Pale Rider = Shane!

I had an epiphany while doing the dishes today: Pale Rider is a remake of Shane.

This may be an obvious thing that's all over IMDB (I haven't checked yet), but it just occurred to me.

You have a mysterious stranger who rides in just when things are getting desperate for a small 3-person family. The stranger has some sort of dark past that he doesn't discuss. The child of the family becomes really attached to the stranger. The wife falls a bit in love with the stranger. The husband is a good man who is the strongest of his community, but he's not quite up to the task of standing up to the bad guy. The bad guy controls some big business and wants to run the community out so he can own their land. The community is fearful and many want to leave. The stranger helps out the husband at a crucial moment early in the movie, which encourages the good guy to stay and fight and rally the others. The stranger participates in the manual labor around the homestead, at one point physically moving/breaking a giant obstacle with the help of the good guy. The bad guy fears that his own men aren't enough to drive the community off, so he hires a special gunman/team of gunmen to help. One member of the community makes a dumb move and winds up dead at the hand of the gunman/gunmen. The stranger and the gunman/gunmen have a history together that's only hinted at. The final showdown occurs between the stranger and the gunman/gunmen & bad-guy, and the stranger wipes them all out. The stranger leaves town, with the child calling out their love.

I prefer Shane. What surprised me was that I even prefer the kid in Shane to the girl in Pale Rider. The kid in Shane is really annoying, but the girl in Pale Rider is even worse. She does much dumber stuff, and should know better because she's a good deal older.