Saddle up. The genre that built Hollywood, sorted by who actually earned their spurs.
Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy capstone with Ennio Morricone's iconic score is routinely cited as the greatest Western ever made. Its three-way graveyard standoff and 178-minute epic scope defined the spaghetti Western.
Leone's sprawling elegy cast Henry Fonda against type as a cold-blooded killer and opens with a near-wordless 10-minute train-station sequence. It's preserved in the U.S. National Film Registry.
Clint Eastwood's revisionist masterpiece won four Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director. It deglamorizes gunfighting as ugly, traumatic work rather than heroic myth.
John Ford and John Wayne's Monument Valley epic topped AFI's Western ranking and is routinely named the greatest Western in critics' polls. Its final doorway shot is one of the most analyzed images in film history.
The Coen Brothers' neo-Western won four Oscars including Best Picture, and Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh took Best Supporting Actor. Its coin-toss menace redefined modern frontier dread.
Paul Newman and Robert Redford's buddy Western won four Oscars and was the top-grossing film of 1969. The freeze-frame finale and 'Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head' are pop-culture fixtures.
Gary Cooper won Best Actor as a marshal abandoned by his town, in a film told in near real-time as an allegory for Hollywood blacklist cowardice. It won four Academy Awards.
Quentin Tarantino's slavery-era revenge Western grossed over $425 million and won two Oscars, including Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor for Christoph Waltz.
Sam Peckinpah's aging-outlaws saga shocked 1969 audiences with slow-motion, blood-soaked gun battles that changed how screen violence was filmed. It's in the National Film Registry.
Val Kilmer's tubercular Doc Holliday ('I'm your huckleberry') became instantly quotable in this crowd-pleasing take on the O.K. Corral gunfight. It endures as a cable-rewatch staple.
The Coens' faithful adaptation earned 10 Oscar nominations and grossed over $250 million. Fourteen-year-old Hailee Steinfeld anchored it opposite Jeff Bridges' Rooster Cogburn.
James Mangold's remake pits Christian Bale's broke rancher against Russell Crowe's charming outlaw in a tense escort thriller. It drew strong reviews and two Oscar nominations.
This Hollywood reworking of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai assembled Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson, and Elmer Bernstein's theme became one of film's most recognizable scores.
Kevin Costner's directorial debut won seven Oscars including Best Picture, but its earnest three-hour runtime and white-savior framing have aged into frequent criticism.
This Brat Pack Billy the Kid tale with Emilio Estevez and Kiefer Sutherland was a modest hit that spawned a sequel. It's fun and stylish rather than essential.
Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall's free-grazing cattlemen deliver a well-regarded climactic gunfight, but the plodding romance subplot drags the middle. Solid, not spectacular.
Despite Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford and a $163 million budget, this genre mashup underperformed and drew mixed-to-negative reviews. The premise never gelled into either good Western or good sci-fi.
Gore Verbinski's $250 million Disney flop lost the studio a reported $190 million and was widely panned, including for Johnny Depp's 'redface' Tonto. A textbook blockbuster disaster.
Will Smith's giant-mechanical-spider Western swept the Razzies, winning five including Worst Picture, and became a byword for bloated late-'90s excess. Smith himself has publicly called it a mistake.
Adam Sandler's Netflix Western spoof holds a rare 0% on Rotten Tomatoes and drew protests over its offensive depiction of Native Americans, several of whom walked off set.
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