I’m not into westerns, which I suppose is why I never bought Boot Hill. But I was exposed to a lot of westerns as a kid, because my dad liked westerns. We watched Gunsmoke, Alias Smith and Jones, and a lot of John Wayne movies. But I didn’t stick with them after I grew up.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a handful of westerns I actually like, some of which I would recommend as quintessential. And there’s at least one western I’d recommend for people designing pseudomedieval fantasy adventures.
The Magnificent Seven
I’ve been wrestling with whether I would rate the 1960 version of The Magnificent Seven as an OK movie or a Great movie. For those who don’t remember, I pared my ratings system down to just three ratings: Bad (i.e. don’t watch these,) OK (watch these if they seem like your thing,) and Great (consider watching these even if you don’t like that genre.)
Just because I like or even love a movie doesn’t mean it’s a Great movie. Hardly any movies are Great. But being OK isn’t bad. If a movie hits the right spot for you, either because it’s a genre you like, or it’s got stuff in it you enjoy like rocket ships, or it’s got actors or a director you like, then go for it. I’m OK with the vast majority of stuff I like being just OK.
But I sometimes struggle with deciding which movies are Great. Remember, my criteria for being Great is that it’s something you should watch even if you would never normally watch that kind of movie. Sometimes, a movie is just too technically, stylistically, or historically important to pass up.
The problem with The Magnificent Seven is: I’m a guy who doesn’t like the vast majority of westerns who has watched The Magnificent Seven many times, enjoys it every time, and has recently realized I love it and it’s probably my favorite western ever. So is it a Great movie, or am I just being subjective?
A Detour Through the Stars
Let’s get sidetracked for a minute and talk about the Star Wars movies. I think almost all the Star Wars movies are OK. I enjoyed some of them well enough, even the ones with flaws, but I’m not a Star Wars fan and I don’t think I should recommend, say, The Empire Strikes Back to someone who doesn’t like space opera. They aren’t Great movies.
But I struggle a bit with Star Wars: A New Hope, the movie most people just call “Star Wars”. I liked it. I know Star Wars fans think The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie, but as a non-fan, I think A New Hope is the best. It moves along at a good clip, and it’s the one you don’t need to know all the background lore to enjoy.
But is it a Great movie? I wasn’t quite sure about this, but I think I’ve settled on “yes”. A New Hope was one of the movies that changed how movies were made. It ushered in the era of blockbusters, film franchises, and big budget sci-fi adventure. It revolutionized special effects.
Great or Not?
So back to The Magnificent Seven. It’s certainly been an influence on other films in the west, but famously it’s a remake of Seven Samurai. Neither of them invented the idea of assembling a team of champions, not even one specifically made of seven champions to fight in a battle; see The Seven Against Thebes for a counterexample in literature. But for some reason, movies didn’t seem to be interested in that kind of story telling before Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven.
But the real way that The Magnificent Seven copied Seven Samurai wasn’t the triviality of “a team of seven champions”, but in its theme. Both the samurai and the gunslingers are presented as relics of a bygone era that is on its way out. They help the peasants, despite the low pay, because few people in the world need that kind of hero anymore. The peasants are the real winners. Both movies flat out tell us this in the dialogue at the end. They both have a sense of something lost and a dark undertone that I enjoy. They aren’t the only movies like that, but they were part of a trend, included with others like High Noon or Shane.
The Magnificent Seven certainly had its influence, even including the fantasy genre. Hawk the Slayer is basically “The Magnificent Seven, but with only five champions and a pseudomedieval setting.” It’s a very D&D movie. There’s a bit of “gathering the champions” in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, a movie I love. (Aside: It has the best dragon fight ever. No, not the first dragon fight. The second.)
So maybe I just love the movie because it’s such a D&D movie. Or maybe because I may have accidentally seen Westworld (1973) before The Magnificent Seven and now my head canon says Yul Brynner is playing the same character in both.
But I still can’t decide. Is The Magnificent Seven a Great movie just because I love it even though I’m not a fan of westerns? How does everyone else feel?
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