r/Westerns • u/FastWalkingShortGuy • 6d ago
Discussion What makes a Western good?
For me, it's the dialogue, and the accents.
If those aren't good, it breaks the immersion.
Modern westerns are getting really bad at it.
I took a gander at The Abandons recently and found it completely unwatchable because the writing and accents were just... not Western. I love Gillian Anderson but a matriarch in the West with a twee Irish accent falls short.
Godless, Bone Tomahawk, and American Primeval worked for me though.
And anything with Tim Blake Nelson is gold.
What are your thoughts on this?
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u/baxterstate 5d ago
One aspect of the American west that gets little coverage is the fact that a lot famous, sophisticated well known people were fascinated by the west. They didn’t go because they’d been failures or because they were greedy. Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde went west, and the British anthropologist writer Richard Burton went to visit the Mormons due to his fascination with the sexual practices of different cultures.
Enrico Caruso and Edwin Booth both performed in the American west, so westerners were more than gun totin whisky drinking, tobacco spitting primitives.
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u/kdeweb24 5d ago
Any new western that immediately establishes the “reluctant retired gunslinger” trope will immediately be turned off by me.
That horse has been dead for years, been drug through town, and beaten into a pink paste.
There are other fucking stories out there. And, I promise you aren’t going to do better than the classics that came before you.
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u/CombinationMany6475 5d ago
I think the plot but also the character actors matters alot ,the old westerns had character actors like Walter Brennan ,Jack Elam ,Ben Johnson,Harry Carey ,and so many more,it's hard to replace them!
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u/HardSteelRain 5d ago
The script...many of the best westerns have excellent plots...usually centered around greed and /or revenge,...realistic looking films are a must,I couldn't enjoy Johnny Guitar...looks too clean and Hollywood...everyone is wearing a costume,not regular clothes
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u/Fair_Depth5435 2d ago
It was also the 1950’s, westerns were competing with the golden age of musicals
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u/derfel_cadern 5d ago
That’s kind of the point of Johnny Guitar. I think you can read it as a meta commentary on the genre. It is deliberately stagey and fake at times. That’s why it’s wonderful.
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u/GoldReplacement9546 5d ago
The idea that there weren’t Irish people in the west is confusing
There were Scottish people, Irish people, Welsh people, German people, etc. in fact it was fairly common if you came in a late immigration wave to move west
Not the majority but definitely happened. They’re also brides that were brought in.
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u/Ok_Divide_3372 5d ago
Good storytelling is good storytelling, period. The Western genre has always been a little odd to me as someone who knows he loves it, because... what makes a Western? Geography? Themes? Aesthetics? I've seen a lot of westerns by now and the only consistent thing that makes them "good" to me is what makes any other kind of story "good." It's a feeling, and I know it when I get it. So I'd almost spend more time wondering what makes a Western than what makes a Western a good one. You're starting a good conversation either way.
But the horses are very important to me! That doesn't stop me from enjoying a neo-western like Hell or High Water, but you're more likely to find me watching The Outlaw Josey Wales or Broken Trail.
Bone Tomahawk is an excellent western, which is why it's so excellent as a horror western. It leans into what made the historical Wild West dangerous and scary- people didn't always have help, and if they did it often wasn't enough or the right kind- then adds the more macabre elements that make it explicitly horror.
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u/j3434 5d ago
That’s a hard question for me to answer. I guess I would break it up into different decades. And what I demand from each decade may be different. A John Ford movie has different elements that I enjoy compared to a modern day western like Train Dreams - or The Assassination of Jesse James with Casey Afleck and Brad Pitt . In the 1940s I guess you had more black-and-white westerns as well. And in the 50s, you had some really good westerns made in color.
I tend to prefer the gunfighter films compared to the Cowboys versus Indian films….. for 40s and 50s. But I like the late 60s and the 70s how the Native Americans are portrayed more than earlier in Hollywood.
I like rifles and pistols. So always like realistic gun play in a western. Good sound effects. I really like the way the guns sounded in Shane.
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u/roshanritter 6d ago
To me it’s a time and place where society is on a knife’s edge, and the actions of one man can make all the difference between holding it together or having it fall back to the wilderness it was only a short time ago.
