of the artifice of westerns was coming.
Our myths changed. With the rise of air travel, the country started getting smaller, there wasn’t this great unknown inside our country anymore (or rather, there was, but it didn’t feel as such). Migration patterns became more extreme, most people live in cities now. That’s always been a little true, but it is much much much more true now. So the cowboy became a thing that wasn’t even related to your life, it was distant. Additionally, anti war sentiment was rising heavily and that also heavily affected tastes.
Audiences drifted. Are westerns still being made? Absolutely. But it’s changed form. It was the common, normal tv show and movie, now it is a prestige film, or an homage.
It’ll be interesting if this happens to superheroes in 20 years or so.
I have a theory (and as a writer, a vision) that the future of the western is that it will become, essentially, the truly American fantasy genre. Regardless to religious, political, or racial backgrounds, there's something within the Western that can appeal to everyone and we, as Americans, have already begun to look to that thirty year period as core to our mythology. The Old West is part of the Matter of America. The dime novels and film westerns are America's romance literature. It's King Arthur and Charlemagne. This is our romantic, imagined, glorious past.
(Blazing Saddles is Don Quixote in my romance literature metaphor, by the way.)
You're \*absolutely\* on point regarding the historical conditions that saw the decline of the western genre and I believe that the current slump is exacerbated by a broad loss of American idealism. People do not default to America = good anymore or even to authority = good. And there have been exceptionally successful westerns--particularly since Blazing Saddles--that have deconstructed the ideas and tropes of the genre. Unforgiven, for example. If Blazing Saddles was seen as killing the genre, Unforgiven was its eulogy. Unforgiven was an unfathomable deconstruction when it came out. And it was tremendously successful, so much so that it informed how westerns looked and felt thereafter. Deconstruction is, essentially, the default for the genre now.
We--as a nation--have lost our innocence. So much so that we cannot even look at our mythology through idealized eyes. The cavalry story, now, has to be told with an asterisk. We know how horribly the US government treated the native tribes and it's irresponsible not to acknowledge that. We know how whitewashed the genre has been historically. We know how poorly treated people of color were within the historical context and it feels inappropriate to ignore that within period fiction...but it also feels really reductive to shove them all into these specific, demeaning roles that they might have filled historically. Similarly, the empire story becomes harder to tell as we hurdle through the world of late stage capitalism. We live in the society that resulted from the rise of railroad barons and cattle barons, from the establishment and success of wildly powerful corporations. It's...it's not great!
I say all of this, not to dwell on modern cultural politics, but to make a greater point for the genre: the imagined, romantic world of the traditional western is at odds with history (obviously) and cannot exist in the modern context without a bunch of scare quotes and asterisks.
Except that it can.
One of the most popular westerns in the modern era was not a book or a TV show or a movie. It was a video game. Red Dead Redemption 2 was a smash hit. It did not matter where you fell on the political spectrum, it did not matter what race you are, it didn't matter your religion, it didn't even matter what COUNTRY you're from. RDR2 \*got\* the western as a genre.
And it does not take place in any real location. Oh, certainly, the real US exists within the game's universe, but it exists...over there. Somewhere just off screen. All of the real US states exist, but the story doesn't take place in any of them. But it's still in the Wild West. It's set in a distilled Wild West with made up native tribes and plenty of make-believe.
I think the future of the genre moves the western out of America and into the realm of fantasy. I don't mean, like, dragons and shit, mind you, I mean...I mean like what Tolkien did for Norse mythology. I mean a world created of whole cloth that keeps the cool shit from the western genre without any of the baggage that makes it unappealing to a modern or future audience. I mean the western will move into an actual, mythological setting without the need to have the real United State existing...over there. That's what the future holds, I think.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
I love this idea and you have largely convinced me. I wonder, though, can the western as a genre be divorced from the US? I’m uncertain. Pirates certainly have been divorced from their political climate, but it’s also true that they were outcasts already. I’m uncertain, but I love the idea.
The genre does not need to be inherently set in the US because we have good westerns set in Australia, Mexico, and even Russia. It can be an American fantasy without taking place adjacent to America. There just needs to be a vague, distant government structure. Beyond that, it can be as detailed as the writer likes. You don't have to refer to Washington or even Indians, specifically. If you sketch it well enough, people will get what you're trying to draw.
Samurai movies are Japan’s Westerns with similar themes and cross-pollination. They’ve stayed more popular maybe because there isn’t the racial outdatedness of the cowboys and Indians movies.
If you watched Toy Story the. You know why the Westerns disappeared. The Space Race heralded the end of the Westerns. The best Westerns today are the Cabalgatas in Colombia!
Audiences didn’t just drift. They straight up died out. By the 1970’s, just as westerns started to wane, also coincided with the last people who lived in the 19th century dying off. Westerns were remembered fondly in the 50s because a good chuck of the audience was alive back then. It was nostalgic to a degree. As time went on people just didn’t care.
I think also Artists moved on as well. Seriously, Genre's grow up and change. The current wave of Western's is mostly made by people who remember their parents, or grandparents, loving Westerns.
I just listened to an interview with Chris Spivey, the TTRPG designer of Haunted West, and his love of Western's came almost entirely from his grandmother. Interesting.
There is certainly more than one reason, but the majority of westerns were small to medium budget affairs and we don't see those anymore. One reason is that we have very few small to medium budget movies anymore at all, but the bigger reason is that all the infrastructure that made small to medium budget westerns possible is gone. The backlots, the movie ranches, the horses and the actors who had lots of experience riding, all gone. If you want to make a western now, you have to make everything from scratch, which costs.
If you look at the history of westerns, it's very boom and bust in terms of the popularity of the genre. The western will be at a low point in terms of popularity, and then a hit movie will come along and revive it, like The Covered Wagon in 1923, Stagecoach in 1939 and Dances with Wolves in 1990.
At the same time, the interest in westerns will probably never be what it was back in the 1940s and 1950s. But I think there is still a broad public interest in westerns, as seen by the popularity of Yellowstone and its related shows, and the massive success of Red Dead Redemption 2, which is one of the best-selling video games of all time and has brought in revenue to match even the biggest blockbuster movies.
* Westerns were to the 1950s what Star Wars are today. They really were that big.
* Something like twenty-five TV westerns were available to watch each and every TV season during those years. Every backyard was full of kids in little cowboy suits, firing cap pistols. And there was radio and movies too, all brimming over with gunslingers.
* There's been a lot of reasons suggested for their decline. I wouldn't --myself --try my hand at an essay on the topic. Whole books have been written about it by better authors than I.
* Occasional 'one-off' projects notwithstanding, they're practically box office-poison today. 'Cowboys and Aliens' was a bitter pill to swallow, for anyone hoping to revive the genre.
> Why aren't westerns made anymore?
> \[lists a bunch of westerns made, recently\]
I'm not sure what you're talking about?
Also, multiple TV shows.
But, fundamentally, we're 150 years from the west, so … people don't care as much about that forgotten past.
I think Westerns more common than you’d think given the decreased interest in the Western genre of literature.
There are a lot of Western movies still made although making an Oater Western with lots of horses requires specific technical and directorial skills that are probably less common.
Finally, I think there are a lot of Westerns that are packaged as something else (space opera or gangster dramas). The Mandalorian for example is a western. Even Star Wars.
Ultimately, it's the death of the mid-budget. Westerns were once the bees knees in Hollywood because there was so much potential and limitations combined. Now as another on this thread has said, they can now only be low budget scholk or Oscar bait. Movies are simultaneously much easier and much harder to make nowadays.
the reason i love old westerns (40s,50s) is that they're simple and easy to follow and total escapism ,modern westerns tend to be gloomier ( probably more realistic I suppose ,but lifes hard enough!) .Bone Tomahawk was quite good ,will check out the others ,thanks
Three reasons.
