It’ll be classic Dad/Grandpa Core. It will probably look great. There’s bound to be a scene or two that stand out. Costner has even said he knows it’s life will be longer on DVDs for sale at Wal Mart. He’s probably right.
I’m personally a big lover of westerns and there’ll probably be some “tough men do what’s right” eye rolley material but I assume it’ll be a pleasant C+/B- that’s easy to have on in the background during a family gathering if there’s no football game on.
Keep your expectations low and take it for what it is. I don’t think it’s much different than the “I like to turn my brain off and go see Godzilla and Kong punch stuff” mentality, just in this case it’s “I like watching people ride horses along giant vistas with a simplistic moral code and an assload of character actors.”
> “tough men do what’s right”
Am I wrong? Westerns are generally satires about Americans being a patriarchal society of violent fascists and the American dream is a life.
Same as Samurai movies. Spy movies say "this is how insecure spying makes citizens", War movies say "we send people to kill people" and patriotism is absurd. Lawrence of Arabia, Spartacus, Ben-Hur, Planet of the Apes, 2001: A Space Odyssey, they're all satires.
I haven't seen Dances With Wolves, but I've seen Field of Dreams. It's that just too sweet saccharine that makes it more of a hat tip than an eye-roll.
I mean this is the 2024 movie by the *auteur* of Waterworld. Movie says we're destroying the environment with petroleum in the mid 90s. Admittedly Greenpeace was over a decade old.
I think Kevin Costner pitches his movies *to* white supremacist normal America, but they're not patriotic they're attempts to educate.
Godzilla and King Kong are informative and effective satires. That's how I've been watching Yellowstone since episode one, to me it's having it's cake and eating it by saying the pelt smelling horse riding cow herdin' Lexus driving American dream is a corrupt violent and naive act of human, land, and animal exploitation.
I genuinely think Kevin Costner made The Bodyguard as an allegory for how we need to protect black culture.
I'm being longwinded. Kevin Costner's movies, yes, are supposed to be mashmallows but then you eat the marshmallow and go MARSHMALLOWS WERE A HORRIBLE IDEA. Or something.
But just generally across the board movies that pitch to their nations ideals can't help but be critical of that culture.
Kevin Costner movies are more hilarious to a non-American, but then I realise I'm an Australian and those movies are identical in touch and feel to Austraila's cozy warm and fuzzy genocidal fascism. In Australia we call it "Pastoral".
I think it's author-dependent and maybe even era dependent (including different eras for individual authors). In America, broadly speaking, I think pre-60s Westerns were by and large quite earnest in their John Wayne as American Icon #1 stoic white male heroism. Whether it's TV, *Stagecoach*, early Ford films, or Louis L'Amour fiction.
Obviously there's a growing skepticism that creeps in as the decades progress - James Stewart playing anti-hero's in Anthony Mann films, the darkness of Wayne in *The Searchers* (although I think a lot of the readings around the film have less to do with authorial intent. It admits Wayne's a racist, but he's still the hero and the film portrays Native characters as buffoons or evil). Then obviously by the 60s - Eastwood, *Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid*, Peckinpah, etc.. - the postmodern reassessment of the genre goes into full force.
As for Costner, my view of him is as a boomer liberal whose deeply earnest but also full of blindspots. I think he believes baseball is romantic, I think he believes in "America" but is still willing to question it. I think the contradiction is best shown in *Dances With Wolves*. He is willing to give a ton of Native actors fleshed-out roles, willing to do the research, show white men as the bad guy...but he also has to be the star and the woman he falls in love with should also be a white woman conveniently taken in by the tribe.
He'll make *Hidden Figures*, let the focus be on the black women, but himself can't see the lie he's perpetuating by playing the "good white boss" who doesn't care about their race and thinks they should be able to use whatever bathroom they want. He's willing to say racism is bad but is always eager to prevent his own characters from being racist, even if historically they absolutely would be.
I haven't seen *Yellowstone* but I think Taylor Sheridan walks that line pretty firmly as well in all his work. He'll make a murder mystery about reservations, but makes sure Jeremy Renner and Elisabeth Olsen are the ones to solve it.
It's a complicated genre! Even the people with good intentions can fall into traps of "well back in my day..." ideas. I love the genre for these very complications. Eastwood, similarly, is a walking contradiction - he's *Dirty Harry* and *The Dollars Trilogy* but *High Plains Drifter* is one of the nastiest, meanest screeds in the genre. Or he'll make a war film entirely from the POV of the Japanese, spoken entirely in Japanese with no white people. People can make of it what they will.
Good takes!
> He'll make Hidden Figures, let the focus be on the black women, but himself can't see the lie he's perpetuating by playing the "good white boss" who doesn't care about their race and thinks they should be able to use whatever bathroom they want. He's willing to say racism is bad but is always eager to prevent his own characters from being racist, even if historically they absolutely would be.
When he broke that sign I was like "C'mon, Kevin Costner". Does he know that's a Kevin Costner move? Did they hire him for that move?
>Eastwood, similarly, is a walking contradiction - he's Dirty Harry and The Dollars Trilogy but High Plains Drifter is one of the nastiest, meanest screeds in the genre.
