To walk into a movie theater today is to notice one obvious thing. Aside from the inflated ticket prices, and the resort to gimmicks such as 3D by a film industry unable to compete with newer more immersive forms of entertainment, is that a genre which hardly existed 50-60 years ago dominates the box office, and a genre which was omnipresent then, is all but absent now.
The Western, once the defining American myth and its most potent international export, has all but vanished. Occasional remakes such as 3:10 to Yuma or True Grit surface, and are gone. In their place is the superhero spectacle. A genre which has become America's new chief cultural export.
