10 surprising movies you didn't know were actually Westerns

When we hear the word "Western," certain images and storyline tropes come to mind: cowboys riding their trusty steeds, epic shootouts with rolling tumbleweeds in the background, and the fearless exploration of uncharted territory. We challenged the movies to a duel to identify movies that may not come to mind when you think of Westerns, but are significantly influenced by or are tributes to the gun-slinging films your grandpa can't get enough of.

From talking bugs to space pioneers discovering a mysterious native population, we present ten movies that take Western themes far away from the Wild West.

A Bug's Life

How's this for a cow-opera plot: a greedy gang comes to town and threatens to steal everything from its docile citizens. Sounds kind of like McCabe & Mrs. Miller, albeit without the prostitutehouse.

Wait, there's more: one resident decides to stand up to the bad guys by rounding up a posse and staging a daring defense of the community and all it holds dear. The Magnificent Seven you say? Well, sorta. A Bug's Life doesn't have horses, spurs, saloons, or duels at high noon, but in its broad outline, it's an oater through-and-through.

Jaws

Wait, wait, hear me out on this one. An idyllic community is threatened by a deadly outside force, so it's up to a motley crew of locals - including a grizzled old guy and a young upstart - to band together in order to save the town. Just substitute Massachusetts for South Dakota, and the giant shark for Lee Van Cleef, and boom - you've got yourself another oater.

Of course, you'd have to change some of the dialogue, but that wouldn't be too hard: the characters could say stuff like "That's some bad ten-gallon hat, Harry," or "You're gonna need a bigger six-shooter." Still not convinced? Well, there's a scene in Jaws that's cribbed practically shot-for-shot from The Searchers - though, to be fair, virtually every movie from the 1970s Movie brats (including Star Wars and Taxi Driver) borrows liberally from the John Ford-John Wayne classic.

Assault on Precinct 13

The great Howard Hawks didn't much care for High Noon -- he though it was anti-American, and was rankled by its seemingly impotent protagonist and cowardly secondary characters. In response, he made Rio Bravo, in which his main character, Sheriff John T. Chance (John Wayne) is surrounded by helpful townsfolk intent on protecting their community from goons trying to bust one of their own out of jail.

John Carpenter was profoundly inspired by Rio Bravo when he made Assault on Precinct 13, set in contemporary Los Angeles but telling a similar story of an outgunned lawman who turns to a ragtag bunch - including one of his prisoners - for help in defending his station from a street gang. Though Carpenter updated the milieu for the 1970s - and also drew inspiration from George Romero's Night of the Living Dead - he proved that rugged, classic heroism is never outdated, even in a more cynical time.

Outland

Starring Gary Cooper in perhaps his most iconic role, High Noon tells the story of a retiring lawman who's forced to take matters into his own hands when a gang of killers threatens his Wild West town - the populace of which is cowed into submission. Outland is basically a remake of High Noon in space.

In Outland, O'Niel (Sean Connery) is a law-enforcement agent who discovers that the mining company he's been assigned to police has been forcing mind-altering substances on its employees to increase their productivity. It all climaxes with a big showdown between O'Niel and the company's goons - just like Cooper in High Noon.

Gran Torino

What if you were to plop the Man with No Name or the Outlaw Josey Wales in contemporary Detroit? He'd probably act a lot like Walt Kowalski, a racist, bitter Korean War vet who nevertheless maintains a deep-seated sense of honor - and a propensity for dishing out frontier justice.

When Thao, a neighborhood kid, attempts to steal Walt's pride and joy - his 1972 Ford Gran Torino - in order to gain initiation into an Asian-American gang, Walt is initially furious. But over time, he warms to Thao and his family, and despite his lifelong hatred of Asians, he decides that he's duty-bound to rid the neighborhood of its criminal elements.

In broad terms, Gran Torino isn't dissimilar to Pale Rider, a Western in which Eastwood is enlisted to protect a community of farmers under siege from evil business interests. By placing a classic Western plotline in a modern, big city setting, Eastwood got a chance to riff on his rugged, old-school persona - and make a few points about the current state of American race relations.

