The success of the saga Yellowstonecreated by Taylor Sheridan for Paramount+frame an unexpected rebirth of Old West stories. Stories set in the years of the pioneer voyage, others set in the present in an area disputed by tourism and real estate companies and defended by the heirs of deep America. We are not in the years of John Ford and his trilogy of knights, nor even in the twilight of mythology, like a film A shot in the nightnot even in the western of camaraderie directed by Howard Hawks Rio Bravo. These are neither the B-grade exercises of Budd Boetticher, nor the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, nor the choreographed violence of Sam Peckinpah, nor the Shakespearean tragedies under the eyes of Anthony Mann. NOit’s a time for nostalgia and re-readingby appropriating this legendary iconography as a desirable commodity in the age of “content” that streaming turns out to be. Extended narratives, bright external representations, territorial disputes and families with inheritance and lineage problems make up the growing panorama of the “new westerns” in which Netflix wants to have the last word.
And that seems obvious the recent premiere of The Forsaken, the new western blockbuster directed by two small film stars like the Brits Gillian Anderson (The X-Files) And Lena Headey (game of Thrones), matriarchs of two feuding families in the historic territory of Washington (effective from 1853 to 1889, when it was admitted to the Union as Washington State). The bet of the leading platform in the streaming business – which is becoming more and more obvious now that it has become the possible new owner of the Warner Brothers franchise – is to conquer the terrain where others first planted their flag, a little in fiction, the ancient frontier outlined in this vast northern desert.
The first in this awakening of the Western were Taylor Sheridan and Paramount with the saga YellowstoneSet in present-day Montana County, at the center of a dispute between ranchers and real estate developers, fueled by racial tensions and family unhappiness that ensued 1883 And 1923 the formation of a multiverse that is in no way inferior to previous superheroes.
The champion of success was also the face of Yellowstone: Kevin Costner. A star who was the architect of the revival of the classic tradition of the genre in the 80s under the direction of Lawrence Kasdan Silverado (1985), and then he cultivated his own vision since his directorial debut Dance with wolves (1990) and his later maturity with Justice pact (2003). In YellowstoneCostner is the patriarch of the Dutton family, ready to defend his country from the greed of tourism companies and the internecine wars within his own family. From a sophisticated production and a combination of western images and the family stories from series like Valley of Passions either DallasSheridan managed to recreate the spirit of the genre with conflicts that push the novel towards contemporary drama and a plot that owes something to the shadowy police force that seems to have colonized the country Streaming in recent years. Hence the completion of the cycle Yellowstonewhich ultimately ended in 2024 but left behind several spin-offs, offers an important lesson for platforms: there is something to explore and turn into new goose that lays the golden eggs.
Under this premise, several series set in the West appeared in the following years: The English -created by Hugo Blick and available in HBO Max-; External area -created by Brian Watkins and available on Disney+-; the Australian Area -created by Timothy Lee and Ben Davies with the clear awareness of being an answer to this Yellowstone-; the brutal American prehistoric era -created by Mark L. Smith for Netflix with the aim of becoming the true update of western stories; the romantic Ranson Canyon -also on Netflix, but closer to the coordinates of a youth soap opera with horses and cowboy hats-; Sheridan’s latest creation about the oil business, Countryman -with another star actor like Billy Bob Thornton -; and the newly published ones The Forsakenwhose results fall short of their ambitions.
As critic Judy Berman explains in the magazine TIME, “Most of these stories are based on territorial conflicts between committed individualists and insatiable capitalist vultures: two quintessentially American archetypes.” Whether set in the years of conquest in the 19th century or updated to the present—which Sheridan actually did—whether in the southern region of the country like Texas, in the Wyoming desert, or in Canada to the north, the narratives of the new westerns deal with the same themes, offer the same production keys, and recreate the same eternal, bitter struggle. Forested landscapes, emerald plains, large ranches or small towns, cattle drives or mining operations – all reappear under the auspices of this “new Western”, a reinvention of the genre that leaves behind the great themes of the classic period, such as the railway line or historical figures in the style of Jesse James or Wyatt Earp, and instead tells family stories, business disputes and a wide range of mysteries that expands the contours of the tradition.
