My latest film, Frontier Crucible, debuts tomorrow in theaters and streaming services, and I'm currently reading the critics' reviews. I thought this one from The Hollywood Reporter was interesting:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/frontier-crucible...
It documents the high quality cinematography, and performances given by William H Macy and Thomas Jane. It goes on to declare the film "shrug-worthy", a faithful adaptation of a pulp western story originally penned in 1961 by Harry Whittington.
That got me thinking. In a world bathed in a deluge of science fiction, and seemingly obsessed with a more perfect future society, are the classic stories of Cowboys and Indians simply irrelevant to modern audiences? Does the rugged self-reliance required to survive in a world where government power is limited to non-existent, simply too alien for a people focused on how current government intersects with social media posts?
I suppose we'll see.
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I'm not sure that they are irrelevant. But it's not an easy genre to do well. Lot of cliche territory. But there have been a few very good examples over the last couple decades not only in features.
3:10 to Yuma was excellent.
Frontier was a solid series with a good following, just not hugely famous.
Westworld was good, though it blended sci-fi in (which was seriously cool in season 1).
No, these aren't extremely recent examples, but they show how well Western flavored work can do when done right.
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Congratulations again, Preston Poulter! And congratulations to everyone who worked on Frontier Crucible!
I don't think the classic stories of Cowboys and Indians are irrelevant to modern audiences. Some of the things people go through nowadays are the same things people back then went through, like survival, providing for their families, and protecting their families and properties.
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Preston Poulter RELEASED TODAY Dec 4: The Abandons, on Netflix (a series).
- RELEASING DECEMBER 5: Frontier Crucible western thriller, in theaters and streaming.
- July 2025 Eddington - contemporary neo-western.
- May 2025 - Rust - western
- May 2025 ; The Last Rodeo
- December 2025 - Eastern Western doing the festival circuit
- Coming January 2026 - American Primeval on Netflix, limited western series
So clearly, the western is still very relevant. But certainly modern sensibilities require different story telling approaches than "cowboys and Indians" movies. Westerns