YMMV / The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

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• Accidental Innuendo: Tuco to Wallace: "I like big, fat men like you."
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Tuco guilty of all those crimes that are being read off just before he's hanged, or has he falsely admitted to these crimes to drive up his bounty, and make his and Blondie's scam more profitable? His second list of crimes is considerably longer than the first, which we hear in its entirety.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • Many of the varying scenes of depravity are actually Sergio Leone showing his work, much to the confusion of most of his prop builders, cinematographers and actors who were confused by everything from the long coat Leone chose to dress Blondie in to the train cannon with the spy tied to the front of it and the scene where the soldiers grimly shoot a criminal after standing him next to a coffin.
  • Tuco piecing together parts from multiple guns in the gun shop to create a custom weapon is typically seen as unlikely at best. This may surprise as Truth in Television, as Samuel Colt (inventor and founder of the Colt Manufacturing Company) would often piece together different parts from as many as 10 of his revolvers to create one functioning gun in front of audiences to demonstrate that they were interchangable for easy replacement and upkeep. (Interchangable machined parts still being a relatively new concept at the time.)
• And You Thought It Would Fail: Orson Welles tried to talk Sergio Leone out of making the film, believing that Civil War films were box office poison (Gone with the Wind being the exception that proved the rule).
• Award Snub: Among many other things, two blog posts decided that Eli Wallach deserved the Academy Award for Best Leading Actor 1966 as Tuco.
• Awesome Music:
  • "The Ecstasy of Gold" and "The Trio" play a large part in creating one of the most memorable finales in the history of film. The former in particular is so memorable that Metallica have used "The Ecstasy of Gold" to open their concerts since 1983.
  • The opening theme is so iconic that one only need hear the first whistle to be immediately reminded of the Western genre, even if one has no idea where it came from.
  • On the other end of the spectrum, there's La missione San Antonio and The Story of a Soldier.
• Broken Base: The numerous changes made to the movie over the years tend to breed a fair bit of debate.
  • Is the American theatrical cut, which runs 16 minutes shorter than its Italian counterpart, a better movie because of its tighter pacing, or an incomplete experience with a few too many unanswered questions?
  • Does the cave scene belong in the movie? Most viewers say "no" because Sergio Leone himself removed it shortly after the movie's premiere, but it made it into the extended American cut anyway.
  • Speaking of the extended American cut: should Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach have returned to dub themselves nearly 40 years later, or would it have been better to use soundalikes, as was done for the late Lee Van Cleef? Is the new 5.1 surround sound mix tolerable or does it destroy the whole movie?
  • Is the latest Blu-Ray release, which presents the movie with a strong yellow tint not found in previous releases, accurate to the way the movie was supposed to look in theaters? Supposedly the Technicolor print used as a reference for the Blu-Ray features the yellow tint, but other surviving prints appear more red, which is how previous transfers of the movie looked.
  • And of course, the longstanding debate about whether or not this film actually shares any sort of continuity with A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More or if the movies are only unified by the idea of the Man With No Name rather than one specific character.
• Complete Monster:
  • US theatrical version: Angel Eyes/Sentenza ("The Bad") is a sociopathic mercenary whose only concern is making as much money as possible. In the opening scenes of the film, Angel Eyes tracks down and murders a man at another's behest. When his victim offers him money if he will spare his life, Angel Eyes replies, "Once I'm been paid, I always see my job through to the end." He kills the man and his son, takes the money, and reports to his employer, whom he promptly kills, since he wants to keep the gold he's found out about for himself. Angel Eyes proceeds to beat the information about the location of the gold out of a hooker. Later, he has Tuco ("The Ugly") tortured and watches with absolutely no emotion on his face. While this is going on, Angel Eyes has his men force the POWs to sing in order to cover up the sounds of their friends being tortured.
  • In the comic book inspired work, by Chuck Dixon, Esteve Polls, & Marc Rueda, two characters on opposing sides manage to stand out even in the harsh reality of The Wild West:
    • Colonel Lambert participates in the French intervention solely to commit war crimes. Introduced executing a man and massacring civilians to Leave No Witnesses of his campaign after pillaging a mission, the greedy and disloyal Lambert refuses to give his loot to Emperor Maximilian. Shortly after suppressing a group of Republican rebels, the Juaristas, Lambert simply decides to engage in Hunting the Most Dangerous Game with his prisoners, impaling and slashing them as they try to escape. Casually trying to return to France with all of the gold, Lambert sends his men to fight against a gang at close range.
    • The Gambler is an utterly sadistic Bandito with the modus operandi of a Theme Serial Killer. Ambushing a French cavalry detachment and ordering his men to "take good care" of the wounded by not wasting any bullets, the Gambler takes the survivors to the hills and toys with them, forcing the defenseless soldiers to pick cards from his tarot deck and killing them with increasingly brutal methods that reflect their own choices, which includes drinking boiling water and getting tied to a horse. When one of the soldiers exposes Lambert's operation to save his own skin, the Gambler acknowledges his sincerity and then burns his chest with hot coal before executing the man and the other captives.
• Designated Hero: Outside of a Pet the Dog moment here and there, Blondie's status as "the Good" is... pretty questionable. He mostly comes across well in comparison with his rivals, but he's also emotionally distant and not as personable as his bandido rival Tuco. Though one could argue that this is the point of the film as Blondie has to earn the title of "The Good."
• Draco in Leather Pants: Tuco. He does almost too good a job of making the audience sympathise with him. Some fans even go so far as to forgive his charges of rape, murder, kidnapping, extortion, armed robbery, etc. It doesn't help that critics have painted him as the emotional heart of the movie.
• Eight Deadly Words: A common reaction among the film’s detractors. The characters are all varying degrees of evil and only after the gold for personal greed. Some people find it hard to care about the film because of this.
