As much as I love horror films my other big favorite genre of movies is the western. Racist, sexist, and just generally a mess or not it's just such a wonderful genre. It's the most mythological of genres, I feel. Also try and fucking tell me that the themes of the Dollars trilogy are not some of the best film has ever seen. EVER. Because it just fucking isn't true that they aren't.
I LOVE THE DOLLARS TRILOGY SO MUCH. Also westerns in general! I will watch a guy read a phonebook for an hour if he's in a desert wearing cowboy boots and a ten-gallon hat (and has an Ennio Morricone score playing behind him). :D
inorite They're just such lovely films. I'm also fond of movies that are very much westerns but not actually westerns in a traditional sense. Things like Kurosawa's samurai films, Star Trek: TOS, or Mad Max.
Yes! There are so many action movies that are westerns but refuse to admit it (lookin' at you, Dirty Harry). The Matrix also hits some of those buttons. And Kurosawa's movies are just so. good. omg.
Dirty Harry is something I haven't fucking watched. FOR SOME REASON. Mysterious. I'm going to write my fst paper for the semester on Mad Max as a western. There's some scenes I'm definitely thinking of writing about. Though I'm not sure what like...the overarching theme of the whole paper will be. Because just Mad Max is a western is boring.
TOS is a space western along with being a space opera. This can be seen in the bright and shiny nature of its morality, which is rather similar to that of some of the popular western shows and serials. Arguments can be made about the actual cast as well. Bones being the one that most obviously fits one of the western's character archetypes, that being the doc. Another argument made regards the travel aspect of the series. Namely it's like a wagon trail western. The nature of the TOS klingons gets compared to how Native Americans are portrayed in westerns from the 30's as well. Thematically TOS is similar to the Manifest Destiny thing we see in a lot of the earlier westerns. Basically the argument is that if we just gave everyone silly hats and replaced the Enterprise with like wagons or a stagecoach we'd have a western right the fuck away.
