10 Movies So Good They Ruined Genres

3. Unforgiven

From the late 1930s onwards, the western genre was a reliable Hollywood stalwart, driven to terrific success primarily by filmmakers John Ford and Howard Hawks, and of course venerable star John Wayne.

The genre eventually evolved into the spaghetti western, fronted most iconically by Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood, before its steam began to run out in the 1980s as, like the slasher genre, fans became over-saturated with too many over-familiar offerings.

Eastwood offered up the last word on the traditional western, then, with his 1992 Best Picture and Best Director Oscar winner Unforgiven, a movie which wrapped classic western tropes around a fiercely unique engagement with the notions of violence and revenge.

Almost three decades on, Unforgiven remains very much the quintessential western to many, for so brilliantly planting one foot in westerns of old while taking a more contemporary, thoughtful approach to its characters.

Unforgiven really does feel like the exclamation point for the classic Hollywood western, and today, the genre is basically dead, at least in its original form.

Aside from the odd throwback like 3:10 to Yuma or True Grit - both remakes, admittedly - the western has largely been reconfigured within the neo-noir sub-genre in films like No Country for Old Men and Hell or High Water, or more comedic efforts like the upcoming The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.

Eastwood's film did such a splendid job encapsulating everything people love about the genre and dressing-down everything people hate, that there really wasn't anywhere else to go.