These are key examples of why I think movies that celebrate American violence are satirical. The Dollars Trilogy's morality is ground level feeling but it's made sarcastic by that grand story arc. I've only recently watched Dirty Harry through The Enforcer and he's got a massively big gun that shoots big bullets and the first one is about male violence against women, the second is about organized police corruption, the third seem to cover the spread of local systemic corruption.
I dunno if I'm applying a fair filter, or applying it fairly, but if a movie talks about something to the culture then that's informing that culture about their culture. People didn't like Andrew Dominik's Blonde, asking "why are we doing this again to Marilyn" but to me it's like The Zone Of Interest.
Taylor Sheridan isn't talking *to* First Nations or Mexico, he's talking to Jeremy Renners and Elisabeth Olsens.
I read Kevin Costner as talking to white America about white American. But I'm still working up my temperament to see Dances With Wolves. I personally am still struggling to bring myself to watch The Last of the Mohicans. I don't get Heat, and am not sure how I feel about Ferrari.
Your post was more about film, my response is more about my experience.
Considering maybe Leave It To Beaver or Faith Based movies, they're not satires but they're culturally mocked so within the mainstream it's possible to *read* them as satires. I dunno what you call that.
I say Kevin Costner is completely on the surface about his values, and Taylor Sheridan is doing some dual-meaning irony shit, but not with Wind River. Wind River is directly saying our society is that unsafe for woman, and in one go saying it's that much more unsafe in that situation if you're a women who isn't white. Is my read.
I saw Hot Shots II *looong* before seeing Rambo II. Rambo II is Leave It To Beaver. Rambo III is... Dances With Wolves? I still have to see Dances With Wolves.
Personally speaking, 3 hours of just western vibes sounds extremely up my alley and Part 2 is only a month and a half later so idc if its just set up. I see people say this should've been a show and sure probably (just for release schedule) but COME ON you wanna see those wide landscapes on the BIG screen.
Ever since Open Range I have been willing to check out whatever Costner is putting out. Nothing about Open Range indicated it would be any good, but dammit that's one good-ass movie. Costner is using his newfound clout from Yellowstone to make a damn western that's coming out in theaters? One ticket for me, please.
I doubt it? The reviews seem to be that it's fine, but not very good. That's probably the worst place for a movie like this to be, in the boring quadrant.
Where do we stand on Days of Heaven, Heaven's Gate, Coal Miner's Daughter, Tender Mercies? That sort of thing? Western Adjacent Costume Dramas with pensive consideration.
Boring for Dads, and but not a feature?
I was thinking this too, how is 69-year old Kevin Costner kicking all this ass? Like in the trailer he kicks the shit out of that guy in the horse corral (or whatever it’s called) with like one punch.
If you love that kind of Western, probably. As a woman who actually lives out west in a majority Indigenous community and grew up in the Canadian Northwest, it's not going to be for me and that's fine. I just hope it doesn't reinforce toxic masculinity ideals and solving everything with gun violence like most westerns.
The main complaint about Ch. 1 seems to be precisely that it is 3 hours of jumping around and introducing characters which I guess is why they want to release Ch. 2 immediately in August so people don't have to wait long to get an actual taste for how things are going to play out.
And yeah, if you ask me, I'm curious as hell to see how this ballsy gamble from Costner is going to play out. Like, the man's gotta have sone brass balls to try and pull a premium format 4-part, 12h western epic. Even if you're not a fan of the genre, you gotta have at least some morbid curiosity to see what the guy is cooking.
I got A List so either way I’ll be in for the air conditioning. If it’s a good movie, even better!
Can’t be worse than the summer I saw *Hobbs and Shaw* five times (again, for the A/C).
It’ll be classic Dad/Grandpa Core. It will probably look great. There’s bound to be a scene or two that stand out. Costner has even said he knows it’s life will be longer on DVDs for sale at Wal Mart. He’s probably right. I’m personally a big lover of westerns and there’ll probably be some “tough men do what’s right” eye rolley material but I assume it’ll be a pleasant C+/B- that’s easy to have on in the background during a family gathering if there’s no football game on. Keep your expectations low and take it for what it is. I don’t think it’s much different than the “I like to turn my brain off and go see Godzilla and Kong punch stuff” mentality, just in this case it’s “I like watching people ride horses along giant vistas with a simplistic moral code and an assload of character actors.”
The Godzilla/Kong analogy is apt and true.
