“Alleged Fairness of This Remake”: Why Denzel Washington’s 2016 Western Remake Gets Poor Accuracy Score Explained by Expert

Michael Grauer, an Old West historian, examines sequences from the 2016 version of The Magnificent Seven and finds numerous inaccuracies. The Western, directed by Antoine Fuqua, is a reimagining of John Sturges’ 1960 film of the same name, which itself an Americanized version of Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 classic Seven Samurai. Denzel Washington plays the title character in Fuqua’s The Magnificent Seven, alongside Chris Pratt, Vincent D’Onofrio, and Ethan Hawke. Washington plays Chisolm.

A real-life cowboy named Grauer recently examined a few moments from The Magnificent Seven, one of which included Lee Byung-hun’s Billy Rocks (the relevant part begins at 8:26 below).

Rauer criticizes the movie for a number of reasons, one of which is how its lone Asian character is portrayed. See some of Grauer’s remarks and his low rating of the movie out of ten below:

It’s a joke. “Why don’t we actually do it?” Really, I mean it. Come on. One or both of them will end up dead or in jail. The fact that this Asian actor is an assassin highlights the notion that there was once a perception that Asians were cunning, despite the supposed justice of this retelling of The Magnificent Seven.

Asians made up a sizable portion of the population, mostly on the West Coast, and they moved inland into the mining areas and helped build the Transcontinental Railway. But they tended to be looked on as some kind of other, and of course, ultimately as untrustworthy.

“It’s become a Western trope, you know, inspiring the townspeople to fight for themselves. But I don’t know of any instance where townspeople line up sandbags along the balconies and fortifications all over town. And then you’ve got the Old West equivalent of a machine gun with the Gatling gun, and of course he’s five hundred yards away. So how accurate is that from five hundred yards? […]

“It seems to me the entire philosophy in this entire scene was ‘the more bullets the better.’ Four [out of 10].”

Summary

• A cowboy and historian criticize The Magnificent Seven remake for its depiction of its only Asian character, which plays into historical stereotypes.
• The 2016 remake also features the trope of townspeople being rallied to fight as a small army, which isn’t historically accurate.
• 2016’s The Magnificent Seven, which stars Denzel Washington and Chris Pratt, earned mixed reviews and was a box office disappointment.

Was The Magnificent Seven Remake A Success Despite Its Inaccuracies?

How The Antoine Fuqua Film Fared Critically & Commercially

The Magnificent Seven from 1960 and Seven Samurai from today are both highly regarded movies, which put pressure on Fuqua’s remake. Nic Pizzolatto, best known for developing True Detective, and Richard Wenk, who penned all three of Fuqua’s Equalizer trilogy, which also starred Washington, wrote the screenplay for the new movie. The Magnificent Seven of 2016 was not universally disliked, even though it was not as good as its predecessors.

Washington’s last film appearance as former government assassin Robert McCall was The Equalizer 3, released in 2023.

Rotten Tomatoes gives 2016’s The Magnificent Seven a 64% rating after a range of negative to neutral reviews. The audience score is a slight improvement at 71%, suggesting general movie-goers enjoyed the film more. Unfortunately, this generally positive audience reception didn’t translate to The Magnificent Seven becoming a box office success.

Made on an estimated budget of $90 million, The Magnificent Seven remake grossed $162.4 million worldwide. Using the standard Hollywood rule of thumb, which accounts for marketing spend and theaters’ cuts, the remake was probably looking at a break-even point of roughly $225 million, making it a commercial disappointment. The film, then, helped reinforce the idea that Westerns just don’t have a wide audience appeal. And judging from Grauer’s commentary, The Magnificent Seven remake clearly doesn’t have historical accuracy going for it either.

The Magnificent Seven

The Magnificent Seven is a new remake of the 1960 western action film that follows a group of seven warriors from different walks of life who join forces to liberate a town from an oppressive gold miner. When Bartholomew Bogue takes control of the town of Rose Creek, the beleaguered residence finds themselves at his mercy. One woman seeking revenge and freedom finds U.S. Marshal Sim Chisholm, and convinces him to join their cause, as he recruits several gunmen, outlaws, and assassins willing to risk it all for a good deed.

