The Surprise When You Revisit a Beloved Story and Discover It's Actually Kinda Terrible

Were the Young Guns movies always this bad?

20th Century Fox

When I was growing up, every Sunday we went to my grandmother’s house in downtown Detroit. My mom’s side is Italian, which meant good food and hours (and hours) of conversation. We’d be there most of the day, long enough to get bored several times.

This being the 80s, my younger brother and I were left to our own devices. We’d go to the park, or slip through a gap in a brick wall and visit a Burger King with no money, or throw rocks at garages, or hit rocks with sticks, or walk to the gas station to buy cigarettes for the adults. If our older cousin was there, we’d create a ball out of paper and tape and play HORSE using a trashcan.

My great-grandfather also didn’t participate in all the talking. He sat in the living room, enthroned in his recliner, watching TV. Everyone greeted him when they arrived, but otherwise he was left alone. Part of that was his hearing—he’d served in World War II as a cook and had the ears to show for it. His difficulties were only compounded by age. But I also think he wasn’t one for a lot of talk. There’s only so much some guys can say before he’s said all he cares to. I know because I am that guy.

Sometimes he watched sports, but typically he was engrossed in Western. Sometimes I joined him. We’d watch in silence. It was great.

I don’t know if those Sundays are why I’ve always had a thing for cowboy movies, or if there’s something about them that speaks to me on a deeper level. When I think about it conceptually, I can appreciate the rugged individualism of the Wild West, and obviously all the gunslinging. But trying to articulate it is like explaining why Binary Sunset in A New Hope moves me. Words can’t express what the heart knows.

The Westerns we watched were slow black & white movies with heroes so stoic they might as well be carved out of wood. They were not exciting. Not to a young boy. Watching them was an experience in patience. Papa: How long until the next gunfight?

Young Guns released in 1988 and I immediately recognized it as a Western for me.

The first, immediate appeal: It was shot in color, and thus felt modern, instead of something made when sound was an exciting new development in filmmaking.

The second: It starred young stars at the beginning of their ascent. Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Dermot Mulroney. A new version of the Brat Pack, with pistols.

The third and final point: there was a lot of gunplay.

Sold.

I watched the first Young Guns so often, the climax remains seared to my brain nearly 40 years later. In 1990, I lost innumerable summer days watching the Blaze of Glory music video. Young Guns 2 was one of my most anticipated sequels, behind only Back to the Future 2 and evergreen hopes for a continuation of the Star Wars saga.

I’ve spent the past 30ish years believing the Young Guns movies were the best of their kind, a nouveau take on the Western for kids who grew up on Nintendo and Star Wars. Not lowbrow, but kinetic and exciting. I recently rewatched them for the first time in decades and was honestly shocked. They kinda suck? And on the heels of that revelation came another—were they always bad? Was I just too young to see it?

Let’s dive in.

Unless John Williams is involved, I wouldn’t normally comment on a film score. Young Guns opens with a number that feels like the amalgamation of pop and 80s synth. It’s so tonally out of place, it’s hard to believe anyone ever considered it a good idea. Fortunately, the score is mostly nonexistent. The better to hear the gunfire.

The plot is fine. It mostly exists to provoke gunfights. It’s no 3:10 to Yuma or even The Magnificent Seven, but it serves its purpose. Scaffolding meant to hold up set pieces. There’s a reason the most memorable scenes involve somebody shooting a gun.

The best part of Young Guns is the characters, specifically Billy the Kid (Estevez), Doc Scurlock (Sutherland), and Chavez (Phillips). The movie doesn’t really give you a good reason to like any of them. They would probably be the bad guys in any other story. But you like them thanks entirely to the charisma of the actors.

Mostly you wonder why anyone would follow Billy the Kid. Yeah, he’s quick with the steel, but he also a chaotic cyclone of sociopathic energy. The only character I’ve ever seen laugh so often while killing is the Joker. Not the best comp if you’re hoping for sympathy. And yet, the whole concept of pals, of sticking with someone because of shared experience, still works. It’s the same vein as Justified’s “we dug coal together,” but without the character work to really make you care.

I was disappointed by Young Guns, but I think that’s probably because I spent 30+ years thinking “this movie is incredible.” It’s fine. I enjoyed it. Just not nearly as much as I’d expected. I ended the viewing thinking, “well—at least I still have Young Guns 2.”

Famous last words.

I honestly thought the sequel was the better film, but it’s awful. I was led astray by the Bon Jon Jovi of it all. Young Guns 2 is constructed around a looking back narrative that asserts Billy the Kid wasn’t killed by Pat Garrett, actually. And while that possibility was raised in the 1940s, the film uses it as a guise to further its attempts at mythologizing Billy the Kid.

On one hand, I get it. Who doesn’t enjoy romanticizing these characters? I went through a whole phase as a teenager reading about people like Jesse James, Doc Holliday, and, of course, Billy the Kid. I’m still not immune to it—I’m currently absorbed with a podcast about Sammy “the bull” Gravano, a notable mafioso from the 70s-80s. Something about people who brazenly flout laws and conventions will always be fascinating. And, too, the dark side of humanity has a gravity of its own.

Young Guns 2 makes the mistake of believing Billy the Kid just being onscreen is enough. It’s not. It reunites the three best things from the previous film—Billy, Doc, Chavez—but doesn’t actually do anything with them. The story meanders through a scrubby wasteland looking for water or shelter or, hell, I don’t know what. It never finds anything worth looking for. We ultimately end up where the first film concluded—a body buried in Billy the Kid’s grave. Unlike the “pals till the end” mantra of the first film, the second’s lasting message is that you can’t kill Billy the Kid. That’s pretty lame.

The most joy I got out of Young Guns 2 was found in revisiting “Blaze of Glory”—which still bangs, and could, and probably should, be considered a stand-in for the entire film—and spotting a young Viggo Mortensen. Seeing him, I felt like Aragorn when the elves arrive at Helm’s Deep. “Viggo—you are most welcome.”

20th Century Fox

Viggo didn’t disappoint, though his role is pretty small.

On the other side of the rewatch, I’m left with damning questions. I know the movies were loved by others in my demographic. What about people with more seasoning? Not necessarily older, but having been exposed to better Westerns? Did they like the Young Guns films at the time? Or did they dismiss it as the Gen X cowboy porn it undoubtedly is?

I’m left wondering at what point in my lifetime these movies tipped the scales, unseen and unnoticed, from something that’s really great to movies that are kinda mediocre. Would I still unequivocally enjoy this franchise if I’d revisited sooner, or with more frequency?

That leads to the most frightening possibility: Would I still love Star Wars if I hadn't continually revisited it all my life?

Does familiarity renew love and allow one to overlook flaws obvious to those without nostalgic baggage? Are there other beloved 80s classics that I remember as being better than they actually are?

If you’re anything like me, you’re probably tempted to rewatch Young Guns just to see for yourself: Have the years been unkind, or is Eric smoking something? Resist the urge. Your vague memories of the films are infinitely superior to what they actually are. Subsist on half-glimpsed visuals of Billy jumping out of a chest, guns blazing.

If that’s not enough, sustain yourself on news of a third film, which Estevez recently confirmed. Overlook the insanity of a bunch of old cowboys in a movie called Young Guns. Forget that the previous films established that Billy the Kid doesn’t die, that in fact he can’t die. He is as inevitable as Thanos. Try not to laugh that two characters who died in Young Guns 2 are coming back. Presumably not as zombies, though wouldn’t that be something.

I am very skeptical a third film will be good. But I’ll be there to see it. I’ve been watching cowboy movies all my life. It’d be silly to quit now.