• Epic Riff: The flute part at the beginning of the main theme, which has become a standard invocation in any place trying to invoke the Old West. You can hear it in Super Mario Bros. music, of all places.
• Even Better Sequel: All of the Dollars Trilogy is generally considered good, but The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is the best-known one. And for good reason.
• Evil Is Cool: Angel Eyes might be an utter bastard, but damn if he isn't a badass.
• Fan Discontinuity: The tie-in novels, which aren't even by the original authors, for Blondie's enigmatic past getting demystified and Tuco suffering a slight case of Flanderization in his only other official appearance, A Dollar to Die For.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: This isn't the last time Clint Eastwood would go treasure hunting while there's a war going on around him.
• Hollywood Homely: He's scruffy and unkempt, but for a man branded "The Ugly", Tuco is actually rather handsome. Many fans like to explain this designation as him being ugly on the inside.
• Ho Yay: Blondie and Tuco, mostly carried through bizarre Does This Remind You of Anything? innuendo. They are really into tying each other up, Tuco bursts in on Blondie tenderly polishing his gun in his hotel room (not a euphemism), and while Blondie is talking to the naked Tuco in the bathtub, he smirks, while suggestively playing with the end of a bedpost. This is almost certainly intentional, as Sergio Leone made them share a bed for the whole of filming as Enforced Method Acting. Quentin Tarantino, who was heavily influenced by the film, claims to ship it a lot.
• Hype Backlash: As with every movie considered among the best ever made (and in this case a contender for the best western movie), some people are turned off by its praise and call it overrated and/or boring.
• Jerkass Woobie: Tuco. It's somewhat ironic that the most sympathetic and likable character is the one who's most morally ambiguous.
• Love to Hate: Angel Eyes.
• Magnificent Bastard: The Man with No Name. See the main page for details.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Oooh-eee-ooh-eee-oooooh! Waaaah waaah waaaaaaah!
  • Tuco shot first.
  • "There are two kinds of people in this world..." and variants thereof.
  • The title itself has been a fairly common neologism in the English language. The phrase was popularized by Robert F. Kennedy during his 1968 presidential campaign joking that for his supporters, "My brother is the Good, Nixon is the Ugly and (Robert) McNamara is the Bad."
• Moral Event Horizon: Angel Eyes crossed the line at the beginning of the movie, killing the son of the man he was hired to kill. It's one thing to kill the man himself, as that was just business ("When I'm paid, I always see the job through."); he didn't have to kill anyone else beyond those he was hired to kill (yes, those–just before dying, Stevens pays Angel Eyes to bump off the guy that sent him to do the deed). Although the boy came running down the stairs behind him, rifle drawn, Angel Eyes was too smart to chance that the boy would be too scared to pull the trigger.
  • While he certainly does a great number of morally questionable things, for a lot of people Tuco's Moral Event Horizon was when he refused to let Blondie shoot the rope off Shorty. Take revenge against Blondie for robbing and abandoning him? Tuco went a bit overboard but its not hard to see the logic. But there is no indication that Shorty had ever done anything to Tuco, and in fact was in the same position in the con that Tuco had been in, and Tuco effectively murdered him for no real reason.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • The Union Captain at the bridge fight. He transitions from a comedic drunk to a tragic figure within a five minute span.
  • Pablo Ramirez. His one scene provides a massive factor in his brother's development, and makes him just as interesting.
  • The cavalry commander answering Tuco's pro-Confederate cheering by silently dusting off his uniform to reveal that he's wearing blue, not gray.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: Some fans have come up with "Blonco" (Blondie/Tuco) by coincidence.
• Sequel Displacement: The last film of the trilogy is generally more well-known than the previous two.
• Signature Scene: By far the most famous scene is the Mexican Standoff at the end between the titular characters because of its impressive direction and editing, the tension it builds and the huge narrative weight. It's considered one of the best scenes of movie history.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The first 45 minutes are just Blondie and Tuco's shenanigans, with a minor sub-plot involving Angel Eyes searching for a guy who ultimately becomes a plot point. It's only about the 45-minute mark that Blondie and Tuco finally find out about the buried gold and begin searching for it. Strangely, this is a case where this was not only done deliberately, but it works on a level that allows the film to build atmosphere and character.
• Stoic Woobie:
  • Blondie as he's crossing the desert, dehydrated. Even if you know that he always wins in the end, you can't help but feel a little bad for him here.
  • Pablo Ramirez is emotionally restrained, but he had grown up in poverty, and within the film's timeline he has been silently coping with his parents' death and despairing the loss of his wayward brother's perspective.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: The three bounty hunters whom Blondie kills in his first scene are only trying to capture the legitimately wanted Tuco (and without the same con game Blondie pulls by breaking him out of jail then turning him in again), and even though they get into a gunfight with Blondie over that bounty, they did catch Tuco first, and Blondie announced his presence with a heavy-handed Implied Death Threat that wouldn't have inspired goodwill in anyone.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?: Blondie comforting the dying Confederate soldier. Clint Eastwood claimed he knew his days of making movies with Sergio Leone were over when they filmed it.
• The Woobie:
  • Maria. In the few minutes she's on screen she's dumped out on the street by drunken revellers, and then beaten by Angel Eyes, enough indication of the poor girl's hard life.
  • The Union Captain with the gangrene eating away at his leg. He wants desperately for his prison camp to be a humane one, but he's powerless to stop Angel Eyes and Corporal Wallace from torturing prisoners.
  • The Union Captain played by Aldo Giuffre. He's caught up in a war that he knows is pointless, especially the feud over the bridge, and he's mortally wounded in battle. Even Tuco, if only just in a brief glance, appears to show some pity for him as he lies suffering on a stretcher.

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