3 Great Films Made After Their Genre's Peak

On September 2nd, Steven Spielberg claimed that the recent rash of superhero films would come to an end, much like the western before it.  Some people were upset by his statements but I wasn't surprised because I've heard that argument before.  At first I was disappointed because I love the genre but I quickly came to accept it.  In some ways I even look forward to it.  Just because a genre stops being incredibly popular doesn't mean it goes away permanently.  Sometimes it comes back bigger and better than ever before.

Unforgiven

As Spielberg said, the Western went the way of the buffalo around 1970.  Like the buffalo, Westerns have also made something of a resurgence over the past decade or so.  There's a case to be made that Paul Thomas Anderson's 2007 cinematic masterpiece There Will Be Blood is a Western, and their influence is seen in the acclaimed blockbuster Mad Max: Fury Road and two of the most successful shows in the Golden Age of Television, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead.  A remake of the classic The Magnificent Seven is scheduled for late 2016 and the similarly titled Tarentino film The Hateful 8 is premiering in January.  However, the most Western of the great neo-Westerns is probably 1992's Unforgiven.  It stars and is directed by Clint Eastwood, who has built his career on the genre.  Along with his work with Sergio Leone, Unforgiven is among Eastwood's best films and certainly one of his best directed.  It tells the story of a former gunslinger getting back in the game one last time.  Along the way it addresses themes like the repercussions of violence and the relationship between myth and reality, challenging classic Westerns including the ones that made Eastwood famous.

Chinatown

Film noir is a kind of gritty crime flick that was popular in the 40's and 50's.  Nowadays they're probably best known as a source of parody.  You can probably think of a few sketches or fantasy sequences where everything is in black and white a detective sits with their feet up on a desk, hat hanging over their face, doing a voice-over about some "dame" then making a self-referential joke about the voice-over.  1974's Chinatown, directed by Roman Polanski, has some of those elements and more, making it instantly recognizable as a noir.  It follows a detective as he gets wrapped up in a web of lies surrounding the Los Angeles water supply and the seriously dysfunctional family at the heart of it, and not dysfunctional in a fun sitcom way.  Jack Nicholson stars as Jake Gittes, a role that couldn't be more perfect for him.  Chinatown is widely considered one of the greatest films of all time, as evidenced by its near flawless 98% score on Rotten Tomatoes.  But like the man said, "Come on Gittes, this is Chinatown so just forget about it, alright."

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Thanks to events like Watergate and the Vietnam War the 1970's were a great time to not trust the U.S. government.  That suspicion and fear led to a period of great success for political conspiracy thrillers like Three Days of the Falcon, Marathon Man and All the President's Men and maybe some others that didn't involve Robert Redford or Dustin Hoffman.  Those are the kinds of films that Joe and Anthony Russo had in mind when they directed 2014's Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  By combining 70's paranoia with the modern politics of surveillance the Russo's turned the Captain America sequel into one of the most distinct and interesting movies not just in the Marvel universe but in the entire superhero genre.  Robert Redford was terrifically cast as the villain, the most obvious connection to the past, while a Bourne-esque cinematic style keeps things rooted in the present.  Although diverging from the Marvel style was detrimental to The Incredible Hulk, if more superhero films can stand out while still feeling like part of a larger universe, the genre might last longer than Spielberg thinks.  If not, that's okay too.