Since the medium of animation has been primarily dominated by family comedies, fairy tale fantasies, and poppy musicals for most of its history, animated Westerns have been few and far between, especially in recent years.
While films like Disney’s Home on the Range, DreamWorks’ Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, and Steven Spielberg’s An American Tail: Fievel Goes West use the genre as a source for parodies and aesthetic inspiration, seldom has there been an animated Western true to the genre’s themes and conventional tropes.
Shows like Samurai Jack and Avatar: The Last Airbender have also explored the thematic and archetypal elements found in classic American Westerns, but have done so in ways so far aesthetically detached from the traditional Western genre to the point that they are almost unrecognizable.
While the Western has been largely absent from blockbuster cinema in general over the past decade, director Gore Verbinski…
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