All 4 Westerns That Won Best Picture, Ranked

You don’t have to define a Western necessarily, because you kind of know one when you see it. If a movie’s got an Old West setting, characters on opposite sides of the law, themes surrounding justice and masculinity, and impressive landscapes, then it might well be a Western. Of course, not all Westerns have all these things, because neo-Westerns (like Hell or High Water) don’t take place during Old West times, and revisionist Westerns (like The Wild Bunch and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) are willing to get a little more complex thematically and/or narratively. The main thing is that quite a few movies can be broadly considered Westerns, which might make it surprising that only four in the nearly 100-year history of the Academy Awards have ever won the top prize: Best Picture. That’s more than there are fantasy or sci-fi movies that have won Best Picture, and there’s never been an animated movie that’s won Best Picture (if you want to count animation as a genre), but still… four’s not a ton, when there are 97 Best Picture winners and counting.