Clint Eastwood began directing his own pictures just as such new Hollywood filmmakers as Sam Peckinpah and Arthur Penn were replacing the honorable stoicism of old John Wayne films with a more brutal amorality. Eastwood-directed Westerns tend to mix qualities from both traditional and modern forms of the genre: the title character in The Outlaw Josey Wales, for example, is somewhere between hero and anti-hero. He's similar to the "Man with No Name" character from the Fistful of Dollars trilogy, but he's an altogether nicer cowpoke. Josey Wales is an altogether nicer movie as well. Though our hero isn't guaranteed a happy ending, there is a reassuring sense of right and wrong. It's a much different feel from the era's prevailing Westerns. Eastwood didn't direct another Western until 1985's Pale Rider.