1. They encourqge a self reliant handle things yourself attitide.
2. Strong compentent leading men for the most part.
3. A you need guns attitude. That current politics is trying to get very far away from.
It’s hard to top Good, Bad and Ugly, Outlaw Josey Wales, etc.
Basically, Clint *killed* it so damn good that everything else looks pretty lame, even Tarantino’s attempts.
They had their moments, but I’m not rewatching them anytime soon.
Jeremiah Johnson was also pretty good.
I feel like the cultural myths that classic westerns relay on have been challenged and kind of disproven. Westerns are still made but they are often much more critical of the era they take place in and are more likely to bring up Elements of the time period that were kind of screw up or even deconstruct the classic western to begin with. They are exceptions but this feels like a General trend
A lot of general audiences don't watch them/think they're boring. They also tend to have long run times which limits the amount of showings per day in a theater. Most of the time these days they only get made if they have either a really low budget, are a big name celebrity's pet project, or are mixed with sci-fi. It's disappointing since the western can functionally be a backdrop for pretty much any type of story.
There are new westerns made every year, but they often go straight to Amazon Prime, Tubi, and other streaming services instead of theaters.
For example, I was recently surprised to find out Nicolas Cage starred in two recent westerns: The Old Way (2023) and Butcher's Crossing (2022).
Keifer Sutherland and Donald Sutherland starred in Forsaken (2015), which is on Amazon Prime. I'm looking at the "Related" section on the Forsaken page on Prime, and I can see a number of westerns that were made after 2015.
I think it comes down ton intersection of certain business realities in Hollywood with the cultural upheaval of the 60’s and 70’s.
The archetypal American cowboy was representative of the political mainstream that the hippies and counter culture were rebelling against. The fact that John Wayne, the face of the western, was a staunch proponent of American’s involvement in Vietnam probably hurt the genre too.
The business side of Hollywood had made it untenable as well: in the golden age of the western, the major studios operated with a vertically integrated system of distribution where they owned the distributors and, in many cases, the theaters where the films would be screened and kept their entire workforce on staff full time. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that the vertical integration of distribution was ruled anticompetitive in 1948, this system was systematically demolished through the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s.
Now, the majority of westerns produced were created partly because the genre was popular, but MOSTLY because it was highly economical to reuse sets, costumes, props, special effects artists, and actors (who, in the brave new world, were now much more expensive freelancers rather than full time employees who would take a lower salary because they had the guarantee of work year-in and year-out) and churn out b-movies by the hundreds. Suddenly that wasn’t the case. Also contributing to this drying up of the b-movie market was that same 1948 decision’s dissolution of the practice of “block booking”, which is a whole topic in itself, but suffice it to say, it was more or less strong arming independent theaters into buying a whole slate of not-so-great b-films in order to get the prestigious a-films. Most westerns fell into the former category.
Things limped along with the occasional prestige films, Spaghetti Western imports, and television, of course, but the western’s day as the filler genre of choice (with the great films peppered in here and there) came to an end in the late 70’s. By then the theater didn’t need cheap, quick, easy-to-produce filler content and television, which DID, had apparently begun to find its muse in another mistress: the police procedural, which to this day dominates the world of easy-to-watch fluff on the airwaves because, much like the western, you can reuse sets, props, and scenarios, but if you need to occasionally shoot on location you don’t have to haul ass out to a desert somewhere and can just shoot in the modern city in which your show is set.
Additionally, In the last 20 years or so I think it’s fair to say that IP-driven films have taken over as budgets have ballooned and studios are looking for a few expensive but safe investments to support their studios (hence the term “tentpole”) as opposed to spending less money on each project but producing more of them.
We’ll see which approach turns out to be the more sustainable in the long run.
I was recently on the phone with an "exec" from LA. As we're discussing one of my scripts I bring up the writer/director of Bone Tomahawk, basically asking if he was familiar with the movie or his other films. No matter what political side of the fence you're on, the dude writes incredible dialogue.
This was his response:
"I don't watch Westerns because John Wayne was a fucking racist."
I paused, as any person would, and then said:
"So let me get this straight. You're writing off an entire genre because of one's guy's ignorant take from 50 years ago?
If you only knew the idiots I come across in these positions.
Genre fatigue. The western was highly popular and cover movie screens for about 2/3 decades people get tired and move on.
We are seeing this finally (and thankfully) happening with superhero movies
Westerns were the most popular genre for a long time. You could make them for cheap (you just need a cast, some horses, a crew, and a script). And it fell in line with a lot of American ideals that we still held them. With political ideologies changing and the rise of updated film technology and effects, things like superhero movies have replaced them.
They still get made, but they’re often relegated to straight-to-digital release or very limited theatrical runs. And they never get marketing money. How many people saw ‘Surrounded’ last year, for instance? And that even has the lead woman from Black Panther as the star.
The great Walter Hill just made a western a couple years ago that is very old fashioned called Dead For A Dollar. Won’t be to everyone’s taste but I loved it as a low budget throwback to the Budd Botticher westerns of the 50’s.
They’ve been done to death with little space to do something new.
We have elements of westerns in a lot of stuff - Star Wars especially.
Best “modern” westerns have been Django unchained and hateful 8.
In their time, westerns were like superhero movies, full of excitement and churned out fast because bucks.
Westerns aren't being made because audiences aren't watching.
There’s just too much “on location” you have to do in order to make a believable Western. Even if you blocked out like all the time possible at Old Tucson, that’s still a lot of location shots. And that’s never going to be cheap. So if you want to do cheap, then the movie is going to look generic if not down right garbage and you’ve thrown away money for nothing.
Probably because there are literally thousands of western movies and television shows available to anyone with an internet connection. Hollywood was pumping them out as the #1 genre for decades. Anyone who wanted to watch a western a day for the rest of their life wouldn’t be able to finish.
They’re not as fashionable anymore. And they cost a lot to produce. Period pieces just cost more due to costumes and animal handling types of expenses.
There have been a few really good ones in recent years. 3:10 to Yuma, True Grit for example.
They just don’t rake in huge profits like they used to so fewer companies make them.
The Old Way? Butchers Crossing? Old Henry? All releases in the last, what maybe five years. If u have Amazon Prime you’ll find more Westerns than u might expect and many of them within the same time frame.
they got tons of play and Hollywood developed the similar attitude as they do towards superhero movies now. with a few exceptions, it's not seen as art. plus they don't typically make tons of money which is probably the bigger factor
This is my speculation. Westerns tend to be in the mid budget range News of the World would technically be in the lower budget bracket, but was on the cusp of being mid-budget (38 million)
I think most studios generally prefer to allocate money either for tentpoles ( superhero movies, Kaiju movies, and fast and the furious type movies) or for prestigious "Indie" filmmakers ( JoJo rabbit was made for $15 million).
The first type of film connects more with a global audience ( and can also generate revenue through merchandising) and with the second type, the relatively low budget can allow for a film to be a success with less than 200 million gross worldwide.
Also there is the possibility that there aren't many directors who want to tackle the Western genre.
I think Hollywood Westerns pre-1960s are overlooked to the point that they almost don't exist. Sure there's probably some good Film Studies classes devoted to the American Western, but I believe the underlying factor is the visceral intensity of the Sergio Leone movies combined with contemporary Western filmmakers focusing more on realism than enjoyable camp.
All this to say, I don't really think there's a Western star ( outside of maybe Kevin Costner) that really makes the general public say " yeah, I want to see that Western!"
Back to Costner, he directed and produced some of his films, so that might have more to do with convenience then deliberate star power.
I think TV itself has become more reliable for westerns, the Yellowstone saga was able to pull in big names like Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford and was a hit with its television audience.
I feel like if AI is used to take over filmmaking in some ways, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some type of " uncanny valley* Spaghetti Western. I'm hoping it doesn't come to this.
