I think I remember when Silverado came out. The talk was that the studio wanted to put together an epic cowboy film in the image of the classics of the 60s and 70s, but upgrading it with the best of 80s sensibilities.
Apparently, one of those sensibilities was to include every actor in Hollywood at the time.
The film stars Kevin Kline, Scott Glen, Kevin Costner, Danny Glover, John Cleese, Jeff Goldblum, Brian Dennehy, Rosanna Arquette, Linda Hunt, plus a whole lot more of familiar names and faces. In defense against my sarcasm, some of those names and faces were pretty unfamiliar at the time. For Jeff Fahey (Lost) and Richard Jenkins, this was their first film. Kevin Costner was still a little-known actor, remarkable for having his entire character cut from The Big Chill during edits.
That many big names implies equally many “main characters.” While Silverado was, indeed, a success and plausibly did revive the Western genre, I’m not sure it ages well. First on my list of complaints is that monstrous cast of characters that makes it, occasionally, hard to follow all the threads and even harder to care. A close second is the emphasis on trick riding and trick shooting, I guess borrowed from Westerns heyday in the 50s, which foils any attempt to seriously portray a historical tale. Contrast it with the incredible Unforgiven, for example, to see how to do Westerns right.
I watched it a week or so ago because it is about to be removed from Netflix. I was actually a little surprised I never watched it before now. Having done so, I guess I see why I never got around to it.