Antoine Fuqua is the director.

Date of Release: September 23, 2016

Village Roadshow Pictures, Columbia Pictures, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer are the studio(s) involved.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is the distributor(s).

John Lee Hancock and Nic Pizzolatto are the authors.

Cast: Denzel Washington, Peter Sarsgaard, Vincent D’Onofrio, Cam Gigandet, Haley Bennett, Chris Pratt2, Ethan Hawke, Sean Bridgers, Vinnie Jones, Matt Bomer, Byung-hun Lee, Denzel Washington

Duration: 132 minutes

Spending limit: $90 million

Where Was the Magnificent Seven Filmed? All Locations Explained

Filming for The Magnificent Seven took place in a number of stunning American locales. The Magnificent Seven, a 2016 motion picture, is a reimagining of the 1960 movie of the same name, which was based on the well-known Japanese film Seven Samurai from 1950. With its combination of contemporary special effects and production methods with an iconic Western aesthetic, The Magnificent Seven was a major commercial success, taking in over $160 million at the box office.

The narrative of Rose Creek, a tiny frontier village, is the focus of The Magnificent Seven. The Magnificent Seven follows their struggle to retake Rose Creek and bring the evil Bogue to justice.

Rose Creek Was Shot in Jackson Louisiana

Set designers created the town of Rose Creek in The Magnificent Seven entirely from scratch in a town called Jackson, about an hour west of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The entire purpose of the buildings in Rose Creek was to film The Magnificent Seven, and they were all intended to be complete standing structures. The actors and crew of this Western classic frequently used Rose Creek’s various buildings to wait out the storms that notoriously delayed filming. When the weather wasn’t good or they had some time off from filming, the actors and crew would congregate in the saloon.

On the Jackson set, every sequence that took place in Rose Creek was shot. That includes both the opening scene when Bogue subjugates the town, and the Magnificent Seven’s final confrontation with Bogue. Jackson is considered part of the Baton Rouge metropolitan area, though it is its own town with a population of about 3,700 people. The weather was so bad while filming in Jackson that it took about 3 weeks to film the final battle between Bogue and the Seven (per Screen Daily).

Amador City Was Filmed In New Mexico

New Mexico was also used for filming The Magnificent Seven. The courageous bounty hunters in the movie are chosen from all across the world, but it all starts in Amador City with Sam Chisholm. The stunning, mountainous landscape of New Mexico served as the backdrop for this section of the film. The flat, lush terrain of Louisiana where the most of the film is set stands in stark contrast to the mountainous plateaus the Seven traverse on their way to Rose Creek. While most of the Seven’s trip to Rose Creek was filmed in various locations in New Mexico, some of it was also filmed close to Ridgway, Colorado.

Some of the movie’s most majestic shots were taken in Abiquiu, New Mexico, which has been a popular place to film Westerns for decades now. Some of the world’s most famous directors have filmed there, including Steven Spielberg and the Coen brothers. Abiquiu was notably a shooting location for the Coen brothers’ masterpiece, No Country for Old Men, as well Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. New Mexico provides a stunning terrain for any movie, not to mention significant tax breaks meant to encourage filming in the state.

The Rose Creek Area Was Filmed in The Towns of Zachary and St. Francisville Louisiana

A few of the scenes that are set in the vicinity of Rose Creek but aren’t really in the town were shot in the Louisianan tiny towns of Zachary and St. Francisville. These two tiny communities are included in the Baton Rouge metropolitan area, much like Jackson. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly which sequences were filmed here, but the landscape suggests that it was only around the made-up town of Rose Creek.

The antagonist of The Magnificent Seven, Bogue, is compelled to escape by Chisholm and the Seven, and he spends a portion of the narrative in Sacramento. There’s a chance that some of the sequences in which he appears were filmed in Zachary or St. Francisville. It is also likely that some of the majestic horseback shots of the Seven riding together were shot in these towns. The original cut of The Magnificent Seven was over 5 hours long, so it’s likely some of the scenes shot in Zachary and St. Francisville were cut for the final version.