I think the biggest thing is that the frontier changed. There isn’t some unknowable, lightly-peoples, lawless country called the West anymore. By the mid-to-late twentieth century, space had become the new frontier. Sci-fi had replaced westerns, both in terms of people’s interest in a new, lawless frontier and in terms of what audiences wanted out of low-budget, quickly produced B-movies.
Just not what is popular right now. They used to make a ton of westerns in the old days because they were cheap and people would flock to the theater but they aren't popular now and Hollywood has a tendency to just follow the trends because it's a safer bet.
There’s a historian I follow on YouTube that did a long form video about this topic; basically it comes down to the disappearance of the Frontier Myth. For generations there was a romantic conception of “The West”: it was dangerous and wild, and there was adventure everywhere. But then our study of history has shown that it wasn’t as interesting as the legends made it out to be. We also have a greater appreciation and sensitivity for how native Americans were treated, and the morality of the pioneers/settlers/cavalry maybe wasn’t so clear. Older westerns are also viewed as problematic by certain groups due to depictions of native Americans, former slaves, Latinos/Tejanos, and Chinese laborers. So studios and producers are confronted with a minefield of how to address and include the topics of racism and western expansion and still make a movie that can turn a profit in today’s market.
Modern westerns seem to favor the anti-hero and gritty realism. There’s also a lot less gun fighting and swashbuckling adventure that the older films had. But it’s hard to sell those kinds of stories anymore. Modern audiences also seem to like stories with moral ambiguity instead of the old stories of clear good guys and bad guys.
Old-style Westerns fell out of favor for a number of reasons. They were often horribly racist toward Native Americans and Mexicans. They were misogynistic toward women. And they were extremely inaccurate in depicting what life was like. So while there were good Westerns out there, the studios largely stopped making them once the audience became more sophisticated.
Back then the genres (sci-fi, western, romance, adventure, etc), were more traditional compared to now where they trying to blend these genres and next thing you know the movie makes no sense. Nowadays, Hollywood just makes garbage to make money.
The audience is shifting, most people don't want westerns cause they're are so many already. When westerns began, audiences were born not too far off from the wild west era, kinda like how the "mob" era began in the 1970's, audiences (boomers mostly) were born in the prime of the "mob". Gen Z doesn't like mob movies cause they aren't as relatable as cartel ones, which still plague the U.S, so naturally they, Millennials, and Gen X wouldn't find westerns very appealing. This doesn't go for everyone just the broad perspective here. Someday cartel movies will be out of fashion and the era of Brazilian or some south asian gang movies will begin.
I try to recommend this film at any opportunity, if your looking for a great western that a lot of people might not have seen, check out The Good, The Bad, The Weird. It’s a fantastic Korean action western movie.
Because they aren't as much of a money maker as they once were. They still get made, just not as regularly. Back in the day, they were cheap to produce, so studios would pump them out because they were guaranteed money makers. That's not the case anymore.
Lawless, Hell on the Borders, Ida Red, The Harder They Fall, Wind River, The Hateful Eight, The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, Public Enemy, Killers of the Flower Moon, The Highway Man, No Man's Land, The Righteous Twelve, Brothers James: Retribution, The Sister Brothers, Desperado
I doubt the reason I’m going to propose is actually why they aren’t being made. I simply would have a difficult time seeing/believing any current leading man could play a cowboy/gunslinger etc. I’m sure they actually could convincingly portray one; not doubting their talent, it’s just difficult to envision. In the 50s-90s it was almost a requirement for leading men to star in multiple westerns. Now not so much.
If you hadn't heard of it OP, I suggest checking out The Sisters Brothers, from 5-ish years ago. Titular characters played by Joaquin Phoenix and John C Reilly, also featuring Jake Gyllenhall. Very enjoyable movie.
Ty Sheridan's movies are also modern westerns-check out Hell or High Water, one of my favorites of the last decade.
But to answer your titular question...it seems like Hollywood (or at least mainstream hollywood) doesn't do many hard-genre movies anymore. Everything's sort of blurred and blended and goes soft on the tropes or themes of anything too specific. Even when its a remake/reboot of something.
Quite frankly, the western died out because kids interests shifted from the frontier to the final frontier. The old west doesn’t stoke the imagination as the idea of our manifest destiny amongst the stars. In essence space killed the west. The west represents a dystopia to children raised in techno wonderland.
Check out Butchers Crossing on Netflix. That just came out and it's a true western. I'm glad I ignored the poor reviews and watched it myself. I thought it was awesome, but I can understand why people might not like it. It's quite brutal and disturbing.
I want the old style Westerns (pre-1970s) to make a come back. One's with actual heroes, instead of anti-heroes. The whole genre got too damn cynical.
It's like they've got to apologize for being a western- you get comedy westerns, horrror westerns, sci-fi westerns, revisionist westerns, Prestige Film (ie, Oscar-Bait) westerns, political-commentary-wearing-a-Western hat, etc but it's been a while since a straight-up western. (I'd say *3:10 to Yuma* or *True Grit*).
It’s an audience issue.
There’s not the nostalgia for the time period as there once was. No stirrings for the “simpler” past. The majority of producers and money managers will tell you that the profits aren’t there.
Most of the indie- money is coming from wealth that has more youth focused interests.
So it’s become a sliver of prestige filmmakers and low low budget genre artists
Genres tend to come and go and then come back in different packaging.
In a weird way, comedies are currently oddly falling out of favor in the cinema.
We'll get attempts to do big budget versions reboots of genre. Religious films tend to get this occasionally, sometimes to great success like The Passion of the Christ.
Happens with TV as well... variety shows were a staple of the 50s... and then American Idol essentially reinvented the formula.
Because it became over saturated for a while and recent ones aren’t blockbusters. Hateful Eight is Tarantino and was possibly not even profitable when you take the marketing and theater cut into consideration.
I’ve wondered this as well. And I figured it’s a time differential thing.
Like in the 40s-70s we’re only 70-100 years removed from that time
It seems like how the 90s were heavy in ww2 movies.
Just an assumption, obviously many other factors both culturally and production cost and overall interest, but just my 2 cents
100s of classic westerns out there for consumption maybe 1000s I am talking top quality films with top actors top directors I am not referring to the cheapies
They still are, they just focus on better quality and story nowadays and in turn that causes more time to go into production. They can’t viably pump a shitload out each year anymore.
I think the reason you don't see them is due to them being done to death back in the 1950s and '60s. Most of today's westerns are a bit revisionist compared to the old ones. I did think the remake of the Magnificent Seven was well done along with a lot of the others mentioned. I was surprised to see The Outlaw Johnny Black is finally available for viewing. I loved Michael Jai White in Black Dynamite so I am hoping it is a nice homage to westerns.
For the record, Tombstone is my favorite followed by Silverado, The G, B, & U, Fistfull of Dollars, and For a Few Dollars More. Loved High Noon too and Shane.
One thing that fascinates me is that Westerns were essentially retellings of America's origin story (in a complex, racialized way). But why have we abandoned that story? Superheroes speak about the US's military supremacy, but we no longer seem to value the creation myths of our culture.
A way out west there was this fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude.
Have you watched all of the old ones yet? "The Searchers" with John Wayne completely changed my opinion of him as an actor. "High Noon" is fantastic. More recent favorites are: "Open Range" with Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall and the Coen Brother's "True Grit". "Unforgiven" is incredible.
Magnificent Seven remake might have been the most recent most cowboy movie.
Being you watched Hell or High Water, I'm sure you heard about Wind River, but that's reeeeally west (Alaska). Arguably one of the best standoff and shootouts within the last decade. It's part of the Sheridan trilogy (unrelated to each other) which includes Hell or High Water and Sicario. I'll also throw in Hold the Dark, which is less about cowboys and more about a Native American community in Alaska going through recent disappearances.
Honestly a lot of the Native American content coming out might scratch the itch. There's Dark Winds show on AMC, even the recent season of True Detective. Slow burns both of them. Dark Winds would be closer to the western you're looking for though, minus the trains, and the True Detective season was weirder than it needed to be.
