Notice the last three westerns have flopped?

I think the younger generation is loosing interest in the "wild west". I remember playing cowboys and indians and cops and robbers... most kids now are playing call of duty inside instead.
The new True Grit was a decent movie and successful. It was certainly a much darker movie than the original.
The new true grit followed the book, the older was tailored to John Wayne. (I really enjoyed both)
 
There you go. If it isn't a good movie, it's going to do badly. The "last three westerns" the OP mentioned flopped because they were bad movies. Two of them arguably weren't even real westerns. (If it's got aliens, it's science fiction, even if some cowboys are running around.)
Agree completely. Two of my favorite recent "Westerns" were "No Country For Old Men" and "Django". A good movie is a good movie regardless of its genere.
 
I liked "Cowboys and Aliens" but then I like cartoons. I wouldn't have paid money to see it, but it was ok on TV. I don't have much desire to see "The Lone Ranger" but will probably watch it sooner or later on TV. I've never heard of the other one mentioned.

The more I watch AMC, and Turner classics, the more I like movies. My wife had never seen "High Noon" until a week or so ago. She was spellbound. The same with "Open Range." She said growing up they never watched westerns. Her father said "The real west wasn't like that", which may be true, but still she missed a lot of good movies. It's fun to watch old movies with her. She's missed so many of them, not just westerns.

I agree on AMC and Turner classics. We don't watch much TV, we were in a motel and the only channel that wasn't selling imitation plastic jewelry, no I mean it wasn't even plastic it was something new that would make the imitation zirconium shine in the light, or showing you how to properly cook snail innards was a Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert movie.

Black and white, no exploding aliens or zombies, just an old fashioned love story. My wife wants to watch more of these.
 
I am getting a good laugh out of some of these posts.
You guys are funny.
 
I think the younger generation is loosing interest in the "wild west". I remember playing cowboys and indians and cops and robbers... most kids now are playing call of duty inside instead.

Gives them lots of chances to blow up ****. Realistically. Without having to go outside and run around.
 
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Johnny Depp dressed up as some kind of punk rock, zombie, satanist, weirdo american indian did not seem believable to me. I cannot imagine someone dressed like him blending in anywhere.
Clearly you've never been on the north side of Chicago on Halloween night...
 
I'd be happy....

I would be happy if Clint just found a script and directed the western, maybe playing the part of an old geezer, too. I mean, durn, the man is in his 80's. Let somebody else be the action hero. At least Clint would probably make a GOOD western.
 
I would be happy if Clint just found a script and directed the western, maybe playing the part of an old geezer, too. I mean, durn, the man is in his 80's. Let somebody else be the action hero. At least Clint would probably make a GOOD western.

He's already made one very good one, "Unforgiven", but I'd be glad to see him do another. He's become a really fine director.

Ever heard him play jazz piano? He does that well too.
 
With all due respect to Clint Eastwood (I really dug his movies in his heyday), I don't think there will be much of a demand now for a western where the hero uses a walker or a wheelchair to get around.

John

CLINT_EASTWOOD_TODAY2_zps45606946.jpg

I've seen people in their 40's that look worse. :rolleyes:
 
I'm not done yet watching the black & white movies that I grew up watching with my dad. The classics will never be replaced. We just don't have the actors of that time today. I watch TMC all the time. I'm hooked on the older classics. The westerns, the late 1800's, the roaring 20's it doesn't get much better unless Clint is in it.

Come on Clint just one more spaghetti bending western?

Posting a pic of Clint like that dirty Harry will be looking for you.

We all get old, I never had a beach bod anyway I'm more of a Buda.
 
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I did like Brad Pitt in "Legends of The Fall", although it is not really a Western. I thought it was a great movie. YMMV.....

Your right it's a great movie. One of the best in this time. I don't think we seen the best from these new actors yet.
 
I would be happy if Clint just found a script and directed the western, maybe playing the part of an old geezer, too. I mean, durn, the man is in his 80's. Let somebody else be the action hero. At least Clint would probably make a GOOD western.

Eastwood even in a wheelchair is more believable as a western star or any action star than Depp is.

Clint Eastwood and Robert Redford can both still produce and direct great movies, including westerns. There are not too many other directors or actors like them around. The rest of Hollyweird is just, well, very different from both of them.

I have not seen Redford's last one yet (The Company You Keep). It has received mixed but generally favorable reviews. Redford seems to do his best work when he is in a Western setting. I doubt it will compare to his movie The Horse Whisperer. This movie came out the same year as Titanic and in my opinion was a much better movie than Titanic. It was Redford's best movie as director and in my opinion his best performance as an actor ( I know that he and Newman did some pretty good stuff earlier in his career but nothing quite as good as The Horse Whisperer.).

In the western genre, it is difficult to top Eastwood's Unforgiven, which in my opinion is the best western ever made. It is loaded with star power having four leading men including, Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Richard Harris, and Morgan Freeman, and a tremendous supporting cast. Everything about Unforgiven is first rate from the writing and directing to the acting and costumes. It was Eastwood's Gone With the Wind, but of course on a much smaller scale.

Also the Cohen Brothers are still making some high quality movies, but not really westerns. No Country for Old Men, while close in some ways, was not really a western, even if it was set in southwest Texas. In fact on one level it was about the end of the western era, and the end of the era of men like the character played by Tommy lee Jones.

