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Lights! Comics! Action!
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Attack of the Westerns!
Attack of the Westerns!
The Western was once the pinnacle of popcorn entertainment. With guns, bad guys, damsels in distress, shootouts, bank robberies, chases and more, they had everything that makes a modern blockbuster successful (and were made with a lot less money). Then, sometime after Clint Eastwood left the American frontier for urban justice as Dirty Harry, the Wild West got kind of stale. Sure, there have been some honorable mentions over the last twenty five years: Pale Rider, Unforgiven (both Eastwood films, naturally), Young Guns, Tombstone, Maverick - but compared to the number of Westerns produced during Hollywood's Golden Age, the genre is just a shadow of what it was, until now.
Will Jonah Hex revive the Hollywood Western?
With Jonah Hex on the horizon and Cowboys and Aliens saddling up for a Summer 2011 release, it has become evident that Tinsel Town has a renewed interest in the Western and is turning to the genius of comic book storytelling for ideas on how to make it relevant again - and why not? Movie studios have become increasingly dependent on comic book stories and characters over the last decade anyway, so it makes perfect sense that they'd look to the medium to influence other types of films as well.
Further, Westerns and comic books are practically a match made in heaven as they have many similar characteristics. Warner Bros. Hex is a great example of this connection. The story follows a common comic book formula: Man is wronged by vicious villain, saved by supernatural forces and reborn to protect and avenge the innocent. Sound familiar (Dan Ketch, Eric Draven anybody)? Probably does, and that's what makes the character so perfect for a film. He's got all the fantastical, high-concept elements of the superhero stories that moviegoers gobble up summer after summer, but doesn't have to wear tights. He's a bad-ass and we love our bad-asses, which brings me to my next point.
Mark Steven Johnson threw a nod to the Western influence into Ghost Rider
(that was one of the only things that I liked about the movie)
The days of idealism are dead. The most successful recent action films focus on cynical anti-heroes like Wolverine, Batman and (the new) James Bond. Hex fits the bill, as did many Western protagonists of the 1960's and 1970's, which helps make the current revival of the genre all the more logical. I guarantee that if you resurrected Eastwood's Blondie from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly today, audiences would get cheer for him the way they do for The Dark Knight or 007, because he was one of the superheroes of his time.
So what does this all mean? Well, if Jonah Hex and Cowboys and Aliens strike gold at the box-office, expect to see a lot more six-shooters on the big screen. There are a wealth of Western characters and stories in the comic book world, so these two films are just the beginning of a Hollywood trend revisited. I'll leave you with a few of my favorite Western in current pop-culture that i believe are ripe for film/TV production:
Loveless: If you are an avid comic book reader, chances are you worship Brian Azzarello. The prolific writer's short lived series about a former confederate soldier and prisoner of the North turned sheriff of his hometown of Blackwater is a wonderfully layered tale that explores the personal tragedies and redemption of protagonist Wes Cutter while also addressing larger historical and thematic issues such as racism and tensions between the North and South after the conclusion of the Civil War. Though it's three-year run was brief, there's enough material within the series to create an adult oriented, Deadwood-styled drama for cable TV.
Iron West: One of my absolute favorites, Iron West tells the tale of Preston Struck, an incompetent outlaw with a heart of fool's gold who discovers an army of metal men bent on destroying central California. With the help of a magical old shaman and his sidekick Sasquatch, Preston must thwart the tin men before they re-fashion a railroad train into a giant demonic iron monster. Cinematic possibilities abound.
Bonus - Red Dead Redemption: Yeah, I know it's not a comic book, but if you've gotten lost in Rockstar Games' epic open-world environment, then you know that John Marston deserves to ride into the sunset on the silver screen. The game pulls no punches and is as rousing and dangerous an adventure as one would want to see in Hollywood Western. Bring it on!
Comment
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Comment by Ron Grijs on June 5, 2010 at 2:25pm -
Jonah Hex and Cowboys and Aliens aren't really what I want I'm looking for in a western. I'm sure to some extent they fit the bill but I'd prefer a 100% serious western before they make a ''Pirates of the Carribean in the west''. Maybe Tarantino's western.. uh.. Southern will be that film. As for Red Dead Redemption, one hell of a tale but the story is spread too thin. And most of it is episodic anyway, it wouldn't work as a movie. It would make a great tv serie though.
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Comment by Hero on June 5, 2010 at 11:26am
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Jonah Hex seems so fun, cant wait for it, will it revive the Western? no, proof of that is very couple of years a western comes that is groundbreaking and amazing but ultimately fails to revive the genre, like The Proposition and The Assasination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford... but still I'm not fully convinced that it wont... because well.. the Westerns I've listed weren't meant to be big summer blockbusters, but more character pieces and that is something new we havent seen done in the Western genre in a long long time and it is something that should've been done a long time ago seeing as how Special effects and CG are what they are
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Comment by Kim on June 5, 2010 at 11:14am -
Don't forget the wild bunch. That movie kicked ass. =)
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Comment by Saso J on June 5, 2010 at 12:51am -
Loveless was a great comic. Jonah Hex ... not so much
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Comment by ZzFist on June 5, 2010 at 12:34am -
3:10 to yuma was a good western too. not really into the sci fi westerns. they should really bring in genuine western movies to show all these kids what the wild west is all about.
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Comment by KrissKross on June 5, 2010 at 12:03am -
to me, Red Dead Redemption brought back any western in me. now i'm ready for a good western movie, and sadly, there's nothing to look forward to...
Cowboys vs. Aliens looks awesome, but that aint no western, and i've heard nothin but bad news about Jonah Hex.
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Comment by VJtheVigilante on June 4, 2010 at 9:36pm -
It will take a real western to bring westerns back. Not a fantastic western. you know where like magical stuff happens. or the Sci-fi western were they have guns that never existed. It didn't work for will smith's wild wild west.
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Comment by Taylor on June 4, 2010 at 9:28pm -
I don't think Jonah Hex will be the movie to bring back Westerns, but the genre seems to be making a comeback this year. Great article, btw.
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Comment by Goatsey on June 4, 2010 at 9:12pm -
I dunno about all of you guys, but to me... Jonah Hex looks like one of the shittiest movies of 2010. But, thats just me.
Maa.
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Comment by John Magnum on June 4, 2010 at 4:33pm -
Jonah Hex reminds me of a lil' too much of Will Smith's Wild Wild West and we all know how that turned out.
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