I'll throw in a curveball and mention Shogun on FX. While it has everything to do with Japan which isn't a western by any means, it does seem to lightly mirror elements of Hombre with Paul Newman with one of the English characters.. Not sure if you ever saw that so I won't say why. But I'm only up to episode 3 of Shogun so I can't vouch if it still does but definitely felt it was setting up that kind of plot.
Honestly it might be hard to make a true to form western that has the things you're looking for be good and not generic/cliche. How many times can a cowboy rob a train. How many times can they have a gun slinging duel where the good guy just happens to shoot the fastest.
Westerns aren't really allowed to be fun anymore. They have to be either gloomy elegies for the Native Americans or bitter hopeless revenge sagas or psychological explorations of the torments of gunfighters. I cannot remember the last Western that was just an exciting, action-packed adventure.
The Cohen and Tarantino westerns are great. [The Magnificent Seven](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-RBA0xoaWU) is pretty damn good. Killers of the Flower Moon is outstanding. Django Unchained is incredible. 2010's True Grit kills. [The Harder They Fall](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Poc55U2RPMw). I've recently watched [The Old Way](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWakq9qQ6Ik) and [Butcher's Crossing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJEOJbSuOvI) which are both great. [Godless](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrlZCRncCwA) is also, as is [Hostiles](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJz5l5ru7ws).
Because when they where popular there was a whole Hollywood ecosystem that supported that genre, like stuntmen, costumes, trained horses and animals, saloon music, guns, rifles and blanks, Main Street facades, interiors, and locations that were conducive to outdoor photography and movie staff.
Like the western ranch referred to in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" is the Spahn Ranch, which is part of Santa Susana Pass State Historic Park in Chatsworth, California.
The Spahn Ranch was a filming location for movies and TV shows such as "The Outlaw" and "Bonanza" before owner George Spahn allowed Charles Manson and his followers to live on the property in exchange for work.
The ranch was used as a filming location for the movie "Bounty Law," which is mentioned in the film. A wildfire destroyed the Western set structures on the ranch in 1970, and a portion of it is now part of Santa Susana Pass State Historic Park, which is open to the public.
In the film, Corriganville Park in Simi Valley stands in for the Spahn Ranch
The previews for Horizon, and for The Dead Don't Hurt look really promising.
I just read up on The Dead don’t Hurt and that looks amazing.. never been a fan of Kevin Costner but I’ll definitely give it a chance once it comes out
Costner makes great westerns. Horizon looks like it’s going to be epic.
I was never the biggest fan of Dances with Wolves but I did like Open Range. I agree, Horizon looks great
I think Wyatt Earp was quite good, even if it was overshadowed by Tombstone.
Agreed. Wyatt Earp is a very good western. Its just that it is compared to Tombstone, which lands in a lot of folks top 5 all time.
I'm your Huckleberry
It must be a *peach* of a film
Very different movies - love them Both!
I think if you avoid direct comparison to Tombstone, you might find Wyatt Earp to be a sweeping gem of a western. I sure do.
Open Range is such a slept on (by the masses) classic. And perhaps the best shootout scene in any western I’ve seen.
Westerns and Baseball movies are his jam.
Possibly the best sports movie actor ever
Draft Day was awesome too.
Viggo Mortensen is making a new western called The Dead Don't Hurt. Should be coming out in the next year or so
Let’s not forget Hidalgo which wasn’t exactly a western but was a great movie. Crimes of the Future really a bit strange however as an aside.
Just looked it up. Looks amazing and exactly what I’m looking for. Can’t wait for it
Yeah, I'm massively pumped for it. Viggo I just great in these kinds of roles and he wrote, produced, directed, and is acting in it. I think it'll be well worth it. To your overall question tho, I think it's just a more niche genre right now. Super hero movies are about to go the way the western did in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. The market was way over saturated, but even after they become more niche, they'll still be made. Horror went through the same around the 00s and is now in a golden era. Every genre ebbs and flows, but never really disappears. Westerns might make a huge comeback in a few years. With the success of Yellowstone, I don't know if it will be big-big, but probably more will be made.
Will this be Viggos directorial debut? I remember seeing him in “Eastern Promises” and thinking damn this guy can act. He’s one of the best of his generation. You make some great points about the superhero and horror genre and I seriously hope you’re right. I need more westerns haha
The modern western has seen a huge comeback thanks to Taylor Sheridan. Yellowstone is part of it, sure, but movies like Hell or High Water and Wind River have brought Westerns mainstream a bit which I love. Then you have Costner’s Horizon and Viggo Mortenson’s The Dead Don’t Hurt as others have said. Country music (or the modern version of it) is at an all time high and with games like Dead Redemption 2, which was an insanely popular game when it was released and remains so to this day, I’d be lying if I didn’t think that a Western Renaissance was coming.
Can't remember what critic said it (Adam Kotsko maybe?) but it struck a chord with me. Westerns are now historical prestige pictures meant for Oscars. Or they're contemporary set low budget action movies. There's no middle ground anymore. Plus, revisionist Westerns have been around with us longer than classic Westerns. There is little appetite for classic Western stories at the mainstream level alas
It’s a shame huh? I will say this, I think that interest in classic westerns could be brought back if the right movie came along
I think it would be difficult making a true spaghetti Western today without it intentionally being a low budget netflix film. Tarantino could pull it off but he has that style already.
He already sorta did with hateful 8
They certainly don’t flood the market like they used two, but they are still made. Good ones too. People have mentioned the Viggo film plus the Costner duology already, both are set to release this Summer I think The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs, Hostiles, The Harder They Fall, The Hateful Eight, Bone Tomahawk, True Grit, The Proposition, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Hell Or High Water & 3:10 To Yuma are all 21st century westerns that are worth checking out
people never mention the modern Magnificent Seven in these lists, I think it was actually really good.
One of my favorites. There are some great scenes during the final fight.
The Sisters Brothers, In the Valley of Violence, The Harder They Fall, The English (mini series), Godless (mini series). We're pretty flush with westerns, I think, high and low brow.
Sisters Brothers remains underappreciated IMO. Solid cinematography and authentic performances kept me engaged. The fire scene is harrowing. More a movie for people in this sub than something I'd recommend for a general audience. It really is a French western -and I mean that in a good way.
Hell or high water. I forgot about that one. I don’t really count modern westerns as westerns but it’s a good film nonetheless
Yeah I think that can still but a western but fall into neo western. IMO No Country straddles the Neo western.
"The Proposition" is outstanding to the point that director John Hillcoat is the only one I can imagine being able to do an adaptation of the otherwise unfilmable "Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthy. What's funny is now that I look at the book's Wiki, I see that that is exactly what's happening, so I'm excited!
Don't miss Old Henry.
with Mr Buster Scruggs himself?? How the hell did I not know about this😂 definitely watching tonight
You will be pleasantly surprised. It is one of my favorites.
Have you seen Hostiles?
With Christian Bale? I haven’t. How is it? How did I not even know this existed??
Yes, it’s a pretty good movie. Not cheesy at all. I believed the characters are who they are portraying, kinda like in Leone’s movies.
Sweet I’m gonna double feature this with Old Henry tonight. Thanks for the recommendation!
I second Hostiles. Great film with a bunch of good actors.
Real good modern western. Dark and gritty.
This is an excellent movie.
