In the 1950s and 1960s, Western movies enjoyed the spotlight, particularly with the famed Spaghetti Westerns. To this day, anyone discussing Westerns will cast their mind to Clint Eastwood (especially in the Man with No Name trilogy), Sergio Leone, Franco Nero, Lee van Cleef, and Henry Fonda. However, while they all deserve such reverence this far down the line, there are also many great Western movies from this decade.
Django Unchained (2012), True Grit (2010), The Revenant (2015), Bone Tomahawk (2015), and The Homesman (2014) rank among the very best of the genre’s modern outings, while The Salvation (2014) and Sweetwater (2013) also deserve a nod. This year, even more Western movies are making their way to the big screen or a streaming platform, with the genre seemingly continuing to make quite the comeback.
A whole lot of Western content coming your way
Among the most popular TV shows in the US right now is Yellowstone. The neo-Western drama has run since 2018 and will be concluding with its fifth season, which was split into two halves for release in November 2022 and late 2023. Many cite the show starring Kevin Costner, Kelly Reilly, Luke Grimes, and Wes Bentley as being one of the driving forces behind the uptick in interest.
It just so happens that Costner looks to be fanning the flames of this renewed interest partially inspired by Yellowstone. In May, the Oscar winner put out a post from the set of his upcoming Western movie series, Horizon: An American Saga. He says that they’re deep in production and that he “can’t wait to share it” with everyone. While the first part of Horizon likely won’t arrive in 2023, there are several others that will in the meantime. Dead Man’s Hand wrapped principle photography late last year, telling the tale of a classic Western revenge mission.
That flick, starring Cole Hauser and Stephen Dorff, will be out later this year. We’ll also be treated to Strange Way of Life, which received mostly positive reviews upon its showing at Cannes in May. The Spanish Western drama, also known as Extraña forma de vida, stars Pedro Pascal and Ethan Hawke as old friends meeting up again. The big one, however, is the re-up of Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio in Killers of the Flower Moon, which is due to be released on October 3, 2023. Newly crowned best actor Brendan Fraser and Robert De Niro also feature in Apple TV+ flick.
The constant allure of Westerns
Westerns are all about people making their own way, making their own rules to live by, and even embarking on dangerous quests just to get by. In essence, our modern perception and love of the genre can be boiled down to the classic Wanted poster. With the lack of legal authority, Wanted posters would help local lawmakers make some additional money for doing more work, but as we know, they’d commission bounty hunters to find dangerous criminals out in the Wild West. It’s such an iconic image, and invariably, they’re made all the more powerful by the classic line “Wanted: Dead or Alive.”
This four-word line is synonymous with the Wild West and the adventurous stories that it tells, making it ideal across entertainment as an eye-catching phrase. It’s clear that it has huge pulling power beyond movies, with Dead or Alive Saloon being a popular live casino game. It’s in there among the other gameshows and live tables as the most played from Evolution Gaming. The format has also been used more comically, even by the United States Golf Association, who put Xander Schauffele for his double-bottle swag at the 2022 US Open on a $1 million reward, Wanted: Dead or Alive poster.
Old Western movies often see the plot turn because of a Wanted poster either offering a good bounty or the protagonist suddenly appearing on one of the posters. Easily the most famous and beloved media productions to lean heavily into this staple of the genre, however, was Wanted: Dead or Alive (1958), which catapulted Steve McQueen to stardom. Now available on the content platform Hulu, it tells of a Wild West bounty hunter who would, where possible, try to bring back the targets alive.
The Old West is a fascinating period of US history to explore, only made all the more enticing by the perceived lack of rules and potential for anyone to manifest destiny. So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the genre would eventually make its way back to prominence.
