ABSTRACT
Dystopian Westerns tend to be set in a later period than romance Westerns, closer to the end of the nineteenth century - long after pioneers and land claims - when the West is settled. The convention of the cavalry rescue is as old as the Western, figuring prominently in Selig films from 1909 and defining the meaning of the cavalry in Griffith's Westerns from The Last Drop of Water. The imperialist assumptions about American frontier history and identity that inform the foundation myth of the epic Western are increasingly called into question. The conventions of the Western genre become disrupted by a convention of the dystopian science fiction film: technology inevitably goes wrong. Romance Westerns are ultimately romantic in their view that the West will be settled for the better, through noble heroism. The conditions are such that the Western hero is unable and unwilling to act in the interests of justice.
