Rio Bravo, El Dorado and Rio Lobo -- the same movie?

D

David W. Richardson

Chapelgrove Films
Okay all you John Wayne western fans. Let's talk!

It seems from the scuttlebutt that "Rio Bravo", "El Dorado" and "Rio Lobo" are very similar movies. I haven't seen "Rio Lobo", so I can't comment on that one -- maybe others can. But I have seen the first two, and the similarities are many.

Both star John Wayne as the strong lead character, of course.

Both have him fighting off a large group of bad guys working for some powerful bad guy -- not uncommon in westerns.

In both movies he has someone locked up in a jail cell and is trying to keep him there.

A lot of both movies takes place in the Sheriff's office/jail.

The supporting cast is where it really gets almost identical. In both movies he's got 3 guys helping him fight. They are:

1. The washed-up drunk of a Sheriff who is the laughingstock of the town, but dries out and redeems himself. (Dean Martin and Robert Mitchum.)

2. The young good-looking kid who is fast with a gun and nicknamed after a state. (Ricky Nelson as "Colorado" and James Caan as "Mississippi".)

3. The grizzled, cranky old jailer who everyone underestimates in a fight. (Walter Brennan and Paul Fix.)

I'll be honest, I've seen both movies and love them both, but it can be hard to remember who was in which one because they are so similar. Which isn't to say there aren't differences -- there are. But the similarities are blatant.

Any thoughts?
 
Yeah, the western genre was pretty formulaic, as the studios made thousands of them and inevitably repeated the ones that worked over and over. Much like the superhero films are all pretty much becoming the same movie, now that the studios have gotten the formula down. Like the western, the superhero genre will die out, although hopefully it won't take decades like the western did to finally fade.
 
This was a particularly noted set of similar films. Howard Hawks produced & directed all three. He made Rio Bravo in 1959, did three more films in the early sixties and then his final two films were El Dorado (1967) and Rio Lobo (1970). Everyone including Hawks commented on the similarities, and Hawks stated something to the effect that he was playing with the same story in different ways. This is the same guy who shot two versions of The Big Sleep (mostly to give Lauren Bacall more screen time), and it is also the same guy who when asked by the studio to reshoot a scene for pacing brazenly did it THE EXACT SAME WAY just to prove a point (I think that was on To Have And Have Not). Howard Hawks was certainly not a guy stuck in one genre (Bringing Up Baby, Sergeant York, Scarface, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes are among his many credits) and even towards the end his films did well enough financially and critically that he could pretty much do what he wanted. He chose to redo a story he liked a couple times.
 
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