The classic Western genre is dead. Western films created today are not considered classic westerns, but are instead classified into the post-western form. This happened because the overuse of cinematic codes in the western genre ultimately led to the predictability of the films. These “genre film cycles” occur because of the overuse of predictability. Film cycles occur when a genre and its conventions are overused to the point of death of that specific genre. For example, if the film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) were shown in a theater today, people would wonder why they were watching it, because they already knew what to expect from typical Western codes, such as good guys versus bad guys. , gunfights, horse chases, Indians, frontier lands, plains, etc. If it were a rerun on television, people would enjoy watching the film with a sense of nostalgia because they know that it is a genre that happened in the past and is now dead. These Westerns were bent to the point that directors made every type of story they could make into the Western structure of cinema. If the pleasure of cinema comes only from predictability, then classic Westerns should still be premiering in theaters. However this is not true. Barrie Hanfling suggests that one reason for the lack of classic Westerns is because times have changed. When the filmmakers of the "old style westerns" (of the 30s, 40s and 50s) were born, the transformation of the American western lands from the 'Wild West'... was the immediate past, and they had a certain sensitivity to it . (Hanfling, 2001). In other words, the early filmmakers still had the “Wild West” feel in mind as they created these films. When they died, those Wild West feelings died too. Hanfling also says that the filmmakers... middle of paper... something was now a thing of the past and was starting to fade, similar to the transition between the silent era and the sound era. References Campbell, N. ( 2013). Post-Western. University of Nebraska Press.Hanfling, B. (2001). Western and the traces of tradition. (1st ed.). Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc.Hirschberg, L. (2007, November 11). The country of the Coen brothers. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/magazine/11portfolio-t.html?_r=0Johnson, G. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue06/infocus/western.htm Nichols, B. (2010). Immersive Cinema: An Introduction to Film Studies. (1st ed.). New York, New York: WW Norton & Company, Inc. Varner, P. (2008). Westerns in cinema. Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Vallis, G. (2014, March 15). Re: Draft introduction [Electronic mailing list message].