"For the most part, the best westerns are those that omit, or minimize, the origin stories. John Wayne made any number of westerns where it was understood that he was tough old cuss, tending to fat, but we rarely dwelled on how he learned to shoot or why he walked that way. Clint Eastwood made a bunch of films where he was just a scruffy guy who could outdraw anybody and walk away with a squint, and that’s all we knew. There were a couple of others like The Outlaw Josey Wales where his background was provided in record time and High Plains Drifter where it remained an ambiguous mystery, and only one, Unforgiven, where it was a large part of the point. There are any number of films where we first meet the protagonist as he’s riding across the desert, and already know that he’s a guy whose adventures we’re here to see, without learning about every single trauma that shaped him." -- Adam-Troy Castro