Why aren't there more Western movies

[Mike Blakesley]

Yeah, Montana has actively been trying to attract more productions, too.

The global cinema industry would need to go through a serious down-turn to get Hollywood to change its current "strategy" for theatrical projects.

I think it's happening with the superhero genre right now. The last blockbuster superhero movie was the Spiderman movie from late 2021 -- some of the others have been big hits, but I think that genre peaked with Avengers Endgame. Even "The Flash," which everyone I talked to at CinemaCon loved, fell short. (Of course, when your benchmark is a billion dollar gross, it's harder to hit.)

Disney being in a cinema tailspin right now is not helping matters either. It's kind of humorous to me that other studios are continually stomping Disney at their own game. Never count the mouse out, of course, but boy do they ever need a re-set.

[Marcel Birgelen]

The question is, what do you consider a western movie? If you look at the last 20 years, there were quite a few movies that somehow fit the bill, as in, they're mostly set in the right time period and mostly in the right location. Below an incomplete list roughly ordered by year of release:

• Open Range (2003)
• Brokeback Mountain (2005) - Did come with quite some criticism at the time and may not be your go-to Western, but clearly checks most boxes of being a western
• The Proposition (2005)
• The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)
• No Country for Old Men (2007) - Maybe not set in the right time period, but is often referred to as a "Modern Western"
• There Will be Blood (2007)
• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
• 3:10 to Yuma (2007)
• Appaloosa (2008)
• True Grit (2010)
• Meek's Cutoff (2010)
• Rango (2011) - It's animated, sure, but otherwise mostly fits the qualification
• Django Unchained (2012) - May be mostly set "in the south", but many movies otherwise qualified as a western were also set in the south, rather than "the west"
• John Carter (2012) - Probably the most controversial one, but this movie is often referred to as "A western in space"
• The Lone Ranger (2013)
• Hateful Eight (2015)
• Ain't Them Bodies Saint (2013)
• The Homesman (2014)
• Bone Tomahawk (2015)
• Slow West (2015)
• The Magnificent Seven (2016)
• Hostiles (2017)
• The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) - A series of more or less comedic and tragic anthologies, yet set in the right time and place.
• The Harder They Fall (2021)

[Gordon McLeod]

Well they would need to resurect Republic Pictures

[John Eickhof]

A LOTTA LUCK! of course who can name from the list above that are remakes of classic westerns? I see six right off...some additional may be retitled but close to an earlier story...just like the super hero movies...that is hollywood for ya! ...

[Leo Enticknap]

The problem with Westerns is that they were essentially a form of revisionist history, depicting a sanitized view of the Old West that didn't really exist. Movies depicted characters played by John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, whitewashed and packaged for public consumption. Themes of Rugged Individualism and Manifest Destiny just don't play well with audiences, today. Political correctness has taken over our culture.

There were Westerns that challenged the sanitized view, even back in the day (e.g. Bad Day at Black Rock, Rancho Notorious), not to mention more recently (Hateful Eight). A major issue, IMHO, is that Westerns are history, period. The colonization, civilization, or whatever you want to call it, of the western states is no longer within anyone's living memory. During the classic Hollywood period, a lot of the population heard about it first hand from their parents and grandparents. Wyatt Earp lived until 1929, around a decade after Hollywood had become a globally dominant entertainment brand. So in some ways, the Western now falls into the same category as costume dramas set in Victorian England - arthouse fare, rather than mainstream.

I suspect that the next genre to experience this will be the WWII movie. A few weeks ago, I saw Jaws in a group of people that included a well-educated 17-year old. She didn't understand any of the historical references in the Robert Shaw character's account of how he survived the sinking of the Indianapolis: I had to explain them to her. At her age, I had learned about it even growing up in England, thanks to grandparents who had served in the war. Her generation is the first that is unlikely to have had any living relatives who experienced WWII, and as they reach adulthood, I expect fewer movies to be made about it as a result.

[Bobby Henderson]

Yeah, Westerns made prior to the modern MPAA movie ratings system were mostly sanitized and romanticized depictions of the old west. However, some of them pushed the limits of the time. The Searchers is a good example.

The Wild Bunch is noteworthy for its dark themes, not to mention all the blood. I love the tagline on one of the posters: Unchanged men in a changing land. Out of step, out of place and desperately out of time.

Unforgiven was a western that was deliberately anti-romantic. I think it's a masterpiece from Clint Eastwood. The story confronts the fantasy world of men playing at being cowboys and outlaws. When men get shot and killed in real life that reality is very different.

