Why did Westerns stop being made?

My first sentence should've ended with a period and not a question mark. Sorry. We need an edit function on here.

They haven't stopped being made. They're just not as frequently made. Some modern Westerns have been quite successful.

Cause they're boring

R3 wins. Thread closed.

I’m not sure. I enjoyed the different sort of westerns that came out in the 90s. Is that an actual genre? Dead Man, Silent To fur and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues are all good.

They got worn out. They became stale and cliched and had been since the 50's at least. What good ones there were succeeded by going against the formula, like Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns. When you have a hit film parodying a genre, like Mel Brooks did with "Blazing Saddles", its over.

Not as many actors and actresses can pull of such performances.

We just recently had this exact thread. Why are threads getting remade? This is the second one I've seen today.

pull off

Current Hollywood moviemakers don't like men who are masculine and self-reliant.

They prefers comic movies and sissies.

Because Trigger died, Rose.

[quote]We just recently had this exact thread. Why are threads getting remade? This is the second one I've seen today.

I searched both on this site and Google and couldn't find anything.

I enjoyed "Hostiles" a couple years ago.

Because John Wayne died. The last big iconic Western film star.

R12 Maybe we didn't. I could have sworn we did and somebody said The Mandalorian was an example of a modern western.

John Wayne died years after Westerns stopped being popular.

R14 He finally won the Oscar for True Grit, actually a very good movie including his bravo performance. He died in 1979.

It seems like cop shows and especially medical dramas replaced Westerns on tv.

90s:

The Quick and the Dead Silent Tongue Legends of the Fall Dead Man Lone Star The Wild Wild West El Mariachi Desperado From Dusk Till Dawn Unforgiven County Brisco Jr. The Young Riders

2000s:

3:10 to Yuma No Country For Old Men Once Upon a Time in Mexico Deadwood The Assassination of Jesse James Brokeback Mountain

2010s

Django Unchained True Grit Justified Jonah Hex Rango Free State of Jones Dead Man's Burden

90s:

The Quick and the Dead, Silent Tongue, Legends of the Fall, Dead Man, Lone Star, The Wild Wild West, El Mariachi, Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, Unforgiven, County Brisco Jr. , The Young Riders

2000s:

3:10 to Yuma, No Country For Old Men, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, Deadwood, The Assassination of Jesse James, Brokeback Mountain

2010s

Django Unchained, True Grit, Justified, Jonah Hex, Rango, Free State of Jones, Dead Man's Burden, Cowboys & Aliens

I think they petered out because they were associated with crewcut flag waving 40s-50s Conservative America, and the 60s really changed that dynamic. They seem cliched and naive after so many people turned on and tuned in and dropped out.

Also as late as the 50s there was still a faint echo of the west in the country — there were still places where people rode horses instead of cars, and there were old men still alive who remembered 1900 — but by the early 70s that shit was as dead as fried chicken.

HBO's "Westworld" is sort of a western that has found modern popularity -- but its all modern sensibilities.

Good point r21. For the first half of the 20th century the Old West was still within living memory, and there were echoes of it that survived. Then time moved on and lots of development happened and that time period became 100% historical. That's something that didn't occur to me.

My father cane back from WWII and didn’t have a job so he went out west and worked on a ranch for about two years. Imagine that happening now.

In a way it’s actually a bit sad tbh.

Even Girl Cows Get the Bulls.

I think of the excellent movie Hell or High Water as a modern western.

Me too, r26. Also, movies like the original Star Wars trilogy were thought be considered new wave or space westerns. Westerns as a concept are still a popular genre, they have just been reimagined/modernized.

If it's not a Western from the 1960s-1970s, by an Italian director, filmed in Spain, I'm not interested. Those are the only ones I find interesting.

Westers largely became passe when the big studios decided the only way forward was focusing on tentpole pictures. Preferably with action heroes. And the teen audience they were chasing isn't interested in cowboys, unless they are center stage on some videogame. Teens want movies about Marvel heroes, robots, blood-thirsty killers and zombies. The romance of the Old West holds no appeal for them.

You’re sort of begging the question there, r29. “Westerns aren’t popular because they aren’t popular.” Oh.

Westerns are the most resilient genre, in terms of still getting funded and made despite constant box office disappointment. This is an argument that's been made in detail by people pointing out how bullshit it is that movies featuring gay themes are treated like these huge risks, the failure of one is used as an excuse to not touch any other project, etc. And yes, the funding resilience of the Western is no doubt due to its association with a particular ideal of white masculinity.

Westerns don't even need to be centered around white men though. At least over half of cowboys in actual Old West were Mexican, Native American and black. Cowboy was anyone who worked on a ranch and rounded up cattle. Hollywood just chose to fixate on the rugged white individualist narrative and kept casting Clint Eastwood and John Wayne in movies. I'm black and think it's really cool that so many cowboys were black and that culture still exists today in California, Oklahoma and Texas. Out in the Mountain West, many ranches are operated by Native Americans and in Southern Texas and Northern Mexico by Tejanos. Robert Rodriguez made his Mexico trilogy as well as From Dusk Till Dawn and Machete which were Spaghetti Westerns told from a Tejano perspective. Legends of the Fall was cool in that it showed Brad Pitt's character being practically raised by a Native American ranch hand. Django was a black Western revenge tale.

As much as I despise Clint Eastwood as a person, I did love his westerns. Honestly, after he stopped making them in the early 70’s, westerns were no longer good.

Films like Collateral (with Tom Cruise, the Michael Mann film) are basically urban westerns. Heat, also by Michael Mann - same thing.

What's a western? A cowboy? Never heard of either.

Hateful 8.

Is r35 going to pretend that they don't know who Han Solo is?

Because that character is as much of a cowboy archetype as John Wayne ever was.

[quote]Current Hollywood moviemakers don't like men who are masculine and self-reliant. They prefers comic movies and sissies.

Dum dum r10 is not intelligent to know that Hollywood moviemakers don't make movie s for themselves. TheY them moviesto MAKE MONEY!

So they give the audience what sells and what audiences WANT.

[quote]Because John Wayne died. The last big iconic Western film star.

Excuse me?

[quote]As much as I despise Clint Eastwood as a person, I did love his westerns. Honestly, after he stopped making them in the early 70’s, westerns were no longer good.

Excuse me?

Yes, R38, current Hollywood moviemakers know that current audiences don't like men who are masculine and self-reliant.

This handsome man is living out his own Western.

If it has horses, it's a western.

If the story is good, the film will be made.

Westerns aren’t out of date or bygone. We’ll watch a western and make it a huge hit if the story is a good one and told well.

My loved that one Jesse James film Pitt did. He was actually really good in it and I enjoyed that POV for a story we all though we knew, yet didn’t.

Loved Django, and am huge fan of Eastwood’s westerns, too.

Americans love their westerns, and I say that as a chick.

It was probably due to the White Supremacy premise of Westerns.