Taylor Sheridan may be best known for Yellowstone, but his secret movie trilogy that began in 2015 is actually better than his neo-Western series, and all three movies are available on streaming. Yellowstone and its spinoff shows have become massively popular in recent years, and for good reason. From Taylor Sheridan’s expert writing to the best acting performances in Yellowstone, the franchise effectively revitalized the neo-Western genre and became a sensation for a reason. As popular and successful as Yellowstone is, however, it’s still not Sheridan’s best work.
Taylor Sheridan has written six movies in the course of his career, and many of Sheridan’s movies are available to stream on Paramount+. Aside from Sicario: Day of the Soldado, most of Sheridan’s movies are standalone, original stories. However, Sheridan also has a secret trilogy of films that are loosely connected to one another, dubbed the “American Frontier” trilogy. Many fans of Sheridan’s may not even know which films are in the trilogy, but they actually constitute the best writing we’ve ever seen out of Sheridan before, and they’re even better than Yellowstone.
Taylor Sheridan’s American Frontier Trilogy Explained. Sicario, Hell or High Water, & Wind River Aren’t Directly Connected, But Share Similar Settings & Themes. Though they’re not directly connected to one another, Taylor Sheridan’s Sicario, Hell or High Water, and Wind River make up the so-called “American Frontier” trilogy.
They’re grouped together as a sort of trilogy because they all feature similar genres, settings, and themes. All three movies take place in remote, rural parts of the American West: Sicario on the Mexican border, Hell or High Water in rural West Texas, and Wind River in remote Wyoming. All three movies are also very closely linked thematically: they all tell stories about protagonists bucking the constraints of the legal system in search of true justice.
Sicario, Hell or High Water, and Wind River basically function as a series because of their thematic similarities. A viewer could easily go from Hell or High Water, a commentary on the injustices of the banking system in America and the cycles of poverty many people are locked into, directly into Wind River, a commentary on how Indigenous people – especially women – are completely ignored by law enforcement and left to suffer and die on their own. In essence, the “character” that appears in all three “American Frontier” movies is the United States legal system and the oppression it wreaks on average Americans.