Near Dark

Years before The Hurt Locker cleaned up at the Oscars, Kathryn Bigelow was a struggling filmmaker who was having trouble getting a movie off the ground. She wanted to make a Western, but found few takers - the genre was considered played out at the time. So she threw some bloodsuckers into the mix, and voila - Near Dark was born.

Set in Oklahoma, Near Dark follows a band of vampires who roam the plains; shootouts, horse chases, and barroom brawls ensue. In addition to acting as Bigelow's big break, Near Dark inspired other directors to make horror flicks with a Western flavor - most notably Robert Rodriguez, who made the vampire-crazed From Dusk Till Dawn.

The Seven Samurai

In the 1950s, as postwar Japanese directors carved out a distinctly Japanese brand of cinema, the great Akira Kurosawa looked to the West - particularly the Wild West - for inspiration.

Profoundly influenced by the works of John Ford (considered by many film scholars to be the greatest director of the Western), Kurosawa reconfigured a classic Western scenario - that of a town under siege, defended by a loose band of heroes - as a samurai epic.

Western directors would return the compliment - John Sturges remade The Seven Samurai as The Magnificent Seven, and Sergio Leone's A Fistfull of Dollars was a loose reworking of Kurosawa's Yojimbo. But The Seven Samurai's influence extends far beyond the Western genre - it's considered by many to be one of the first modern action movies, and many of its elements - a motley group assembled to undertake an impossible mission, a leader who doesn't play by the rules - have been endlessly imitated.

But there's nothing quite like the original, which turns feudal Japan into one big town without pity, and contains action sequences of bracing, immediate power that remain thrilling even to folks who tend to avoid foreign films.

The Road Warrior

It's not surprising that Australia has produced its share of quasi-Westerns. Oz has a wild, untamed, mysterious frontier, and because it was used by the British as a prison colony, it produced some legendary outlaws - Ned Kelly, anyone?

In The Road Warrior, George Miller inverted the basic plotline of the Western classic Shane - instead of being unable to leave his violent past behind, Max (Mel Gibson) is a cold-blooded killer who finds he can't escape his fundamental morality. In this post-apocalyptic, distinctly Australian action flick, tribal warfare has erupted in the wake of a worldwide fossil fuel shortage, and Max, who is haunted by the death of his wife and child, finds himself in the midst of a deadly conflict.

As with any great Western, the environment is practically a character itself, and in The Road Warrior, the foreboding beauty of the desert is as evocative as anything this side of Monument Valley.

Avatar

Strip Avatar of its CGI, its outer space milieu, and its tall blue people (difficult, I know), and you've essentially got the plot of Dances with Wolves.

Both tell the tale of an outsider attempting to learn the ways of native peoples - be they Native Americans or Na'vi - while defending them from aggressive outsiders - in the form of the U.S. military and/or a private security firm called Spec-Ops. Some conservative pundits objected to the Avatar as anti-American, while liberal types found the Na'vi to be one-dimensional savages - in other words, the kinds of for/against arguments that cultural critics have been making about revisionist Westerns for years.

Of course, audiences ate it up, and who can blame them? By wedding the latest in moviemaking technology to age-old Western tropes, Cameron was able to wow us with remarkable visions without upsetting our need for classic storytelling.

Serenity

We obviously couldn't leave Serenity off this list, because we knew the fanboys and girls would throw a fit if we did. Serenity (and Firefly, the TV series that birthed it) was feverishly adored by a cult audience and widely praised by critics, but it never quite won over the mainstream.

The film chronicles the adventures of a roving band of outcasts, who traverse the galaxy aboard the Serenity, which is essentially a stagecoach in space. Now and then, they stop off in various one-horse towns (er, spaceports) and haul freight and/or contraband to various destinations - kind of like the railroads did in olden times.

And if there was any doubt, the Firefly intro features a twangy country tune and lots of horses.

