PdR, what baffles you about the Western?
One thing that doesn't baffle me is the landscape. I love deserts and prairies. Two of my favorite films,
Days of Heaven and
The Reflecting Skin, have western backdrops. But they couldn't be called Westerns. I don't even think
Badlands could really be called a Western. It's probably the characterizations. They're usually simplistic. I have nothing against stoicism, but the stoicism of Western characters is usually a kind of grizzled, show-offy, cocksure stoicism. It tends to be a caricature. There just seems to be this primitivist, anti-intellectual vein coursing through Westerns. The "action movie" is probably the proper descendant of the Western. And maybe it's all correct, as the Old West was a lawless and chaotic place where things got necessarily reduced to the basics. Maybe that's why my favorite Western, if I have one (and if it could even be called a Western) is the current TV series
Westworld, because it recognizes that the Old West of the Western is a macho fantasy-land.
The characterizations are similar in samurai movies. As soon as you see some taciturn, curmudgeonly,
sake-swilling old goat, you immediately know he's going to turn out to have a heart, or a soft spot, or do the right thing against everyone's expectations. It's usually just too easy.