Young Guns is officially ‘old’ as the popular Western action film turned 35 after opening in theaters on August 12, 1988. Emilio Estevez led the all-star cast that also included Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips, Charlie Sheen, Dermot Mulroney, Casey Siemaszko, Terence Stamp, Terry O’Quinn, Brian Keith, Patrick Wayne, and Jack Palance.
The film that was billed as a “Brat Pack Western” provided some sizzle to the late summer box office, opening at No. 1 with a gross of $7 million to dethrone “Cocktail” starring Tom Cruise after its two-week run atop the charts. Ironically, Cruise had a cameo in “Young Guns” when he was visiting the set and director Christopher Cain tabbed him to be in the movie. Cruise very briefly appears at the 1:39:18 when he is shot by Charlie (Siemaszko). Estevez would essentially return the favor and do an uncredited cameo in the original “Mission Impossible” in 1996.
“Young Guns” had a short run at No. 1 at “Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master” took the top spot the following week, but would gross $45.7 million domestically and $56 million worldwide on an $11 million budget as the biggest Western released since 1985’s “Pale Rider” starring Clint Eastwood and “Silverado” starring Scott Glenn, Kevin Kline and Kevin Costner.
“Young Guns” takes place in 1870s New Mexico with English cattleman John Tunstall (Stamp) adding a young gunman named Billy to join the “Regulators” (Doc Scurlock(Sutherland), Jose Chavez y Chavez (Phillips), Dick Brewer (Sheen), “Dirty” Steve Stephens (Mulroney) and Charlie Bowdre (Siemaszko)) that work and reside on his ranch. Tunstall’s goal is to educate and civilize the young men amidst his clashes with rival rancher Lawrence Murphy (Palance).
After Murphy’s men kill Tunstall, the Regulators are deputized and given warrants for the killers’ arrest and following Billy’s gunning down of several men, the newspapers paint the Regulators out to be gang headed by the outlaw “Billy the Kid.” Soon there are bounty hunters searching for the Regulators, including Buckshot Roberts (Kieth), who kills Brewer and makes Billy the Kid the defacto leader of the group. Billy’s agenda to avenge the Tunstall’s killing in what screenwriter John Fusco calls their “adolescent defiance” to bring an end to Murphy’s corruption.
Estevez had already appeared in the hit films “The Outsiders,” “The Breakfast Club,” “St. Elmo’s Fire” and “Stakeout,” and well-known in Hollywood as Martin Sheen’s oldest son, but he was not director Cain’s original choice to play Billy the Kid.
“I lobbied hard because I was not the first choice,” Estevez told Yahoo! in a Role Recall interview. “The director was looking at a lot of other actors to play that role. I actually called the director who I knew I’d worked with before [on 1985’s That Was Then… This Is Now], and I said, ‘I was born to play Billy the Kid.’ And he says, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘I was born to play this role, and you can go on and audition whomever you want.’ I said, ‘I’ll come in, I’ll audition, whatever you want, you’re going to end up casting me in this film.”
Cain informed Estevez that he intended to cast Sutherland in the Billy the Kid role, to which Estevez replied “You got it the wrong way, bro. You got it the wrong way. Switch ’em.”
In spite of Sutherland’s recent success with “Stand by Me” and “The Lost Boys,” Cain cast Sutherland as Doc with no blowback from Donald Sutherland’s son.
“That was the most fun I ever had on a film,” the actor said to Yahoo! in 2016. “We hung out in the bar together, we hung out in the restaurants together. We were really good friends.”
Screenwriter John Fusco also had a different choice in the beginning to play Billy the Kid.
“My first choice for Billy was Sean Penn,” Fusco told Cowboys & Indians. “But Sean Penn was in jail at the time. The director brought the script to Sean in jail, and Sean wanted to do it, but his legal problems wouldn’t allow it.”
“The fact that we are all really very different types and would never be up for the same role reduces any sense of competition between us,” Phillips told the Los Angeles Times.
“Young Guns II” was greenlit off the original’s success and released in the summer of 1990. New cast members for the sequel included Christian Slater as “Arkansas” Dave Rudabaugh, Alan Ruck as Hendry William French, James Coburn as John Chisum, Balthazar Getty as Tom O’Folliard, Viggo Mortenson as John W. Poe and William Peterson as Pat Garrett.
“Young Guns II” went on to gross a worldwide total of $59 million.
There have been rumors of a third installment in the series “Guns: Alias Billy the Kid,” most recently mentioned by Lou Diamond Phillips in May 2023.
“It’s in limbo right now,” Phillips told EW. “It was chugging along there for a minute, but then I think they got into a rights situation… It’s not dead, but it’s not happening right now.”
Estevez discussed the possibility of a sequel, telling Collider in March 2021 “Yeah, it’s definitely in the works.”
“Francis Ford Coppola has said movies are defined by time. It’s interesting because, yes, I think we all know that the initial critical reaction to “Young Guns” was so cynical, and everybody assumed it was a contrived attempt to put the Brat Pack on horseback, or “Young Buns,” Fusco told Cowboys & Indians. “We just had our own irreverent rock-and-roll take on it. But it’s so beautiful that, over time, it’s become so well-loved and iconic.”
YOUNG GUNS (Rated R)
Scale of 1-10: 7
