Red Dead Redemption 2 is coming to PC after a long, arduous one-year wait for us computer users. Just like all Rockstar products, RDR2 is full of movie references and in-jokes. Let's see what to watch to get some of them.
While the first Red Dead was very reminiscent of a late Clint Eastwood western, the RDR 2 one takes a step back and goes into more classic territory. The character of Arthur Morgan, the game's protagonist, is much more reminiscent of John Wayne than he is of Clint Eastwood, especially in appearance. Morgan has Wayne's suspenders, bandana. Roger Clark, the actor playing Arthur Morgan, stated in an interview that the Duke and Toshiro Mifune were much bigger inspirations than Clint Eastwood's stoic persona. This brings us to...
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Mifune is perhaps the quintessential samurai actor. Did you know that the idea of "
The Man With No Name" in Sergio Leone's movies is almost entirely lifted from the Japanese concept of the ronin - a warrior without a master who roams the land? The similarities are striking... and also illegal according to Kurosawa, who filed a lawsuit against Sergio Leone.
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Clint Eastwood was never the first choice to play the lead in Sergio Leone's westerns. That honor always went to Charles Bronson, the tough-as-nails actor with whom Leone had the pleasure of working with on Once Upon a Time in the West. Bronson's character - a man dubbed Harmonica, wears an outfit very similar to Arthur Morgan's white jacket. The aforementioned Toshiro Mifune and Bronson starred together in the Samurai-Western movie Red Sun.
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Red Dead Redemption 2 features snowy and mountainous areas we don't always associate with the Western genre. While Tarantino's The Hateful Eight also made use of the snowy Midwest, The Great Silence is the quintessential cold western film, perhaps followed by McCabe & Mrs. Miller. The aforementioned Hateful Eight is also a great movie that instils a strong sense of isolation and dread from the frozen landscape.
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The main theme of Red Dead Redemption 2 is the conflict between civilization and the Wild West. This is quite similar to the main theme of HBO's classic TV series Deadwood. There are also quite a lot of other similarities, including a striking resemblance between Deadwood's antagonist, Al Swearingen, with Dutch van der Linde, one of the central characters of the Red Dead Redemption 2 campaign. The Pinkerton National Detective Agency also makes an appearance in both titles, and aren't too happy about
the way they are shown in the game.
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This article may appear in some platforms with a collage cover photo with photos from Flicker by user @SteamXO and Wikimedia. CC BY 2.0. 
