At one time, there wasn’t a more successful movie genre than the Westerns, and they ruled Hollywood for multiple decades. With contributors like John Wayne, Ward Bond, John Ford, Gary Cooper, and more, the biggest stars in Hollywood made the Western a must-see at the movie theaters. The best part was that these movies were all different from one another.

The best Western movies included stories of settlers in the American West fighting for survival and war movies from that era, including iconic battles at the Alamo and in the Civil War. The Western genre also included stories of antiheroes and genuinely good lawmen, some based on real life and others part of Old West mythology.

1930s – Stagecoach (1939)

Released in 1939, John Ford’s Stagecoach turned John Wayne into Hollywood’s biggest leading man. Before that, Wayne starred in small, low-budget Westerns. However, the second he entered the screen as the Ringo Kid, Wayne proved he was a star.

Between serving as John Wayne’s breakout moment and the awe of John Ford’s incredible Old West cinematography, Stagecoach changed everything about the Western genre. It remains one of the most influential movies of all time for how it changed Hollywood filmmaking, regardless of genre. This took a normally low-budget genre and made it grand cinema.

There are some things about Stagecoach that don’t hold up as well today. The treatment of Native Americans as “savages” is something that historians and film scholars point out as unrealistic and offensive. However, on the whole, Stagecoach remains one of the best Westerns of any era.

1940s – Red River (1948)

While Stagecoach was John Wayne’s breakout movie, Red River, released almost a decade later, was one of his overall best. Directed by Howard Hawks, Red River followed a father and his adopted adult son as they set off on a cattle drive from Texas to Kansas, following the Chisholm Trail.

This was a different story type from Stagecoach. While that first movie was about surviving Native American attacks, Red River is about a father and son who disagree on their course of action, leading to internal conflict and strife. This was one of Wayne’s first dark roles, as he considers murdering his son for disobeying orders.

These roles were rare for the Duke, but that is only part of what made this film such a great Western movie. The entire cast was great, with Montgomery Clift as the adopted adult son, and names like Walter Brennan and Harry Carey in supporting roles. It entered the National Film Registry in 1990.

1950s – The Searchers (1956)

Directed by John Ford, The Searchers is the best movie that he ever made and the best film starring John Wayne in his career. The movie is also one where Wayne plays someone who is not a good person, although he is still someone who tries to be heroic.

Wayne stars as Ethan Edwards, a war veteran who returns to his family’s home for the first time in eight years. After this, an attack by a Comanche tribe sees his niece kidnapped. The movie is about Ethan first trying to rescue her, and then wanting to kill her when he learns she had assimilated with the tribe.

Ethan Edwards is a hateful racist who believes a person is better off dead than living peacefully with Native Americans. While this is troublesome, the movie never allows Ethan to appear as a genuine hero. The last scene, where he finds himself shut out from his family, shows the true meaning of this Western masterpiece.

1960s – True Grit (1969)

John Wayne only won one Oscar for acting in his career. That came in his 1969 film, True Grit. In this movie by long-time Wayne contributor Henry Hathaway, Wayne is Rooster Cogburn, an aging, one-eyed U.S. Marshal hired by a little girl to find the outlaw who killed her father.

Glen Campbell joins Wayne in the movie as a Texas Ranger named La Boeuf, while Kim Darby is the little girl, Mattie, and Jeff Corey is the outlaw Tom Chaney. Wayne deserved his Oscar win, as he played an older, broken-down lawman who still had the strength and determination to help this young girl find closure.

Wayne also won a Golden Globe for his performance, and the movie received a Western Heritage Award for Theatrical Motion Picture and ended up as one of the first movies added to the National Film Registry in 1989, the first year of the award’s existence.

1970s – High Plains Drifter (1973)

In the 1970s, Clint Eastwood replaced John Wayne as the top Western actor in Hollywood, but he changed the genre drastically. Eastwood refused to play a white-hat good guy, and he demanded that any roles Hollywood offered him were shades-of-grey antiheroes. Wayne hated these changes, and the movie Wayne hated the most was High Plains Drifter.