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  1. 3 years ago
    arendr

    A lot of people don't realize how the Western is in many ways the most universal of film genres. I know people who said, "The Propostition isn't a Western because it takes place in Australia!," which shows a lack of understanding of what the Western represents. John Ford influenced Kurosawa, who influenced Leone, who influenced Tarantino. Lucas lifted the story line from Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress for Star Wars. There's a huge chain of filmmakers worldwide who are connected with the Western motif.

  2. 3 years ago
    Bigbrother

    Should have included Way of the Gun, it's basically Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid "You can call me Mr. Parker and my partner Mr. Longbaugh" (Butch and Sundance's real names). Bit more of a stretch T2, when Arnold is riding to the rescue on his harley western afficianado's will note he wieners his lever action exactly like John Wayne in True Grit.

  3. 3 years ago
    JacMohnson

    If you're going to talk about Gran Torino and westerns, you have to mention The Shootist. John Wayne plays a crotchety, dying gunfighter who befriends a neighborhood boy, becomes the father figure the kid never had, is forced to confront the local hoods, and goes out in a blaze of glory. Sound familiar?

    It's also worth noting that The Shootist was the Duke's last role and Gran Torino could very well be Eastwood's.

  4. 3 years ago
    AJ A.

    To be quite honest, how many truly original plot lines have been created since the beginning of film? One can really dwindle down all plot lines to probably 10 basic premises. Also, just because there are 10 films here, that does not mean there aren't other films they wouldn't recognize as western-esque. Saying "If you're going to mention ______, then you have to say _____" It's a list of ten surprising and generally considered quite different films, that's why they picked Jaws, Gran Torino, and Avatar.

  5. 3 years ago
    Bat M.

    Avatar is based on "dances with wolves" which is based on "a man called horse" which was based on a wagon train episode, which was based on a shorty story inspired by the pochahontas legend.

    The themes within the story are not classic "western" themes but are generally allegories for colonialism rather than the more primal good v evil themes of westerns.

    A man called horse was a thinly disguised anti-vietnam flick for instance. I dont think Avatar is about Iraq - but the timing for this story to resurface again is interesting.

    I thought Dances with wolves was such a rip-off of A man called horse that I hated it.

  6. 3 years ago
    Anonymous

    Awesome list. I always thought that the western was more a state of mind than anything. Isolation and loneliness seem to be a common part to most westerns or western-like films. It's a shame there aren't many new westerns anymore.

  7. 3 years ago
    Rajjpuut

    Best movie fitting the classification but not listed is "Bad Day at Black Rock" which has a western sounding name . . . but modern trains and automobiles but it's definitely a western. A Thriller A Western

    Worst movie as far as not remotely belonging on the list: "Jaws." Jaws is a morality play like some westerns are but it has no connection to most major western themes. In fact, Peter Benchley stole huge parts of the story from Moby Dick . . . just substitute a white shark for a white whale in the ending and no one's the wiser . . . B Horror F- Western

    Not only was The Seven Samurai a western, but they stole from it to make the Magnificent 7 which was sort of a spaghetti western.

    Two great westerns that were NOT westerns: The Ox-Bow Incident and Track of the Cat both from novels of Walter Van Tilburg Clark were both psychological thrillers.

  8. 3 years ago
    Michael M.

    Anyone who says Avatar is like Dances with Wolves hasn't actually seen Dances with Wolves. It's nothing like that film at all. More like classic fairy tale type films like Pocahontas. Oh, and Avatar is still a wonderful film. The best ever? No, but good.

    P.S.-Star Wars (1977) is also a complete ripoff of classic fairy tale stories and Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress. And yes, its quite good too.

    • 3 years ago
      ShopSmart

      How can you say Avatar is nothing like DWW? Military man goes to a remote outpost, is thrust in the middle of a native race of people that he believes to be savages. He slowly learns their culture, learns their ways and realizes they aren't savages at all. He then tries to help them by becoming one of them. He takes one of them as a mate(I know, stands with a fist was actually white). He then turns on his own kind. You're right, those films have nothing in common at all.

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