Western movies have long been built on repeated tropes that define the genre. As the exciting stories of how cowboys, bandits, and outlaws make their way through a lawless life across the Wild West ...

On-set brawls. Courtroom battles. Epic bombs. Why the world's most bankable cowboy is suddenly shooting blanks.

For decades, the Western was the beating heart of Hollywood mythmaking, an arena where heroism rode tall in the saddle and the frontier seemed endless. But like the real West, the genre had its ...