Good movies are still being made, but you have to look for them. Sloppy, gaudy, and poorly made movies are the norm and there are so many of them it makes finding the goods ones a real chore.
 
My kids bought me one of those DVD western movie packs a few years ago. Some of them feature some big name western actors. Most of the movies are really bad. Even in the golden age of westerns, most that came out were lousy. Even the great westerns have their flaws. There are sequences in The Searchers or in Liberty Valence, or any number of others that are hard for me to sit through because they are so corny.
 
In the western genre, it is difficult to top Eastwood's Unforgiven, which in my opinion is the best western ever made. It is loaded with star power having four leading men including, Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Richard Harris, and Morgan Freeman, and a tremendous supporting cast. Everything about Unforgiven is first rate from the writing and directing to the acting and costumes. It was Eastwood's Gone With the Wind, but of course on a much smaller scale.
.

Unforgiven is an interesting movie. The popular take on it by critics who up to that time dismissed Eastwood as an actor and director was that Eastwood was atoning for all the violence and bloodshed in his previous movies by depicting negative consequences to violence. After that, Eastwood was the critic's darling. I thought the same thing the first time I saw it, no doubt being primed somewhat by the reviews I had read. But on subsequent viewings I realized Eastwood is a sly dog. The shootout toward the end is a classic western dealing out to the bad guys what they have coming to them by an invincible hero. Is Eastwood repudiating violence as a solution to violence? Check out the look on the cut-up whore's face at the end if you think he is.
 
I'm a big fan both of Japanese gangster movies (yakuza eiga) and WELL MADE westerns.

"Tombstone" has all of the elements of a classic yakuza film:
  1. Taciturn but honorable hero. (Wyatt Earp)
  2. Craven, dishonorable villain. (Ike Clanton)
  3. Loyal followers of the hero. (the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, etc.)
  4. Sinister underlings and allies of the villain. (Johnny Ringo, "Curly Bill" Brocius, etc.)
  5. A shy, tentative romance between the hero and the female lead.
  6. A certain degree of moral ambiguity (The "heroes" in yakuza eiga are gamblers and borderline gangsters. Wyatt Earp tries to make his fortune as a gambler, strongarming his way into a gambling parlor.
  7. A climactic showdown between the forces of "good" and "evil". Lots of the villain's men are slaughtered. The villain is humiliated and or killed.
Two of my favorite films are "The Yakuza" with Robert Mitchum and "Tombstone". They have amazing similarities in concept.
 
I agree its hard for present day Hollywood to make a decent main stream Western as everything has to meet their PC standards. I've heard talk of a remake of "The Searchers." That should be a real Daisy.

I think the best Westerns in recent years can be found on TV (Hell on Wheels) and in Indy productions from Australia and New Zealand ("Good For Nothing", "Red Hill" and "The Proposition").
 
I'll tell you how to do a western...

Sign Uncle Si and Phil as gunslingers...
Have Ennio Morricone write some music...
Get Jim Supica and Lee Jarrett to brainstorm on some period arms...
Add a train, some gold and a gatling gun just for a little spice...
A very attractive red headed woman/damsel in distress...(for heat- needs to be filmed in cold weather)
throw in a good plot...

Mix well and VIOLA!
You got a western!

:D

Can you tell I might be influenced by Sergio Leone?
 
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If you REALLY want to be terrified, then think a remake of "Have Gun Will Travel." With Paladin as a modern day bounty hunter in Detroit and played by Eminem.
It almost happened a few years back...thank the stars above it didn't!
The "westerns" as we knew them are a thing of the past That is why I will not go to any "remakes" or "reimaginings" of the old classics.
Like it or not, when Moore and Silverheels left this Earth...so did the Lone Ranger and Tonto.
 
Make them more real

The last good westerns were Back To The Future 3, Two Mules For Sister Sara, And Paint Your Wagon.

Need good actors and good plot.

Dances With Wolves was good old west fiction. As usual I was offended that those black powder guns and cannons did not blast out large clouds of smoke.

My dad was born in 1901 and hated hunting rabbits with a black powder shotgun. He said "you fire, and then bend over and look under the cloud of smoke to see if you hit anything".

Imagine a more authentic movie showing Doc Holliday with his double barrel black powder shotgun at the O.K. Coral shootout. With the several smaller guns giving their own smoke.

For authenticity we then show Holliday and two of the three Earp Brothers limping away as the sirens at the mines sounded. And miners rushed up from the mines flooding into the streets to protect the town against the cowboys.
 
Also the Cohen Brothers are still making some high quality movies, but not really westerns. No Country for Old Men, while close in some ways, was not really a western, even if it was set in southwest Texas. In fact on one level it was about the end of the western era, and the end of the era of men like the character played by Tommy lee Jones.

Cormac McCarthy, who in my opinion has written some really fine stuff, has got the potential for some good westerns in his body of work. His Border Trilogy, which is really about the end of an era, has yielded one mediocre one (All the Pretty Horses), but ought to be good for at least one good one. The one I am really waiting to see, if it ever happens, is a movie treatment of Blood Meridian.
Blood Meridian - IMDb
Blood Meridian - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yeah, it'd be a hard movie to make, and would probably flop at the box office too, but I'd still like to see it happen.
 
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