On this map, The Forsaken offers two distinctions: The first is to choose two female stars like Gillian Anderson and Lena Headey as the leads – following the melodramatic enclave that the genre exploited in the ’50s with films like… Johnny guitar (1954), by Nicholas Ray, with Joan Crawford; either Dragons of Violence (1957), by Sam Fuller, with Barbara Stanwyck-; and secondly, he chooses references in the Twilight Western, which retains the classic spirit but is clearly aware of its decline. In this line, the beginning of the series is reminiscent of the beginning of The pale rider by Clint Eastwood: In this case, a gang of robbers destroyed the homes of a group of gold prospectors who did not want to give up their land to the powerful Mr. LaHood; In The Forsakenis Constance Van Ness (Anderson), a lady with aristocratic aspirations and investments in the Vanderbilts, who wants to take the land of a silver-rich region away from the ranchers who live there. The one who opposes him is Fiona Nolan (Headey), a widow of Irish descent, owner of a ranch with her four adopted children, the same who in the first episode suffers a brutal attack on her livestock and begins a fight for survival. Creator Kurt Sutter had updated it with a bit of ingenuity hamlet by Shakespeare in his successful series, Son of Anarchyand now try the same with Romeo and Juliet in this somewhat muddied version of the 1854 dispute between Montagues and Capulets.
Although The Forsaken is far from the best standards of the genre, with Eastwood’s legacy being one of its most important achievements, it nevertheless offers a representative mosaic of this attempt to restore the genre the favor of an audience that seemed lost forever. In this sense, the pioneer Sheridan was the one who best knew how to update the perspective that focused on ancestral tensions with native peoples and Mexican immigrants, while at the same time considering the family as the axis of emotional conflict and the business of real estate as a nod to the present. He also revived the presence of stars who attract audiences, not only Costner, but also the duo Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren, who appear in 1923one of the satellites of the universe Yellowstone. It’s true that people like series Dead wood (2004, available on Paramount+), Justified (2010, available on Disney+ and Movistar Play) and Godless (2017, available on Netflix) attempted to revive the genre, but were unsuccessful in their personal success a trend like the one seen in streaming today.
When reviewing the best titles, what stands out most is the protagonist role of women (in The English, American prehistoric era and now in The Forsaken), police secrets (in External area with evidence, and also in another series related to this universe, such as: Untamed from Netflix), hellish families (in almost all of them), disputes over land in the past (between ranchers and farmers or between mining exploiters and pioneers), a revisionist look at the relationship between settlers and indigenous people (something that in The Forsaken is evident in the creation of Fiona’s blended family with children of African descent and indigenous roots), a notable use of outdoor productions and an increasing use of digital technology to represent early craft achievements (just compare the fall of the cattle in the first episode of The Forsakencreated using CGI, and the analog capabilities of films like The hard work either Red River in animal husbandry).
It remains to be seen what vitality this new era of streaming westerns will have, as the appropriation of these frontier imaginaries, their exploitation to the point of wear and tear in similar and repetitive stories, and the transformation of archetypes and thematic constants into clichés without edges or textures can satiate the viewer and cause them to abandon the genre. Judy Berman is succinct The Forsakenthey baptize “MVP: Minimum Viable Product”, as an example of an increasingly widespread streaming trend: “The necessary ingredients are mixed – famous protagonists, a fashionable genre, a creator with his own audience, some tenuous notions of motherhood and family – to present viewers with a cohesive package and the assurance that they will consume it. ‘PMV’ television is ubiquitous in this dull and timid moment in Hollywood.” Except for what Sheridan did Yellowstone -and clean 1883which is one of the highest standards of this saga-, These new westerns don’t live up to the excellence of a genre who understood that the mythology with which the past is formed continues in the form of a legend. The journalist already said it at the end A shot in the night by John Ford: “This is the West. When a legend becomes reality, print the legend.”
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