This revisionist Western starred Eastwood as The Stranger, a man who arrives in a small Western town and brutalizes the citizens there. However, The Stranger is there for one specific reason. He dreams of some outlaws murdering the local lawman, and this man is there for revenge.

There is nothing about The Stranger that makes him a Western hero, other than that he is killing the real bad guys. This is a violent film, and it is easy to see what Wayne hated about it. However, for the revisionist Western era, it remains a masterpiece, one of the best in the new style of Old West filmmaking.

1980s – Silverado (1985)

The 1980s were a wasteland for the Western genre. After Clint Eastwood’s fantastic 1970s output, fans lost interest in Westerns in the 80s, and Hollywood took note and stopped making them. There were a few in the era, with the popular ones being fun movies like Young Guns. However, the best of the decade was Silverado.

Lawrence Kasdan, the screenwriter who wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back, directed this Western, starring Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, Danny Glover, and a young Kevin Costner. The film follows these four actors as drifters who team up to battle a corrupt sheriff and a greedy ranching family.

Silverado received mostly positive reviews, and while it was only a small box office theatrical success, it remains a highlight of the Western genre’s lowest point in history.

1990s – Unforgiven (1992)

Clint Eastwood returned to the Western genre in 1992 for what was his masterpiece, both as a director and actor. Eastwood stars as William Munny, a retired outlaw who is living out his later years following the death of his wife. However, he ends up coming out of retirement for one last job.

When a local sheriff (Gene Hackman) murders William’s best friend (Morgan Freeman) and then showcases the dead body to set an example, William sets out to avenge his friend. The movie has some of the best one-liners in Western movies and is a masterclass in storytelling.

Unforgiven won the Oscar for Best Picture, helping to revitalize interest in the Western genre. Eastwood won Best Director, Hackman won Best Supporting Actor, and Unforgiven remains one of the best Westerns of the modern era.

2000s – No Country For Old Men (2007)

Only two Westerns made the list of the Best Movies of the 21st Century in the New York Times, as voted on by industry professionals. Both movies came out in 2007, and the better of the two was No Country for Old Men (the other was There Will Be Blood).

The Coen brothers directed No Country for Old Men, which followed a luckless man (Josh Brolin) in a small town who finds a drug deal gone wrong and takes the money he finds there among all the dead bodies. This leads a mafia boss to send an assassin (Javier Bardem) to get the money back and kill the man.

This is a dark and violent movie, and the villain, Anton Chigurh, is one of the best villains ever to appear in a Western film. No Country for Old Men earned eight Oscar nominations, winning Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Bardem), and Best Adapted Screenplay.

2010s – Django Unchained (2012)

Quentin Tarantino directed two Western movies in the 2010s. Both were all-star affairs, with Django Unchained (2012) and The Hateful Eight (2015). The latter movie was polarizing, but the first film remains a masterpiece that received almost unanimous positive reviews.

Jamie Foxx plays Django, an enslaved man whom a bounty hunter named King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) rescues and offers to free if the man will help him find his latest targets. He also promises to help reunite Django with his wife, whom he ended up separating from when his former owner sold him.

The movie has all of Tarantino’s great trademarks, from his visual directing cues to the incredible dialogue throughout. Waltz won an Oscar for his performance, and Tarantino won for Best Original Screenplay.

2020s – The Harder They Fall (2021)

The 2020s have been mainly quiet as far as Westerns go, but there have been a few standouts, especially on streaming services. The Harder They Fall was a 2021 Netflix original release. The story was unique because it told the story of historic Black Western figures.

While all the characters were based on real-life figures (Nat Love, Rufus Black, Stagecoach Mary, Cherokee Bill, Lawman Bass Reeves, etc.), the story itself was fictional, and these were all fictional portrayals of the characters. The cast, led by Jonathan Majors and Idris Elba, was masterful.

Reviews were magnificent across the board, with an 88% Rotten Tomatoes score. It also has several awards and honors at the Black Reel Awards, Critics’ Choice Awards, NAACP Image Awards, and more. It is easily one of the best Westerns of the 2020s.