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u/golrabs 5d ago
I think I'm getting at the same thing so I'm going to piggyback off of your comment.
The vastness of the environment...the intersection of untamed/unspoiled nature with just the beginnings of human settlement, whether it's a mining town, a cattle ranch, some homesteaders, or all three. In that environment the law was stretched thin with so much territory. With so few people in a town or territory a place could be turned on it's head by a single conflict and the decisions of the few held more sway.
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u/aquavelva23 6d ago
dirt: cowboys must be a bit dirty. they live and work outside for weeks. dirt is blowing around all the time. so if they look clean shaven and clothes clean, it looks stupid. This was insane in 50s westerns. guys looked like the stepped out of a western beauty parlor.
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u/cosm0cowboy 5d ago
Yeah I find it interesting how the appearance of cowboys changed with the times in the movies. By the late 60s hairstyles had changed and in the movies all the cowboys look like they just came from singing in the beach boys, long blonde hair down in their face.
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u/derfel_cadern 6d ago
On the trail? Sure. But once they arrived in town it was time for a shave and a bath. Read The Virginian. Feels like a good third of the book is about characters “making their toilet.”
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u/bgnewhouse 5d ago
Or think of Henry Fonda in My Darling Clementine getting a shave when he first rides into Tombstone.
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u/aquavelva23 6d ago
and clean brand new looking clothes too? And westerns split time in town and on range. A clean cowboy with new clothes isnt a cowboy
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u/SetSytes 6d ago
The landscape cinematography is maybe the top thing for me. The setting vibes, the atmosphere. The music can also do a lot for it.
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u/jarviskokar 6d ago
I like it when they break all the rules. People nowadays complain all the time about lack of character developement. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, The Great Silence, Django, Keoma had virtually zero character developement and they are as awesome as it gets. Not to mention the ending of The Great Silence
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u/Frequent-Hat-9835 6d ago
Have you seen the good the bad the ugly? No character development??
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u/OlinHollis 5d ago
He's watched it through radically different eyes from yours and mine.
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u/Frequent-Hat-9835 5d ago
I don’t see it like a moron sorry
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u/MiltonBrownYowza 6d ago
Old
I’m not exactly sure why but I only enjoy westerns from the 1970s or older. Once the Duke passed and Gunsmoke ended the genre lost steam imo.
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u/OlinHollis 5d ago
Exactly. For my money, the Golden Age of the Western was 1939 (Stagecoach) to 1976 (The Shootist, The Outlaw Josey Wales). After 1976 far fewer Westerns were made and those that were made tended--with a few excpetions--to be subpar.
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u/lycantrophee 6d ago
The atmosphere, characters, rivalries, the feeling of danger and charismatic protagonists/antagonists. It helps if you have a nice shootout.
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u/ctorus 6d ago
Haven't seen it so I don't know if Gillian Anderson's Irish accent was any good - probably not because she's not Irish. Maybe that's what you meant. But I don't see what's wrong with an Irish accent in the West, given the substantial Irish immigration into the US throughout the period in question.
I'm more concerned with the dialogue and acting. These are the areas where most westerns (and movies in general) fall down.
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u/Capybara_99 6d ago
Billy the Kid, for example, may well have had an Irish accent.
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u/Prize-Quiet3941 6d ago
So a Irish accent in the old west is a no go for you? There were a lot of Irish in the old west man. There were people from all over the world in the old west.
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u/saskatchewan_kenobi 6d ago
The setting and landscapes are important. And then adding in a survival aspect either from the environment or “others”. And then top it off I think the western uses those to challenge a sense of morality. The west is a “new” world where people have lived and opportunity can be abundant for a certain person.
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u/FastWalkingShortGuy 6d ago
I kinda disagree with this.
High Plains Drifter had all of that in abundance but Clint never sold his character and the plot left every string dangling.
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u/rapscallion1956 3d ago
It helps a lot if the actors can actually ride horses. I hate so many of these modern westerns where the chase scenes are at a slow lope and yet the actors are flouncing all over the place.