Westerns - Reaction Shots Discussion Topic

Howdy!  Come and be our huckleberry this month on Reaction Shots and join in to talk about Westerns!  Have we reached the saturation point on westerns yet??  Probably not!

Some of my favorite westerns include: No Country for Old Men, El Topo, The Wild Bunch, Tombstone, Silverado, Dead Man, Back to the Future Part 3, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, There Will be Blood, The Searchers, Slow West, Django (the og, I actually didn't like unchained all that much), Blazing Saddles, The Revenant, Meek's Cutoff, Wind River, 3:10 to Yuma, True Grit, The Proposition.

What's your favorite western?

What are your favorite western tropes?

Who are your favorite western actors?

Who is/are your favorite western directors?

Who is/are your favorite western composers?

Westerns have been around nearly as long as film itself.  The oft-cited "first Western" is The Great Train Robbery from 1903, and the Edison Company had done vaguely "Western" themed things even before that.  Why do you think the Western genre has stuck around for so long?

Let's talk subgenres real quickly: Westerns are typically divided into two (or four) main subgenres.  There are Classical Westerns, the old-school good v. bad very clear morality westerns that typically came out before World War II; Revisionist Westerns, which started coming out during and after WWII (especially from the 60s onward), that tell much more morally gray tales; and then sometimes you'll hear about Spaghetti Westerns which are those typically made in Italy by people like Sergio Leone; and "Modern Westerns" which for my money are usually Revisionist Westerns that were just made while most of us were alive.  Where do you think the lines were drawn between Classical and Revisionist Westerns?

Would any "Modern Western" be a Revisionist Western even if it were TRYING to be a Classical Western? Whoa.

Are there influences of the Western genre that have spilled out into other parts of filmmaking?

Let's compare westerns to samurai films like Thirteen Assassins, Rashomon, Seven Samurai, etc.

Let's talk about Comedy Westerns like Blazing Saddles, Silverado, Back to the Future Part III, etc.  What are some other great examples?  Why does the Western Genre work so well for comedy?

Let's talk about the mythic and psychedelic west (or "Acid Westerns" apparently, as coined by the incomparable Pauline Kael about El Topo haha)! El Topo, The Dark Tower, Dead Man, any others?  We could probably include Western Horror in here like From Dusk Til Dawn, Tremors...

Anything else you'd like to discuss about Westerns?