Restrepo (yes, the Afghan War documentary) is a good example, IMHO. One of my first thoughts after watching it was: "This must have been what it was like for the pioneers who tried to settle deeper and deeper into Indian land."

You haven't seen Posse.

I'll just drop this here...

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/043...ith-jim-carrey

<iframe src="http://www.funnyordie.com/embed/0433b30576" width="640" height="400" frameborder="0"></iframe>

I had to watch How The West Was Won tonight for work. Good god, what a boring movie. Other than the train scene at the end, I had to fight to stay awake. They sure didn't know how to make them back then.

A comment about Speghetti Westerns in the Django Unchained thread got me thinking: What killed the European western and how popular are stories of the American West in Europe today?

Westerns were popular worldwide and by the '60s the Eupopeans jumped in the game making their own westerns, but today it would appear that the western is even more dead in Europe than it is here. What caused the initial popularity of the western in Europe and why did it die off so completely? Have any recent westerns done well in Europe? Apparently Django Unchained did well there.

Regarding HTWWW it really needs to be seen in Cinerama to be appreciated. Just as watching an IMAX film on a 32" TV will never do the film justice, Cinerama films really need to be seen on the deeply curved and very big screen. On TV it looks very static with almost no movement of the camera but in a real Cinerama theater you actually turn your head from left to right to take it all in. The image invelops you litterally. It's amazing.

To add to what Mabuse said, I'd like to share my own experience with the film. I saw it in Cinerama on a class trip when I was in the 4th grade and it immediately joined the ranks of my favorite films. Yet when I saw it on TV about eight or so years later, in my first year of college, I was severely disappointed. More recently, my nephew showed me his Blu-ray of the film on a 60-inch widescreen TV and it looked spectacular, far better than my DVD of it. But, dramatically, there are long stretches that simply don't hold up. Given the range of directors who worked on it (including John Ford), it is admittedly uneven.

^agreed i was lucky enough to watch it on one of the few Cinerama theaters left in the world, and the experience was amazing. Yes its long and has slow parts but the whole experience was pretty rewarding

I'll also add that what comes across when watching it in Cinerama is that the film is more of a Western "Pageant" than a straightforward narative film. It's like Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show on celluloid.

Well, I can understand that some films are simply meant to be seen in a specific format. No viewing of The Dark Knight will ever live up to the IMAX screenings I saw.

My question may have been overlooked due to the HTWWW conversation. Anyone care to comment on this:

From Leone's bio it said the reason Leone decided to do a western was because there was some obscure German western at the time that did well so he had the ok from the moneymen, aside he was already dreaming of Texas and New Mexico as AD.

As far as why Westerns were popular in Europe, I'd say that it was probably something foreign and exotic to European audiences.

As far as why they died off, the fad had run its course.