High Plains Drifter
Westerns have become a shorthand for moral simplicity. There are good guys in white hats and bad guys in black hats. They draw pistols at dawn and the bad guys hit the dirt at a minute past dawn. Of course, that's a broad interpretation. There are plenty of Westerns with more complicated ethics. On the far end of that spectrum is High Plains Drifter. Directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, Drifter appears to be about justice but a more specific code of ethics is harder to pin down. There's barely a character worth rooting for to be found. It's hard to tell if that was intentional or if writer Ernest Tidyman is just entirely lacking in scruples. Either way, there are good reasons why the movie has become a classic. It's well directed and much stranger than your typical cowboy picture, making it a prime example of what Wikipedia calls "Weird West." A remake of High Plains Drifter with the same touch of the supernatural but a just slightly better defined sense of morality could be really fascinating.
Wild Wild West
If someone says "steampunk spy Western" the obvious reply should be "how do you mess that up?" It seems impossible but it happened in 1999. Not only that, but Wild Wild West is remembered as one of the biggest bombs in Hollywood history. The script was awful and totally unfunny, a complete waste of the comic talents of Kevin Kline and Will Smith. I know that sounds like a Deadpool review from someone who "just doesn't get it" but like I said, history has my back here. The worst part is that the TV show the movie is based on was genuinely pretty good but now has been almost entirely overshadowed by the trainwreck of a movie. It was created in the mid-60's when cowboys were on their way out and spies were on the way in. Producer Michael Garrison had the idea to put James Bond in stirrups. The result was one of the strangest but coolest TV shows ever made. This could be the perfect time to bring The Wild Wild West back to its original glory in its original format. Not only because Westerns are on the rise in the "golden age of television," but also because the perfect actor to play the villain is in the prime of his career. The show's main antagonist Dr. Miguelito Loveless was played by Michael Dunn, one of the most accomplished dwarf actors ever and he opened a lot of doors for little people in film and television. Now, Peter Dinklage is a major star and he's fantastic at playing villains like Bolivar Trask in X-Men: Days of Future Past. A new version of The Wild Wild West with better writing and Dinklage as the mad scientist is practically begging to be made.
Jonah Hex
There was a time when gunslingers had a bigger presence in comic books than superheroes did. Jonah Hex is the most prominent remnant of that time. He's a bounty hunter with a horribly scarred face. There isn't much more to him than that. A character that simple calls for a simple approach. In this case, a mostly good guy battles very bad guys. Instead the 2010 movie is stuffed with a lot of bad ideas in a much too long hour and a half. There was a time when six years wasn't long enough to wait for a remake but Jonah Hex is as deserving of the benefits of the film industry's current "try, try again" method as anyone. Then again, it might be better off with a sequel that simply pretends its predecessor doesn't exist. Much like last year's Fantastic Four, Jonah Hex has too good of a cast to waste. Josh Brolin plays the title character with Megan Fox as his love interest and John Malkovich as the villain. Michael Fassbender even manages to almost make his scenes watchable as Malkovich's deranged, grinning lieutenant. If the superhero bubble really is on the brink of popping just as the Western one did, maybe this is the perfect time to give old Jonah another shot. Send out the golden age of comic book movies by combining them with the Western just as the Western once fused with the espionage thriller. This time just skip the random fight club snake man.
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