westerns Tagged Articles at Cinematical

A few months ago, I argued that Westerns were making a post-Unforgiven comeback and few really sparked to the idea. But there is clearly something in the air, because now studios are rushing to remake television Westerns. A few weeks ago, it was The Big Valley and today it happens to be the legendary Gunsmoke.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, CBS Films is heading up the big screen reimagining, and has put Gregory Poirier to work on the screenplay. The idea is to keep the premise, but update it with more action, adventure, and probably more Swearengen style. It's not a bad idea, and it does seem the public is hankering to see how the West was won all over again. But something tells me the public would rather see some original tales of the frontier (I know I'd trade my saddle for another Lonesome Dove) instead of just revisiting the 1950s version of it.

Did the Western make a comeback in 2007, with 3:10 to Yuma (371 screens), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (294 screens), and last spring's Seraphim Falls? That's a tough question, but the better question would be: did it ever go away? Those three movies earned a lot of attention this year, and it showed that, if nothing else, filmmakers and actors are eager to make Westerns once again, as they did back in the 1950s. How much more of a indication do you need when Pierce Brosnan, Russell Crowe and Brad Pitt don cowboy hats and mount horses? Other actors, such as Matt Damon and Colin Farrell have suggested how much fun they had while making recent Westerns. Unfortunately, audiences don't seem so interested, and conversely, producers don't want to put up the money for actors to play if audiences don't want to share in the fun.

Director James Mangold told me that no studio would touch 3:10 to Yuma, and that he had to secure financing from a bank. It opened, happily, in the #1 box office slot, but after eight weeks, it has started to slide, and is still just shy of recapturing its $55 million budget. And this is a terrific, crowd-pleasing movie with a great performance by Crowe. It's directed with energy and clarity, with an innovative use of an authentic Western soundtrack. It has exciting gunfights and chases and escapes. And if aesthetes and elitists wish, they can see bonus allusions to Iraq in the film, even if they're not actually mentioned or hammered home. It's unpretentious in every way. (Paul Haggis could take a few notes from this movie.) So why has the box office slowed down so drastically?

Over the past century, the Western ranged from being by far the most popular genre to almost dying out completely. But as often as it has been pronounced dead, it has been resurrected. One of the genre's key resurrections was Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992), which emerged almost instantly as a masterpiece and a landmark film, but, despite that, actually went on to win four Oscars. After Unforgiven (and a previous Oscar-winner, Dances With Wolves), the Western had a minor resurgence; by one count, there were more Westerns produced in the 1990s than in the 1970s and 1980s combined. This year three excellent Westerns have been released, prompting many writers to use phrases like "the best Western since..." or, more specifically, to measure the landmarks. Here, to put the record straight, are the seven best Westerns sine Unforgiven.

1. Dead Man (1996, Jim Jarmusch)

Jim Jarmusch's brutal, black-and-white poem of a movie was, like Unforgiven, as well as Ride the High Country and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a Western death-rattle, but it was something entirely unique as well, like a dream or a primal odyssey. Johnny Depp stars as William Blake, not the poet, who comes to the town of Machine for a job but winds up shot and dying in the woods, aided by an American Indian called Nobody (Gary Farmer). The great Robert Mitchum co-stars -- in one of his final roles -- as a monstrous town boss who sends out a band of killers after Blake.

Cowboys and extraterrestrials, two great tastes that taste great together, will be coming together on the big screen in an adaptation of Platinum Studios Comics' graphic novel Cowboys and Aliens. According to a report in Variety, the comic will be adapted as a live action feature by Dream Works and Universal Pictures. Imagine partners Brian Grazer and Ron Howard will produce along with Platinum Studios chairman-CEO Scott Mitchell Rosenberg who was the head of Malibu Comics back when they were publishing Men In Black. Also producing will be Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who also scripted this summer's Transformers). Ervin Rustemagic and Rich Marincic will co-produce. Screenplay will be by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby who also penned Children of Men and the eagerly anticipated Marvel Comics adaptation Iron Man. No mention yet of who might direct.

Set in Arizona in the 1800s, the genre melding Cowboys & Aliens begins when a battle between Apaches and cowboys is interrupted by the arrival of an alien craft whose commander wants to enslave mankind, and the two warring factions must join forces to defeat the invaders. The graphic novel, which was published in 2006 based on ideas created by Rosenberg, has an official website which you can see here, and the graphic novel itself can be read online in its entirety here.

I love Westerns. They're such great stories full of symbolism and pathos, often with great performances and compelling characters facing life and death situations. Westerns explore what it means to face your fears, to carve out a life among the harsh wilderness -- to be an American. Cowboys, one of the most enduring and recognized symbols of America, are a part of our history and who we are as a nation.

I remember the first time I watched a Western. My father was a huge John Wayne fan (still is) and when I was pretty young, he took me to see "The Duke" in the movie The Shootist. Even as a young man I reacted to the story about the last days of a gunfighter who knows he's about to die from cancer but wants to go out on his feet, fighting, instead of on his back. After watching the movie, I was hooked. Of course, my experience was made even more special by the fact that The Shootist was John Wayne's last film. How fitting that it should be a Western.

From then on, I watched as many Westerns as I could. Over the years as I grew older, I came to appreciate Westerns not just for their stories, but because of what the stories, characters and situations represent. Over time, I made a list of the Westerns that typify the Western -- those films that would serve as an excellent introduction for anyone wishing to explore this genre. In truth, I could populate this list with films mostly from the same director -- John Ford. His westerns are among the best and most widely acclaimed of all time.

He's an icon of the genre whose best work featured the stalwart and similarly iconic John Wayne. But to be fair, there are many other Westerns that have come out in the history of Hollywood that deserve your attention. Even if you don't love the genre, these films are still an entertaining mix of action, suspense, drama, and romance. They also happen to have compelling characters, horses, fist fights and even the occasional gun fight. And yes, stuff even blows up once in awhile too.

So, settle in at the saloon, pour yourself a shot of rye, and let's take a look at some great Westerns.

How is it that Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand -- which drops to below the 400-screen radar this week, playing on 332 screens with a gross nearing $233 million -- outgrossed the first two films? The movie is a vastly inferior sequel to Bryan Singer's excellent X2: X-Men United (2002), slammed together by a man who could be, in fact, the very definition of "hack director." He has made nothing but intellectual, artistic offenses with his films (Rush Hours 1-2, The Family Man, the truly dreadful Red Dragon and the should've-gone-straight-to-video After the Sunset), and yet has reaped millions and millions for Hollywood, with more zeroes at the end of his checks than the top half-dozen most talented filmmakers put together.

I'll do the math: Bryan Singer's first X-Men (2000) clocked in at about $157 million, and his second, even better film stopped at about $215 million. According to Lee's Movie Info, the average movie ticket price in 2000 was $5.39, and in 2002 it was $5.80. This year it's an estimated $6.56. That's 29 million tickets sold for the first movie, about 37 million for the second, and about 35.5 million for the third one. Yes, we can assume that lots of people saw the first couple on DVD -- but you have to account for a certain amount of word-of-mouth; wouldn't people tell their friends about how badly X-Men 3 sucked?