Streaming’s Hottest Movie Genre is … the Western?!?

When the first part of Kevin Costner’s western epic Horizon premiered in theaters this past June, it was met with mixed-to-negative critical reaction and seeming audience indifference. As a result, the second part was pulled from a planned August release, as Warner Bros. regrouped and hoped for the first installment to build an audience on Max. Their hope – presumably based on an older audience’s recent settling into the idea of staying home to watch movies, and the Yellowstone fanbase being accustomed to seeing Cowboy Costner on streaming – appears to be well-founded. Horizon is currently in the Max Top 10. And it’s not the only streaming service with a western on the charts: The 2007 remake of 3:10 to Yuma is doing well on Netflix, while the little-seen Natalie Portman starrer Jane Got a Gun is Hulu’s current oater of choice.

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Understandably, some smaller outfits have begun to cut out the middleman of the long-forgotten 2000s-era theatrical release that powers so much streaming success. Though westerns, typically period pieces, are probably more expensive to make than a typical direct-to-home plug-in-a-star-and-play action programmer, there seems to be a growing sense that they might be worthy investments anyway. Nicolas Cage, no stranger to discount-house versions of studio movies, went on a mini-run of westerns recently, starring in The Old Way as an ex-outlaw attempting to do right by his unruly daughter and Butcher’s Crossing as an obsessive buffalo hunter. He has another one, The Gunslingers , on tap for 2025. For one of their first big-name forays into original programming, the free streaming service Tubi is theatrically releasing The Thicket , a western starring Peter Dinklage and Juliette Lewis, into select theaters this weekend. (Its premiere on the service has yet to be announced.)

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It makes sense that these movies would pop out from the endless streaming content churn. There are simply not that many chances to see contemporary stars try their hands at a relatively dormant genre. If you want to see Natalie Portman fall in love, fight, dance, or even banter with Thor, there are multiple movies for any of that. If you want to see her wear a cowboy hat, there’s pretty much just Jane Got a Gun . (Cage, with his tendency to indulge genres for two or three movies at a time – he had a wizard phase in the early 2010s! – is the exception here.)

Frankly, this novelty can make it difficult to discern whether the westerns in question are particularly good. I excitedly went out to a theater last year to watch Butcher’s Crossing , a relatively slow-paced affair that features a bald Cage obsessively killing buffalo and then seething with rage as his hunting party gets trapped in the mountains by a snowstorm. I left satisfied by the moody, desolate atmosphere; Cage glowering; and the attention to the finer details of buffalo-skinning. It didn’t need to hit High Noon levels of tension or Unforgiven levels of deconstruction to hold my attention for a couple of hours, even though a 1952 version of the same story could probably escape most viewers’ attention indefinitely.

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Similarly, Jane Got a Gun isn’t any great shakes compared to a classic of the genre, or even its hidden gems. It feels compromised by its troubled production – director Lynne Ramsay left before it began filming, scuttling the involvement of several cast members, and the movie was heavily rewritten before it went before cameras. The end result that people are belatedly checking out on Hulu is middling entertainment, with the requisite shadowy brown-and-yellow grubbiness of a modern western and good-enough performances. On the other hand: Natalie Portman rides a horse, wears a cowboy hat, and reunites with two of her Attack of the Clones co-stars (Joel Edgerton and Ewan McGregor also co-star). It’s tough to get mad at any of that, because while it may look and sound like a lot of other movies, but it doesn’t look or sound like many other movies from 2015. Same goes for the newer 3:10 to Yuma ; another version from 1957 already exists, but it’s neat just to see Christian Bale and Russell Crowe inhabit their roles, just as plenty of fans took comfort in the mere sight of the Horizon ensemble going about their western business, even though the story as yet has no real shape, arc, or ending. It’s ironic, then, that traditionalism and boilerplate in westerns have become novelties by default. This both relieves the pressure of justification – who knew that there would be a renewed interest in current westerns? – and threatens to let the genre further ossify.

As far as movies that actually push the form forward or reimagine it in a more contemporary context, Netflix has another western debuting this weekend – though it’s not advertised as such. Jeremy Saulnier’s Rebel Ridge is set in 2024 or thereabouts, features no horses, no one wears a cowboy hat, not even as an affectation. But it is about a stranger with a mysterious past who rides (on bike, rather than horseback) into a small town ruled by a corrupt lawman (not quite a sheriff, but he’s got his eye on the position), and winds up on a mission to defend his own honor as well as the livelihood of a scrappy local gal he gets to know. Structurally and thematically, Rebel Ridge very much is a modern western – and a terrific one, too. The fact that it’s going direct to streaming (just like The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and The Power of the Dog before it) almost makes it seem like more of a western, because despite the genre’s vistas and details (which Rebel Ridge also has, in its contemporary way), there hasn’t been a big theatrical hit in the genre since The Revenant , which came out around the same time as Jane Got a Gun . Maybe this is a lingering effect of the pandemic lockdown, when there might have been some vicarious thrill in getting lost in the landscapes and a decidedly different atmosphere. Whether out of habit or aging fanbase, for recent forays into the great wide open, viewers seem to prefer to stay home on the range.

Jesse Hassenger ( @rockmarooned ) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com , too.

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