Western films

The American Film Institute defines Western films as those “set in the American West that [embody] the spirit, the struggle, and the demise of the new frontier.” The term “Western”, used to describe a narrative film genre, appears to have originated with a July 1912 article in Motion Picture World magazine. Most of the characteristics of Western films were part of 19th-century popular Western fiction, and were firmly in place before film became a popular art form. Western films commonly feature protagonists such as cowboys, gunslingers, and bounty hunters, who are often depicted as seminomadic wanderers who wear Stetson hats, bandannas, spurs, and buckskins, use revolvers or rifles as everyday tools of survival and as a means to settle disputes using “frontier justice”. Protagonists ride between dusty towns and cattle ranches on their trusty steeds.

• 1903 – The Great Train Robbery
• 1906 – The Story of the Kelly Gang 

Year	Franchise	Film	IMFDb	Rotten Tomatoes
1939		Gone with the Wind	8.1/10	91%
1939		Stagecoach	7.9/10	100%

Year	Franchise	Film	IMFDb	Rotten Tomatoes
1943		The Ox-Bow Incident	8/10	90%
1946		My Darling Clementine	7.8/10	100%
1948		Fort Apache	7.5/10	100%
1948		Red River	7.8/10	100%

Year	Franchise	Film	IMFDb	Rotten Tomatoes
1953		The Naked Spur	7.4/10	100%
1959		Rio Bravo	8/10	100%

Year	Franchise	Film	IMDb	Rotten Tomatoes
1969		Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid	8/10	90%

Year	Franchise	Film	IMDb	Rotten Tomatoes
1990		Dances with Wolves	8/10	83%
1992		Unforgiven
1993		Gettysburg	7.6/10	76%
1993		Tombstone (film)	7.8/10	74%
1999		Wild Wild West

Year	Franchise	Film	IMDb	Rotten Tomatoes
2010		Jonah Hex
2011		Cowboys & Aliens
2013		The Lone Ranger	6.6/10
2015		The Revenant	8/10	78%