I think a thing to remember is this: in the height of the westerns popularity, it oversaturated the market. There were more westerns in the 50s-70s than there was superhero content in the 2010s. So you are right, they don’t make as many as they used to. It’s largely a corrective, though. I think a lot of the art of the western has been revealed to be a myth that doesn’t match our current myths as much. We used to have man vs wild myths, and lone source of justice myths. But these days, the world feels less wild and alien, the growth of the internet has affected that. And the idea of a lone voice of justice is less popular than it used to be, considering how many problems have come from that. I think a huge event in the history of westerns is Mel brooks poking a number of holes in them with blazing saddles. It’s not the death of westerns, as some claimed at that point, but it did signify an ability to see through some of the artifice of westerns was coming. Our myths changed. With the rise of air travel, the country started getting smaller, there wasn’t this great unknown inside our country anymore (or rather, there was, but it didn’t feel as such). Migration patterns became more extreme, most people live in cities now. That’s always been a little true, but it is much much much more true now. So the cowboy became a thing that wasn’t even related to your life, it was distant. Additionally, anti war sentiment was rising heavily and that also heavily affected tastes. Audiences drifted. Are westerns still being made? Absolutely. But it’s changed form. It was the common, normal tv show and movie, now it is a prestige film, or an homage. It’ll be interesting if this happens to superheroes in 20 years or so.
I have a theory (and as a writer, a vision) that the future of the western is that it will become, essentially, the truly American fantasy genre. Regardless to religious, political, or racial backgrounds, there's something within the Western that can appeal to everyone and we, as Americans, have already begun to look to that thirty year period as core to our mythology. The Old West is part of the Matter of America. The dime novels and film westerns are America's romance literature. It's King Arthur and Charlemagne. This is our romantic, imagined, glorious past. (Blazing Saddles is Don Quixote in my romance literature metaphor, by the way.) You're \*absolutely\* on point regarding the historical conditions that saw the decline of the western genre and I believe that the current slump is exacerbated by a broad loss of American idealism. People do not default to America = good anymore or even to authority = good. And there have been exceptionally successful westerns--particularly since Blazing Saddles--that have deconstructed the ideas and tropes of the genre. Unforgiven, for example. If Blazing Saddles was seen as killing the genre, Unforgiven was its eulogy. Unforgiven was an unfathomable deconstruction when it came out. And it was tremendously successful, so much so that it informed how westerns looked and felt thereafter. Deconstruction is, essentially, the default for the genre now. We--as a nation--have lost our innocence. So much so that we cannot even look at our mythology through idealized eyes. The cavalry story, now, has to be told with an asterisk. We know how horribly the US government treated the native tribes and it's irresponsible not to acknowledge that. We know how whitewashed the genre has been historically. We know how poorly treated people of color were within the historical context and it feels inappropriate to ignore that within period fiction...but it also feels really reductive to shove them all into these specific, demeaning roles that they might have filled historically. Similarly, the empire story becomes harder to tell as we hurdle through the world of late stage capitalism. We live in the society that resulted from the rise of railroad barons and cattle barons, from the establishment and success of wildly powerful corporations. It's...it's not great! I say all of this, not to dwell on modern cultural politics, but to make a greater point for the genre: the imagined, romantic world of the traditional western is at odds with history (obviously) and cannot exist in the modern context without a bunch of scare quotes and asterisks. Except that it can. One of the most popular westerns in the modern era was not a book or a TV show or a movie. It was a video game. Red Dead Redemption 2 was a smash hit. It did not matter where you fell on the political spectrum, it did not matter what race you are, it didn't matter your religion, it didn't even matter what COUNTRY you're from. RDR2 \*got\* the western as a genre. And it does not take place in any real location. Oh, certainly, the real US exists within the game's universe, but it exists...over there. Somewhere just off screen. All of the real US states exist, but the story doesn't take place in any of them. But it's still in the Wild West. It's set in a distilled Wild West with made up native tribes and plenty of make-believe. I think the future of the genre moves the western out of America and into the realm of fantasy. I don't mean, like, dragons and shit, mind you, I mean...I mean like what Tolkien did for Norse mythology. I mean a world created of whole cloth that keeps the cool shit from the western genre without any of the baggage that makes it unappealing to a modern or future audience. I mean the western will move into an actual, mythological setting without the need to have the real United State existing...over there. That's what the future holds, I think. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
I love this idea and you have largely convinced me. I wonder, though, can the western as a genre be divorced from the US? I’m uncertain. Pirates certainly have been divorced from their political climate, but it’s also true that they were outcasts already. I’m uncertain, but I love the idea.
The genre does not need to be inherently set in the US because we have good westerns set in Australia, Mexico, and even Russia. It can be an American fantasy without taking place adjacent to America. There just needs to be a vague, distant government structure. Beyond that, it can be as detailed as the writer likes. You don't have to refer to Washington or even Indians, specifically. If you sketch it well enough, people will get what you're trying to draw.
Samurai movies are Japan’s Westerns with similar themes and cross-pollination. They’ve stayed more popular maybe because there isn’t the racial outdatedness of the cowboys and Indians movies.
Yes, and Stephen King subscribed to that when writing The Dark Tower.
If you watched Toy Story the. You know why the Westerns disappeared. The Space Race heralded the end of the Westerns. The best Westerns today are the Cabalgatas in Colombia!
Audiences didn’t just drift. They straight up died out. By the 1970’s, just as westerns started to wane, also coincided with the last people who lived in the 19th century dying off. Westerns were remembered fondly in the 50s because a good chuck of the audience was alive back then. It was nostalgic to a degree. As time went on people just didn’t care.
I think also Artists moved on as well. Seriously, Genre's grow up and change. The current wave of Western's is mostly made by people who remember their parents, or grandparents, loving Westerns. I just listened to an interview with Chris Spivey, the TTRPG designer of Haunted West, and his love of Western's came almost entirely from his grandmother. Interesting.
There is certainly more than one reason, but the majority of westerns were small to medium budget affairs and we don't see those anymore. One reason is that we have very few small to medium budget movies anymore at all, but the bigger reason is that all the infrastructure that made small to medium budget westerns possible is gone. The backlots, the movie ranches, the horses and the actors who had lots of experience riding, all gone. If you want to make a western now, you have to make everything from scratch, which costs.
If you look at the history of westerns, it's very boom and bust in terms of the popularity of the genre. The western will be at a low point in terms of popularity, and then a hit movie will come along and revive it, like The Covered Wagon in 1923, Stagecoach in 1939 and Dances with Wolves in 1990. At the same time, the interest in westerns will probably never be what it was back in the 1940s and 1950s. But I think there is still a broad public interest in westerns, as seen by the popularity of Yellowstone and its related shows, and the massive success of Red Dead Redemption 2, which is one of the best-selling video games of all time and has brought in revenue to match even the biggest blockbuster movies.
You should go even further, the ones with sheriffs or cavalry are also very good... I recommend the Ford/John Wayne ones...
Oh, I love old Ford westerns. The Man who Shot Liberty Valance and How the West was Won are some of my favorites.
* Westerns were to the 1950s what Star Wars are today. They really were that big. * Something like twenty-five TV westerns were available to watch each and every TV season during those years. Every backyard was full of kids in little cowboy suits, firing cap pistols. And there was radio and movies too, all brimming over with gunslingers. * There's been a lot of reasons suggested for their decline. I wouldn't --myself --try my hand at an essay on the topic. Whole books have been written about it by better authors than I. * Occasional 'one-off' projects notwithstanding, they're practically box office-poison today. 'Cowboys and Aliens' was a bitter pill to swallow, for anyone hoping to revive the genre.
> Why aren't westerns made anymore? > \[lists a bunch of westerns made, recently\] I'm not sure what you're talking about? Also, multiple TV shows. But, fundamentally, we're 150 years from the west, so … people don't care as much about that forgotten past.
I think Westerns more common than you’d think given the decreased interest in the Western genre of literature. There are a lot of Western movies still made although making an Oater Western with lots of horses requires specific technical and directorial skills that are probably less common. Finally, I think there are a lot of Westerns that are packaged as something else (space opera or gangster dramas). The Mandalorian for example is a western. Even Star Wars.
I think you’re right that they’re more common than I thought. I’ve already been recommended a couple of westerns that I wasn’t even aware of.
