MovieChat Forums > Appaloosa (2008) Discussion > cliche cliche cliche

cliche cliche cliche

posted 14 years ago by jedijosh-1
11 replies | jump to latest

How many westerns out there are about a hired gunman (in this case 2) that are hired to protect a town from a gang of outlaws?

Oh, and the hero of our story rides off into the sunset at the end. Really I'm not kidding. As a matter of fact while typing this I decided to look up western cliches. Look at the list on this site and how many of them match Appaloosa.

http://www.filmcritic.com/features/2009/12/western-cliches/

Still there was enough to this movie for me to give it a 7/10 or a C as my signature explains.

How I rate movies: 5 stars=F,6 stars=D,7 stars=C,8 stars=B,9 stars=A.1-4 stars are very bad.

[–] Bilwick1 14 years ago

Many good westerns, like APPALOOSA, take the cliches and do something interesting with them.

[–] Howlin Wolf 14 years ago

Westerns are built upon archetypes; one of the reasons I don't particularly like them - but this one was OK.

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[–] 14 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Howlin Wolf 13 years ago

True. From memory, this one was more in the classic style.

Born when she kissed me, died when she left me, lived whilst she loved me

[–] samantha3 13 years ago

EH said he was aiming for more of a classic feeling than most westerns have these days, but he was mainly in love with the book and found some friends to help him make a film inexpensively from it, one with the right feel.

It got on several lists of the 10 best of the year, so I guess more people liked it than one might think from the comments on this board. Nothing new there, of course. IMDB seems to be mainly a place for haters.

[–] khalidamin 12 years ago

nicely said man ...and that's why the spaghetti westerns rules ..watch the dollar trilogy and u'll feel better ..
the cliche ruins anything and you won't find any cliche in a spaghetti western , i mean it ..

[–] moewadle 12 years ago

I have heard that the word "cliche" is related, or has origins, in the word for truth. So, something that works is used repeatedly because.....duh.....it works. We cannot get away from cliches completely. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and the film and have now seen the film 4 times since it came out 4 1/2 years ago. I think it is very good. If it is full of cliches...so what....the film actually reflected real life in many ways and, of course, real life is, essentially a cliche. Cliches in books and films are not bad...they are almost unavoidable. It is just how artistically the creators convey the cliches in the story told.

[–] yogi115 11 years ago

Watch Henry Fonda in 1959 WARLOCK

[–] spookyrat1 11 years ago

Look at the list on this site and how many of them match Appaloosa.

Gee whiz! A lot of the gunslingers in this movie are wearing guns too and ride horses. Is that clichéd? What you appear to fail to understand is that the western is a generic film, just the same as there is a clutch of other generic film types, for which surely you will find similar web sites supplying the same sort of data.

As Bilwick above says, good westerns, like Appaloosa, do something interesting with the "clichés".

[–] comic_geek05 10 years ago

Not surprising, since it's an adaptation of a Robert B. Parker novel from his later years. He wrote "Appaloosa" during the time he went on creative auto-pilot and just stopped really trying.

*****************
"Transcend the Bullsh#t." - Harold Balazs

[–] scofflaw3 10 years ago

Interesting.