Most war movies were commonly sanitized and glorified prior to the 1960's. Even going into the 1980's most war movies were still just action movies meant only to entertain. I think Das Boot was one of the first "modern" war movies to show a very unflattering, horrific and R-rated depiction. Later in the decade movies like Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and Glory changed the landscape of war movies for good. Today it's expected for any war genre movie to go more toward realism than glorified fantasy.

[Ed Gordon]

In 1949 Philip Yordan wrote the script for House of Strangers. The film was set in the 1930's about a banker's family.

In 1954 Philip Yordan reworked the script to retell the same story as a western in the film Broken Lance. The banker's family became a family in Arizona in the 1880's on a cattle ranch. On Broken Lance, it was observed that, "This movie is an uncredited reworking of the play King Lear by William Shakespeare, moved to the Wild West with the daughters changed into sons."

In 1961, Yordan reworked the story a third time to write the script for The Big Show. This time the story is about a family in a traveling Circus.

House of Strangers is a 1949 American film noir directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and starring Edward G. Robinson, Susan Hayward, and Richard Conte.^[2][3] The screenplay by Philip Yordan and Mankiewicz (who chose to go uncredited) is the first of three film versions of Jerome Weidman's novel I'll Never Go There Any More, the others being the Spencer Tracy western Broken Lance (1954) and The Big Show (1961).

Credit: Wikipedia

So what makes a Western? Cowboy hats?

[Bobby Henderson]

I don't think cowboy hats are necessarily required. Alejandro Iñárritu's 2015 film The Revenant could be considered a western. It doesn't have a lot of cowboy hats. But the movie takes place in the 1800's, involves fur traders, native tribal people, a gruesome bear attack and very dark revenge story. Sounds pretty "western" to me.

[Frank Angel]

Yes but you're overlooking the fact that "Yellowstone" is the biggest thing on TV right now. I'm kind of surprised they haven't announced a Yellowstone spinoff movie.

Maybe they're thinking it's a one-off trend.

That is true, but it's one thing for people to click on an icon on a streaming service they already subscribe to -- it's easy, it takes no effort or cost. But it's another to get them to pick their sagging asses off the couch and get into the car to get to a multiplex and deal with all that entails; it seems these days it's mostly the blockbusters that have the power to get that to happen.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I don't think cowboy hats are necessarily required. Alejandro Iñárritu's 2015 film The Revenant could be considered a western. It doesn't have a lot of cowboy hats. But the movie takes place in the 1800's, involves fur traders, native tribal people, a gruesome bear attack and very dark revenge story. Sounds pretty "western" to me.

The Revenant (2015) should probably on the list I've previously provided. While the cold setting of the movie may not match up with the idealized ideas of a classic western movie, a movie like the Hateful Eight also play entirely in the dead of winter.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

So what actually makes a movie "A Western"? I can think of a number of movies that were shot out west that I would not classify as a Western. The classic Shane for instance is more about pioneer life than it is a shoot em up western like the Clint Eastwood Spaghetti westerns are.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I guess, like with so many things in life, there is no straight answer. I'd say that, in general, movies set in "the West" of the U.S. and in the 19th century mostly qualify for the term "Western". I usually call those "shoot 'em up style" Westerns "Cowboy movies". While the average life of a cowboy wasn't as exciting as in most of those movies, it's the image of the cowboy that's often idealized in those same movies.

There are a lot of sub-genres involved with westerns and there are also some hybrids/crossovers: What would you call a movie like Back to the Future III? Or a movie like Westworld?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

What would you call a movie like Back to the Future III? Or a movie like Westworld?

Science Fiction for those two...

[Marcel Birgelen]

Well, then imagine the following movie with the following, entirely original plot (Hollywood, just P.M. me if you want to license it): It's a movie entirely set in the West of the U.S., it's right smack in the middle of the 19th century, all kinds of plots, twists, intrigues, whatnot manifest themselves... the second-best shoot-em-up Western ever made! Then, five minutes before the conclusion, the protagonist wakes up among a bunch of his fellow "friends". In the center, the "Dream Machine" of Inception... it was all just a dream. THE END. By the time that happens, you'd probably want to launch the next-best highly explosive device directly at the screen, but there you are...

So, you'd consider that Science Fiction or rather a Western with some Sci-Fi elements? Or the other way around? "Garbage" or any equivalent answer isn't considered a valid qualification, the movie was awesome, you just didn't get it.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

What about 'Independence Day'? Sci-Fi and mostly shot out west.