Some Magnificent Seven recapping

Some movie fans have the Star Wars series or others the Lord of the Rings epics. Me, I go in a different direction from the sci-fi epic. Westerns have always appealed to me ever since I started watching John Wayne movies or reading Lous L'Amour stories. So I'll pass on those science fiction series and stick with the Magnificent Seven series instead.

Looking at all four movies, made between 1960 and 1972 with Elmer Bernstein's musical score the only common link among the four, it's easy to rank them. There's the original, 1960's The Magnificent Seven, which is a classic and consistently ranks among the top 10 westerns ever made and for good reason. The cast is full of up and coming actors like Steve McQueen, Eli Wallach, Charles Bronson, and James Coburn and is anchored by the always steady Yul Brynner.

It's sort of a mix between the old school westerns of the 1940s and 1950s and a preview of what was to come in the 1960s when there was more of a middle ground with westerns. There weren't always good guys vs. bad guys. The original doesn't show these gunfighters as romantic characters, instead portraying them as men drifting through a life that is empty with little to hold them in one place.

To be fair, the three sequels all explore those ideas, some more successfully than others, but the trio of movies goes through quite a transformation. Brynner leaves after one more movie, 1966's Return of the Magnificent Seven, only to be replaced by George Kennedy and Lee Van Cleef, both leaving their own personal imprint on the Chris Adams character. Each movie puts together a new group of seven gunfighters and ultimately ends up killing off about half of them, but more on that later.

What I like so much about these movies is they try hard to get the idea of the wild west across. Maybe it's a romantic ideal of what the wild west could or should have been in my head, but it's something I like to look for in westerns. In each group of seven, the less than perfect gunfighters join up for any number of reasons, but usually come around to one thing. They're doing something right after years of doing what they wanted to or needed to do. The odds are always against them, but they have a chance to do something on principle, something they can believe in. The cost is a pricey one for these gunfighters with many of them getting killed in the process, but they chose to stay and see things out until the end.

All other things with story and action aside, I like these movies so much because of the casting. The original speaks for itself in terms of the stars it produced, but the genre formula of a team of specialists/experts allowed some pretty cool groups of actors to work together. They weren't all big stars, some were just really solid western character actors, but in most cases they made the most of the parts. Where else could you see a list of performers like Brynner, McQueen, Coburn, Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Brad Dexter and then Eli Wallach as the villain? And that's just the original. Onto the sequels, you get Warren Oates, Claude Akins, James Whitmore, Kennedy, Monte Markham, Reni Santoni, Bernie Casey, Joe Don Baker, Luke Askew, Pedro Armendariz JR, and Van Cleef.

Now with all that seriousness out of the way, I do have to bring something up about the Chris Adams character over the course of the 4 movies. Let's go with the assumption that he's the same character even if he's played by 3 different actors. So he assembles 4 groups of seven for a total of 23 different men. When all is said and done, 15 of the 23 are dead (I won't spoil who). You'd think sooner or later word would get around that maybe these jobs this Chris fellow is selling aren't worth it. "Yeah, sure, here's $20, wanna go get shot up in a suicide mission?" Ah, just me rambling with something I've always wondered about, I still love 'em.

The Magnificent Seven (1960): ****/****
Guns of the Magnificent Seven (1969) ***/****
Return of the Magnificent Seven (1966): ** 1/2 /****
The Magnificent Seven Ride! (1972): * 1/2 / ****

And one more thing I have to point out, what movie fans have been clamoring for all these years. A remake of The Magnificent Seven done in...LEGOS! I'd say something about someone having too much time on their hands, but who am I kidding? I sat down and watched the whole thing. The scary part? It's pretty dead on. Enjoy.

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four