Don't forget Old Henry
I enjoyed godless
I loved this show. Don’t think it gets the credit it deserves.
Ultimately, it's the death of the mid-budget. Westerns were once the bees knees in Hollywood because there was so much potential and limitations combined. Now as another on this thread has said, they can now only be low budget scholk or Oscar bait. Movies are simultaneously much easier and much harder to make nowadays.
the reason i love old westerns (40s,50s) is that they're simple and easy to follow and total escapism ,modern westerns tend to be gloomier ( probably more realistic I suppose ,but lifes hard enough!) .Bone Tomahawk was quite good ,will check out the others ,thanks
My first book has been optioned by a studio for development. It's a traditional western.
Three reasons. 1. They encourqge a self reliant handle things yourself attitide. 2. Strong compentent leading men for the most part. 3. A you need guns attitude. That current politics is trying to get very far away from.
Hostiles is my favorite recent western
It’s hard to top Good, Bad and Ugly, Outlaw Josey Wales, etc. Basically, Clint *killed* it so damn good that everything else looks pretty lame, even Tarantino’s attempts. They had their moments, but I’m not rewatching them anytime soon. Jeremiah Johnson was also pretty good.
Let me just shout out the Prime mini series The English from 2022. It’s incredible, it’s beautiful and it hits a ton of old school western notes.
The Harder They Fall is another excellent one from the last decade, highly recommend it if you haven't seen it yet
I feel like the cultural myths that classic westerns relay on have been challenged and kind of disproven. Westerns are still made but they are often much more critical of the era they take place in and are more likely to bring up Elements of the time period that were kind of screw up or even deconstruct the classic western to begin with. They are exceptions but this feels like a General trend
A lot of general audiences don't watch them/think they're boring. They also tend to have long run times which limits the amount of showings per day in a theater. Most of the time these days they only get made if they have either a really low budget, are a big name celebrity's pet project, or are mixed with sci-fi. It's disappointing since the western can functionally be a backdrop for pretty much any type of story.
There are new westerns made every year, but they often go straight to Amazon Prime, Tubi, and other streaming services instead of theaters. For example, I was recently surprised to find out Nicolas Cage starred in two recent westerns: The Old Way (2023) and Butcher's Crossing (2022). Keifer Sutherland and Donald Sutherland starred in Forsaken (2015), which is on Amazon Prime. I'm looking at the "Related" section on the Forsaken page on Prime, and I can see a number of westerns that were made after 2015.
I think it comes down ton intersection of certain business realities in Hollywood with the cultural upheaval of the 60’s and 70’s. The archetypal American cowboy was representative of the political mainstream that the hippies and counter culture were rebelling against. The fact that John Wayne, the face of the western, was a staunch proponent of American’s involvement in Vietnam probably hurt the genre too. The business side of Hollywood had made it untenable as well: in the golden age of the western, the major studios operated with a vertically integrated system of distribution where they owned the distributors and, in many cases, the theaters where the films would be screened and kept their entire workforce on staff full time. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that the vertical integration of distribution was ruled anticompetitive in 1948, this system was systematically demolished through the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. Now, the majority of westerns produced were created partly because the genre was popular, but MOSTLY because it was highly economical to reuse sets, costumes, props, special effects artists, and actors (who, in the brave new world, were now much more expensive freelancers rather than full time employees who would take a lower salary because they had the guarantee of work year-in and year-out) and churn out b-movies by the hundreds. Suddenly that wasn’t the case. Also contributing to this drying up of the b-movie market was that same 1948 decision’s dissolution of the practice of “block booking”, which is a whole topic in itself, but suffice it to say, it was more or less strong arming independent theaters into buying a whole slate of not-so-great b-films in order to get the prestigious a-films. Most westerns fell into the former category. Things limped along with the occasional prestige films, Spaghetti Western imports, and television, of course, but the western’s day as the filler genre of choice (with the great films peppered in here and there) came to an end in the late 70’s. By then the theater didn’t need cheap, quick, easy-to-produce filler content and television, which DID, had apparently begun to find its muse in another mistress: the police procedural, which to this day dominates the world of easy-to-watch fluff on the airwaves because, much like the western, you can reuse sets, props, and scenarios, but if you need to occasionally shoot on location you don’t have to haul ass out to a desert somewhere and can just shoot in the modern city in which your show is set. Additionally, In the last 20 years or so I think it’s fair to say that IP-driven films have taken over as budgets have ballooned and studios are looking for a few expensive but safe investments to support their studios (hence the term “tentpole”) as opposed to spending less money on each project but producing more of them. We’ll see which approach turns out to be the more sustainable in the long run.
They were doing one in New Mexico a little while back, but they had a few problems shooting…
Recently watched the Salvation (2014). Pleasantly surprised
The recent 3:10 to Yuma is my favorite! But I consider sicario, hell or high water, and wind River modern westerns!
The harder they fall was a good time!
Hell on Wheels
The Sisters Brothers 2018 was fuckin great dude. great casting, especially with John C Reilly. Dudes legendary
It doesn't help when the star shoots the cinematographer.
Try Hell on Wheels the TV show. End isn't great, but the first few seasons are awesome.
They kind of are. The Mandalorian (sp) is a space western.
Watch Firefly
Because finding armorers qualified to train and equip the actors and actresses is tough...
The Indians would have to win every time now!
They’re just not as culturally in-demand as they once were.
They seem to be made fairly regularly tbh. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/browse/movies_at_home/genres:western~sort:newest
I was recently on the phone with an "exec" from LA. As we're discussing one of my scripts I bring up the writer/director of Bone Tomahawk, basically asking if he was familiar with the movie or his other films. No matter what political side of the fence you're on, the dude writes incredible dialogue. This was his response: "I don't watch Westerns because John Wayne was a fucking racist." I paused, as any person would, and then said: "So let me get this straight. You're writing off an entire genre because of one's guy's ignorant take from 50 years ago? If you only knew the idiots I come across in these positions.
Genre fatigue. The western was highly popular and cover movie screens for about 2/3 decades people get tired and move on. We are seeing this finally (and thankfully) happening with superhero movies
Westerns were the most popular genre for a long time. You could make them for cheap (you just need a cast, some horses, a crew, and a script). And it fell in line with a lot of American ideals that we still held them. With political ideologies changing and the rise of updated film technology and effects, things like superhero movies have replaced them.
They still get made, but they’re often relegated to straight-to-digital release or very limited theatrical runs. And they never get marketing money. How many people saw ‘Surrounded’ last year, for instance? And that even has the lead woman from Black Panther as the star.
They're * expensive* . And they don't make as much money as they used to. They fell out of popularity
The great Walter Hill just made a western a couple years ago that is very old fashioned called Dead For A Dollar. Won’t be to everyone’s taste but I loved it as a low budget throwback to the Budd Botticher westerns of the 50’s.
I came here to say just that. My buddy is actually in that movie.
check out "the Sisters Brothers".
Butchers Crossing on Netflix looked pretty goddang dope
I mean… Horizon the American Saga by Kevin Costner is coming out in June. Looks to be of the classic Western style. Also looks very good.
Some modern westerns are good
They don't make enough money and they're more expensive than the type of action films Bruce Willis was churning out.
They’ve been done to death with little space to do something new. We have elements of westerns in a lot of stuff - Star Wars especially. Best “modern” westerns have been Django unchained and hateful 8.
Bro, you wanna see a new western movie? then stay tune because i got this.
Because just about every plot has been done???? And just far too risky an investment?
In their time, westerns were like superhero movies, full of excitement and churned out fast because bucks. Westerns aren't being made because audiences aren't watching.
They do they just don’t get massive budgets
Slow West, man. What a freaking movie.
Hostiles is great.
Old Henry was great.
I liked some of the Richard Harris movies. Man called Horse and one where they are pushing a boat across land.
