Zorro initially was a character in books by Johnston McCulley in the 1920s, but his popularity has spanned across decades and in different media–from books, to television to movies. If you can only watch one, watch Tombstone.***Īnother more recent throwback remake, is the 1998 film The Mask of Zorro.
Kurt Russell is a way cooler Wyatt Earp than Kevin Costner. ***Note: Kevin Costner’s movie Wyatt Earp came out a few months after Tombstone, after he had read the script and disagreed with the general focus of the movie.
The film focuses on the lawlessness of the west, the free reigning banditry, and a heroic stand to serve justice. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona–a subject of many a Western. The 1993 movie Tombstone is another throwback Western, based on (and largely fictionalizing) Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday’s legendary gunfight at the O.K. An extremely risky move, but ultimately with positive results. Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven, on the exact opposite end, turns convention on its head by creating a tale without morality, and a solid anti-hero in old gunslinger Munny. In Dances With Wolves, the rules and conventions are played to the letter–noble, solitary hero goes out west and discovers the new frontier, both external and internal, as he fights to protect the innocent. These films pay homage to the old school Western–they are set in the wild west, and they employ themes prevalent in the genre (the hero or anti-hero tale, interactions with native americans, etc), but not necessarily with the same outcomes. Since we have covered some of the classics in the genre, we now explore the new frontier for the Western, and a few of the directions these films have taken since the 1970s. Instead of just the classic shoot ’em up westerns, or simple tales of morality and justice, westerns throughout the 20 th century and into the 21st have become more fluid and flexible, as seen in the more revisionist, Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s and ’70s, and the challenging of the noble hero, and daring to impart ambiguous endings. Like any other genre and art form, the Western has expanded, grown, and metamorphosed. Has the cowboy rode off into the sunset, never to be seen again? The Western, on film, has dwindled in prevalence and fashionability since its mid 20 th century heyday.
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