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Sergio Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly isn’t just the definitive Spaghetti Western, and the pinnacle of the Western movie. It’s also one of the greatest and most important movies ever made. Besides cementing Leone’s cinematic legacy and Clint Eastwood’s stardom, the third installment in the loosely titled “Dollars Trilogy” irrevocably changed cinema and art as a whole. To this day, its influence can be felt in just about any kind of movie, whether it’s a Western or not. Surprisingly, this also applies to movies made in countries outside the United States of America, the birthplace of the cowboy and frontier myth. Case in point: South Korea’s The Good, the Bad, the Weird.
Loosely inspired by The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Good, the Bad, the Weird is far from the first or last Western made in Asia. But beyond the novelty of seeing something as undeniably American as the Western be reinterpreted through a South Korean lens, what helped this movie stand out among its contemporaries was its sheer epicness. Without exaggeration, The Good, the Bad, the Weird is the kind of Western epic that hasn’t been seen in the better part of a century. Such movies are rarely, if ever, made these days. It’s also easily one of the best movies to come out of the 2000s, which is why its current cult status among English-speaking audiences is such a shame.
The Good, the Bad, the Weird Was a Very Loose Remake of a Classic Western
The Remake Told a More Exciting and Upbeat Story Than the Original Did
The Good, the Bad, the Weird is a remake of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in name only. For one, the movies’ moods and stories were opposites of each other. If The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was a bleak reflection on life’s worthlessness in the barren American frontier, The Good, the Bad, the Weird was an exciting adventure across Manchuria’s deserts. The remake was a treasure hunt from beginning to end, with various factions fighting over a map that would lead them to the Qing Dynasty’s hidden fortune. Conversely, the original’s treasure hunt only began at the halfway point. What’s more, the titular Good, Bad and Ugly fought over a small personal fortune, not vast riches that could shape or buy a country’s future.
The movies’ differences were most pronounced in their respective titular trios. In The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Blondie (The Good), Angel Eyes (The Bad) and Tuco (The Ugly) could be read as deconstructions of a classic cowboy tale’s heroes and villains. Though they lived up to their nicknames, they were anything but one-dimensional. To wit: Blondie only did good if he profited from it, Angel Eyes was more of an irredeemable sadist than a cool outlaw, and Tuco was a pitiful and sympathetic underdog. When compared to classic cowboys, these characters’ moralities were much harder to determine. This, in turn, made them more unpredictable and human to viewers.
On the other hand, The Good, the Bad, the Weird’s version of this iconic trio was incredibly simplified. Park Do-won (The Good) was clean and noble, Park Chang-yi (The Bad) was cartoonishly ruthless, and Yoon Tae-goo (The Weird) was a goofy wild card. They had some depth, but the movie didn’t spend too much time exploring their humanity. The movie gave them just enough development to keep them larger-than-life at all times. These three were the leads of an action-comedy Western, and they played their designated roles perfectly. While the remake’s choice to water down the original’s substance and excise its nihilism may seem like bad ideas, the end result says otherwise.
The Good, the Bad, the Weird Was a Modern Cowboy Epic Like no Other
The Remake’s Epic Cowboy Action Has Yet to be Paralleled
If The Good, the Bad and the Ugly was a cynical deconstruction of the cowboy power fantasy and frontier mythmaking, The Good, the Bad, the Weird was a throwback to the genre’s more innocent and imaginative days. Although it had some unkind things to say about the fascists who occupied Manchuria and the Korean outlaws who fled there, exploring this dark chapter in history was not a priority. The movie set out to entertain audiences by transporting them into its anachronistic and fantastical vision of occupied Manchuria just before World War II broke out, and it succeeded.
Bandits hijacked a train just as the movie began. Shootouts broke out in the shady underworld called the “Ghost Market.” A bounty hunter fought an entire army while on horseback. The main trio settled things in a climactic duel, and so forth. More than anything else, The Good, the Bad, the Weird was a collection of massive cowboy setpieces that were tied together by a thin plot. The movie’s priorities were made clearest in the climactic chase, which is the biggest and best that the genre has seen in modern times. Here, all parties converged on Tae-goo’s location and fought for the map. The ensuing chase, which used minimal to no CGI, went on so long that the accompanying song was changed three times.
The Good, the Bad, the Weird traded The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’s depth and nuance for cinematic spectacle, and it was better for it. What it lacked in substance, it more than made up for in action and comedy. This freed the loose remake from the shadow of its legendary source material and, more importantly, gave it an identity of its own. The Good, the Bad, the Weird was basically an excited kid’s idea of what a cowboy movie should be, and it was glorious and unparalleled. More importantly, it was a very different kind of Western movie that stood out at the height of the genre’s resurgence in the late 2000s.
Broadly speaking, most revived Westerns retreaded familiar ground. Bone Tomahawk, Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight and In a Valley of Violence upheld Spaghetti Westerns’ grim and violent traditions. New takes on classic cowboys like Horizon: An American Saga and the remakes of 3:10 to Yuma, The Magnificent Seven and True Grit were still more of the same. Either they were throwbacks to old-fashioned filmmaking, or they were indistinguishable from modern action movies. On the other hand, The Good, the Bad, the Weird was the kind of action epic that Asian filmmakers were known for, only now it used six-shooters and lever-action rifles instead of martial arts and bladed weapons.
The Good, the Bad, the Weird is the Biggest “Ramen Western” Ever Made
The Movie is Part of a Fun and Important Globalized Trend
Though The Good, the Bad, the Weird is probably the only Korean-made Western that English-speaking viewers have ever heard of, it’s not the only out there. The movie that director Jee-woon Kim dubbed as a “Kimchi Western” was the modern successor to the “Manchurian Western” from the ’60s and ’70s. Just as Spaghetti Westerns were Italian filmmakers’ take on cowboys, Manchurian Westerns were South Korean filmmakers’ reinterpretation of the Wild West. What’s more, South Korea wasn’t the only country in Asia that had its own spin on the cowboy movie. There were so many Westerns made in the continent that English-speaking film pundits dubbed the trend as the “Ramen Western.” The Good, the Bad, the Weird is, as of this writing, the biggest Ramen Western ever made.
But more importantly, The Good, the Bad, the Weird’s mere existence speaks to both the cowboy myth’s appeal, and cinema’s global reach. Cowboys, sheriffs, outlaws and duels at high noon are quintessentially American. However, the story of a mythic hero who defends innocent people from evildoers is something that anyone, regardless of language barriers and cultural differences, can relate to. It’s no wonder why or how filmmakers from around the world connected so deeply with American cowboy movies, and were then inspired to make their own. This inspiring exchange of ideas didn’t just introduce audiences to different countries’ stories, cultures and perspectives, but it reaffirmed just how globalized movies are as well. The biggest example of one such filmmaker is none other than Akira Kurosawa, who was greatly moved and inspired by John Ford’s classic Westerns.
The best movies transcend cultural divides, speak to audiences from any part of the world, and maintain their roots all throughout. The Good, the Bad, the Weird is proof of this. Even if it’s basically what would happen if a dark masterpiece like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly were turned into a live-action cartoon, this remake is a modern cowboy epic in the truest sense of the term. Not only is the movie great, but there hasn’t been anything like it since. Its closest competition would be the dour The Lone Ranger (2013), but only because of its blockbuster scale and a jarringly exciting final train battle. The Good, the Bad, the Weird is simultaneously a unique remake, and one of the best modern Westerns ever made. It has yet to be surpassed, and it will be a long time before that happens.
The Good, the Bad, the Weird is now available to watch and own physically and digitally.
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