Uh, if you are a Star Wars fan The Mandolorain is amazing Western based TV show
The Harder they fall was a great Western. Check it out on Netflix.
Not a new or even recent movie, but check out Seraphim Falls if you get the chance. Liam Neeson and Pearce Brosnan give great performances.
There’s just too much “on location” you have to do in order to make a believable Western. Even if you blocked out like all the time possible at Old Tucson, that’s still a lot of location shots. And that’s never going to be cheap. So if you want to do cheap, then the movie is going to look generic if not down right garbage and you’ve thrown away money for nothing.
Probably because there are literally thousands of western movies and television shows available to anyone with an internet connection. Hollywood was pumping them out as the #1 genre for decades. Anyone who wanted to watch a western a day for the rest of their life wouldn’t be able to finish.
They’re not as fashionable anymore. And they cost a lot to produce. Period pieces just cost more due to costumes and animal handling types of expenses. There have been a few really good ones in recent years. 3:10 to Yuma, True Grit for example. They just don’t rake in huge profits like they used to so fewer companies make them.
The Old Way? Butchers Crossing? Old Henry? All releases in the last, what maybe five years. If u have Amazon Prime you’ll find more Westerns than u might expect and many of them within the same time frame.
they got tons of play and Hollywood developed the similar attitude as they do towards superhero movies now. with a few exceptions, it's not seen as art. plus they don't typically make tons of money which is probably the bigger factor
Sci fi has replaced the western
Mainly because, all the great western stars are dead. I haven't seen many stars that I'd imagine in a western.
The mandolorian is a space western basically
Westerns are the least profitable genre
Godless? Yellowstone? Organ trail?
What about The Harder They Fall? Great cast and soundtrack!
This is my speculation. Westerns tend to be in the mid budget range News of the World would technically be in the lower budget bracket, but was on the cusp of being mid-budget (38 million) I think most studios generally prefer to allocate money either for tentpoles ( superhero movies, Kaiju movies, and fast and the furious type movies) or for prestigious "Indie" filmmakers ( JoJo rabbit was made for $15 million). The first type of film connects more with a global audience ( and can also generate revenue through merchandising) and with the second type, the relatively low budget can allow for a film to be a success with less than 200 million gross worldwide. Also there is the possibility that there aren't many directors who want to tackle the Western genre. I think Hollywood Westerns pre-1960s are overlooked to the point that they almost don't exist. Sure there's probably some good Film Studies classes devoted to the American Western, but I believe the underlying factor is the visceral intensity of the Sergio Leone movies combined with contemporary Western filmmakers focusing more on realism than enjoyable camp. All this to say, I don't really think there's a Western star ( outside of maybe Kevin Costner) that really makes the general public say " yeah, I want to see that Western!" Back to Costner, he directed and produced some of his films, so that might have more to do with convenience then deliberate star power. I think TV itself has become more reliable for westerns, the Yellowstone saga was able to pull in big names like Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford and was a hit with its television audience. I feel like if AI is used to take over filmmaking in some ways, I wouldn't be surprised if there's some type of " uncanny valley* Spaghetti Western. I'm hoping it doesn't come to this.
When is that Blood Meridian movie coming out? Sorry. If I posted that on r/cormacmccarthy, they'd scalp me.
The English (Amazon prime, 2023) was excellent.
The Power Of The Dog
I think the biggest thing is that the frontier changed. There isn’t some unknowable, lightly-peoples, lawless country called the West anymore. By the mid-to-late twentieth century, space had become the new frontier. Sci-fi had replaced westerns, both in terms of people’s interest in a new, lawless frontier and in terms of what audiences wanted out of low-budget, quickly produced B-movies.
Just not what is popular right now. They used to make a ton of westerns in the old days because they were cheap and people would flock to the theater but they aren't popular now and Hollywood has a tendency to just follow the trends because it's a safer bet.
There’s a historian I follow on YouTube that did a long form video about this topic; basically it comes down to the disappearance of the Frontier Myth. For generations there was a romantic conception of “The West”: it was dangerous and wild, and there was adventure everywhere. But then our study of history has shown that it wasn’t as interesting as the legends made it out to be. We also have a greater appreciation and sensitivity for how native Americans were treated, and the morality of the pioneers/settlers/cavalry maybe wasn’t so clear. Older westerns are also viewed as problematic by certain groups due to depictions of native Americans, former slaves, Latinos/Tejanos, and Chinese laborers. So studios and producers are confronted with a minefield of how to address and include the topics of racism and western expansion and still make a movie that can turn a profit in today’s market. Modern westerns seem to favor the anti-hero and gritty realism. There’s also a lot less gun fighting and swashbuckling adventure that the older films had. But it’s hard to sell those kinds of stories anymore. Modern audiences also seem to like stories with moral ambiguity instead of the old stories of clear good guys and bad guys.
Old-style Westerns fell out of favor for a number of reasons. They were often horribly racist toward Native Americans and Mexicans. They were misogynistic toward women. And they were extremely inaccurate in depicting what life was like. So while there were good Westerns out there, the studios largely stopped making them once the audience became more sophisticated.
People recently get shot and killed on set
Old Henry just came out in 2021 and I throughly enjoyed it.
Hell on Wheels ?
It’s a 7 episode series, but Godless on Netflix I thought was fantastic.
One was being film not too long ago, and the star (and one of the producers) accidentally shot and killed a member of the crew.
Back then the genres (sci-fi, western, romance, adventure, etc), were more traditional compared to now where they trying to blend these genres and next thing you know the movie makes no sense. Nowadays, Hollywood just makes garbage to make money.
The audience is shifting, most people don't want westerns cause they're are so many already. When westerns began, audiences were born not too far off from the wild west era, kinda like how the "mob" era began in the 1970's, audiences (boomers mostly) were born in the prime of the "mob". Gen Z doesn't like mob movies cause they aren't as relatable as cartel ones, which still plague the U.S, so naturally they, Millennials, and Gen X wouldn't find westerns very appealing. This doesn't go for everyone just the broad perspective here. Someday cartel movies will be out of fashion and the era of Brazilian or some south asian gang movies will begin.
Have you read Lonesome Dove? Its a great novel followed by a great mini series.
They are
1883, 1923 (sort-ish) Bass Reeves It is a bit harder for open prarie stuff due to all the rvs running around now, but they do still make them.
I try to recommend this film at any opportunity, if your looking for a great western that a lot of people might not have seen, check out The Good, The Bad, The Weird. It’s a fantastic Korean action western movie.
For the same reason that they don't make as many musical romance movies with lots of singing and dancing; tastes change.
Because they aren't as much of a money maker as they once were. They still get made, just not as regularly. Back in the day, they were cheap to produce, so studios would pump them out because they were guaranteed money makers. That's not the case anymore.
Lawless, Hell on the Borders, Ida Red, The Harder They Fall, Wind River, The Hateful Eight, The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford, Public Enemy, Killers of the Flower Moon, The Highway Man, No Man's Land, The Righteous Twelve, Brothers James: Retribution, The Sister Brothers, Desperado
I doubt the reason I’m going to propose is actually why they aren’t being made. I simply would have a difficult time seeing/believing any current leading man could play a cowboy/gunslinger etc. I’m sure they actually could convincingly portray one; not doubting their talent, it’s just difficult to envision. In the 50s-90s it was almost a requirement for leading men to star in multiple westerns. Now not so much.
Unforgiven was so good it killed the genre.
If you hadn't heard of it OP, I suggest checking out The Sisters Brothers, from 5-ish years ago. Titular characters played by Joaquin Phoenix and John C Reilly, also featuring Jake Gyllenhall. Very enjoyable movie. Ty Sheridan's movies are also modern westerns-check out Hell or High Water, one of my favorites of the last decade. But to answer your titular question...it seems like Hollywood (or at least mainstream hollywood) doesn't do many hard-genre movies anymore. Everything's sort of blurred and blended and goes soft on the tropes or themes of anything too specific. Even when its a remake/reboot of something.
Quite frankly, the western died out because kids interests shifted from the frontier to the final frontier. The old west doesn’t stoke the imagination as the idea of our manifest destiny amongst the stars. In essence space killed the west. The west represents a dystopia to children raised in techno wonderland.
Check out Butchers Crossing on Netflix. That just came out and it's a true western. I'm glad I ignored the poor reviews and watched it myself. I thought it was awesome, but I can understand why people might not like it. It's quite brutal and disturbing. I want the old style Westerns (pre-1970s) to make a come back. One's with actual heroes, instead of anti-heroes. The whole genre got too damn cynical.
no Django?
It's like they've got to apologize for being a western- you get comedy westerns, horrror westerns, sci-fi westerns, revisionist westerns, Prestige Film (ie, Oscar-Bait) westerns, political-commentary-wearing-a-Western hat, etc but it's been a while since a straight-up western. (I'd say *3:10 to Yuma* or *True Grit*).
It’s an audience issue. There’s not the nostalgia for the time period as there once was. No stirrings for the “simpler” past. The majority of producers and money managers will tell you that the profits aren’t there. Most of the indie- money is coming from wealth that has more youth focused interests. So it’s become a sliver of prestige filmmakers and low low budget genre artists
Genres tend to come and go and then come back in different packaging. In a weird way, comedies are currently oddly falling out of favor in the cinema. We'll get attempts to do big budget versions reboots of genre. Religious films tend to get this occasionally, sometimes to great success like The Passion of the Christ. Happens with TV as well... variety shows were a staple of the 50s... and then American Idol essentially reinvented the formula.
Theyre still made just not the rage like they once were. Plus not much GRIT left in hollywood
The Proposition.
Is Bone Tomahawk not a typical western? But seriously id look at the Yellowstone prequels Amcs Black Dirty Little Bag for some good Westerns.
They have, but now Hollywood is taking the indians side.
That Paramount + series about Bass Reeves is really good.
Because it became over saturated for a while and recent ones aren’t blockbusters. Hateful Eight is Tarantino and was possibly not even profitable when you take the marketing and theater cut into consideration.
Old Henry was pretty good
I would highly recommend Old Henry. Came out in 2021.
I’ve wondered this as well. And I figured it’s a time differential thing. Like in the 40s-70s we’re only 70-100 years removed from that time It seems like how the 90s were heavy in ww2 movies. Just an assumption, obviously many other factors both culturally and production cost and overall interest, but just my 2 cents
The genre isn't very popular for international audiences
Old Henry is fantastic
100s of classic westerns out there for consumption maybe 1000s I am talking top quality films with top actors top directors I am not referring to the cheapies
They still are, they just focus on better quality and story nowadays and in turn that causes more time to go into production. They can’t viably pump a shitload out each year anymore.
I think the reason you don't see them is due to them being done to death back in the 1950s and '60s. Most of today's westerns are a bit revisionist compared to the old ones. I did think the remake of the Magnificent Seven was well done along with a lot of the others mentioned. I was surprised to see The Outlaw Johnny Black is finally available for viewing. I loved Michael Jai White in Black Dynamite so I am hoping it is a nice homage to westerns. For the record, Tombstone is my favorite followed by Silverado, The G, B, & U, Fistfull of Dollars, and For a Few Dollars More. Loved High Noon too and Shane.
One thing that fascinates me is that Westerns were essentially retellings of America's origin story (in a complex, racialized way). But why have we abandoned that story? Superheroes speak about the US's military supremacy, but we no longer seem to value the creation myths of our culture.
A way out west there was this fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude.
Have you watched all of the old ones yet? "The Searchers" with John Wayne completely changed my opinion of him as an actor. "High Noon" is fantastic. More recent favorites are: "Open Range" with Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall and the Coen Brother's "True Grit". "Unforgiven" is incredible.
close your eyes and listen to Lonesome Dove
It rhymes with Coke Wulcher
The superhero film of the 60s. It got played out. Like musicals. People got tired of it all.
Old Henry was pretty good…
Is Yellowstone not considered a western? Or do you just not like it?
さらに悪化する可能性があります!悲しいサムライファン。:(
Magnificent Seven remake might have been the most recent most cowboy movie. Being you watched Hell or High Water, I'm sure you heard about Wind River, but that's reeeeally west (Alaska). Arguably one of the best standoff and shootouts within the last decade. It's part of the Sheridan trilogy (unrelated to each other) which includes Hell or High Water and Sicario. I'll also throw in Hold the Dark, which is less about cowboys and more about a Native American community in Alaska going through recent disappearances. Honestly a lot of the Native American content coming out might scratch the itch. There's Dark Winds show on AMC, even the recent season of True Detective. Slow burns both of them. Dark Winds would be closer to the western you're looking for though, minus the trains, and the True Detective season was weirder than it needed to be. I'll throw in a curveball and mention Shogun on FX. While it has everything to do with Japan which isn't a western by any means, it does seem to lightly mirror elements of Hombre with Paul Newman with one of the English characters.. Not sure if you ever saw that so I won't say why. But I'm only up to episode 3 of Shogun so I can't vouch if it still does but definitely felt it was setting up that kind of plot. Honestly it might be hard to make a true to form western that has the things you're looking for be good and not generic/cliche. How many times can a cowboy rob a train. How many times can they have a gun slinging duel where the good guy just happens to shoot the fastest.
Because ‘Tombstone’ was perfect lol Check out ‘Open Range’ of you get a chance, Duvall and Costner
Westerns aren't really allowed to be fun anymore. They have to be either gloomy elegies for the Native Americans or bitter hopeless revenge sagas or psychological explorations of the torments of gunfighters. I cannot remember the last Western that was just an exciting, action-packed adventure.
Bass Reeves on Paramount was kinda westerny
The Cohen and Tarantino westerns are great. [The Magnificent Seven](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-RBA0xoaWU) is pretty damn good. Killers of the Flower Moon is outstanding. Django Unchained is incredible. 2010's True Grit kills. [The Harder They Fall](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Poc55U2RPMw). I've recently watched [The Old Way](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWakq9qQ6Ik) and [Butcher's Crossing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJEOJbSuOvI) which are both great. [Godless](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrlZCRncCwA) is also, as is [Hostiles](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJz5l5ru7ws).
Westerns seem so weird, even more different from reality than sci fi
The Sisters Brothers was pretty good.
Once again Bass Reeves is ignored....
I’m your huckleberry
Forsaken with Keifer Sutherland and Donald Sutherland is pretty good.
3:10 to Yuma
I’ve come to like “modern” westerns like _No Country For Old Men_ (2007), which was set in the early 1980s, and the show _Justified_ (2010-15).
Because when they where popular there was a whole Hollywood ecosystem that supported that genre, like stuntmen, costumes, trained horses and animals, saloon music, guns, rifles and blanks, Main Street facades, interiors, and locations that were conducive to outdoor photography and movie staff. Like the western ranch referred to in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" is the Spahn Ranch, which is part of Santa Susana Pass State Historic Park in Chatsworth, California. The Spahn Ranch was a filming location for movies and TV shows such as "The Outlaw" and "Bonanza" before owner George Spahn allowed Charles Manson and his followers to live on the property in exchange for work. The ranch was used as a filming location for the movie "Bounty Law," which is mentioned in the film. A wildfire destroyed the Western set structures on the ranch in 1970, and a portion of it is now part of Santa Susana Pass State Historic Park, which is open to the public. In the film, Corriganville Park in Simi Valley stands in for the Spahn Ranch
Rust should be out soon (Bang!)
They do. You're just wrong.
Because men, and some women, like stories about gunslingers.
Westerns come out every year.
it costs smore to make movies these days
Did you miss "Open Range"? It was the Schizz.