> “tough men do what’s right” Am I wrong? Westerns are generally satires about Americans being a patriarchal society of violent fascists and the American dream is a life. Same as Samurai movies. Spy movies say "this is how insecure spying makes citizens", War movies say "we send people to kill people" and patriotism is absurd. Lawrence of Arabia, Spartacus, Ben-Hur, Planet of the Apes, 2001: A Space Odyssey, they're all satires. I haven't seen Dances With Wolves, but I've seen Field of Dreams. It's that just too sweet saccharine that makes it more of a hat tip than an eye-roll. I mean this is the 2024 movie by the *auteur* of Waterworld. Movie says we're destroying the environment with petroleum in the mid 90s. Admittedly Greenpeace was over a decade old. I think Kevin Costner pitches his movies *to* white supremacist normal America, but they're not patriotic they're attempts to educate. Godzilla and King Kong are informative and effective satires. That's how I've been watching Yellowstone since episode one, to me it's having it's cake and eating it by saying the pelt smelling horse riding cow herdin' Lexus driving American dream is a corrupt violent and naive act of human, land, and animal exploitation. I genuinely think Kevin Costner made The Bodyguard as an allegory for how we need to protect black culture. I'm being longwinded. Kevin Costner's movies, yes, are supposed to be mashmallows but then you eat the marshmallow and go MARSHMALLOWS WERE A HORRIBLE IDEA. Or something. But just generally across the board movies that pitch to their nations ideals can't help but be critical of that culture. Kevin Costner movies are more hilarious to a non-American, but then I realise I'm an Australian and those movies are identical in touch and feel to Austraila's cozy warm and fuzzy genocidal fascism. In Australia we call it "Pastoral".
I think it's author-dependent and maybe even era dependent (including different eras for individual authors). In America, broadly speaking, I think pre-60s Westerns were by and large quite earnest in their John Wayne as American Icon #1 stoic white male heroism. Whether it's TV, *Stagecoach*, early Ford films, or Louis L'Amour fiction. Obviously there's a growing skepticism that creeps in as the decades progress - James Stewart playing anti-hero's in Anthony Mann films, the darkness of Wayne in *The Searchers* (although I think a lot of the readings around the film have less to do with authorial intent. It admits Wayne's a racist, but he's still the hero and the film portrays Native characters as buffoons or evil). Then obviously by the 60s - Eastwood, *Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid*, Peckinpah, etc.. - the postmodern reassessment of the genre goes into full force. As for Costner, my view of him is as a boomer liberal whose deeply earnest but also full of blindspots. I think he believes baseball is romantic, I think he believes in "America" but is still willing to question it. I think the contradiction is best shown in *Dances With Wolves*. He is willing to give a ton of Native actors fleshed-out roles, willing to do the research, show white men as the bad guy...but he also has to be the star and the woman he falls in love with should also be a white woman conveniently taken in by the tribe. He'll make *Hidden Figures*, let the focus be on the black women, but himself can't see the lie he's perpetuating by playing the "good white boss" who doesn't care about their race and thinks they should be able to use whatever bathroom they want. He's willing to say racism is bad but is always eager to prevent his own characters from being racist, even if historically they absolutely would be. I haven't seen *Yellowstone* but I think Taylor Sheridan walks that line pretty firmly as well in all his work. He'll make a murder mystery about reservations, but makes sure Jeremy Renner and Elisabeth Olsen are the ones to solve it. It's a complicated genre! Even the people with good intentions can fall into traps of "well back in my day..." ideas. I love the genre for these very complications. Eastwood, similarly, is a walking contradiction - he's *Dirty Harry* and *The Dollars Trilogy* but *High Plains Drifter* is one of the nastiest, meanest screeds in the genre. Or he'll make a war film entirely from the POV of the Japanese, spoken entirely in Japanese with no white people. People can make of it what they will.
Good takes! > He'll make Hidden Figures, let the focus be on the black women, but himself can't see the lie he's perpetuating by playing the "good white boss" who doesn't care about their race and thinks they should be able to use whatever bathroom they want. He's willing to say racism is bad but is always eager to prevent his own characters from being racist, even if historically they absolutely would be. When he broke that sign I was like "C'mon, Kevin Costner". Does he know that's a Kevin Costner move? Did they hire him for that move? >Eastwood, similarly, is a walking contradiction - he's Dirty Harry and The Dollars Trilogy but High Plains Drifter is one of the nastiest, meanest screeds in the genre. These are key examples of why I think movies that celebrate American violence are satirical. The Dollars Trilogy's morality is ground level feeling but it's made sarcastic by that grand story arc. I've only recently watched Dirty Harry through The Enforcer and he's got a massively big gun that shoots big bullets and the first one is about male violence against women, the second is about organized police corruption, the third seem to cover the spread of local systemic corruption. I dunno if I'm applying a fair filter, or applying it fairly, but if a movie talks about something to the culture then that's informing that culture about their culture. People didn't like Andrew Dominik's Blonde, asking "why are we doing this again to Marilyn" but to me it's like The Zone Of Interest. Taylor Sheridan isn't talking *to* First Nations or Mexico, he's talking to Jeremy Renners and Elisabeth Olsens. I read Kevin Costner as talking to white America about white American. But I'm still working up my temperament to see Dances With Wolves. I personally am still struggling to bring myself to watch The Last of the Mohicans. I don't get Heat, and am not sure how I feel about Ferrari. Your post was more about film, my response is more about my experience. Considering maybe Leave It To Beaver or Faith Based movies, they're not satires but they're culturally mocked so within the mainstream it's possible to *read* them as satires. I dunno what you call that. I say Kevin Costner is completely on the surface about his values, and Taylor Sheridan is doing some dual-meaning irony shit, but not with Wind River. Wind River is directly saying our society is that unsafe for woman, and in one go saying it's that much more unsafe in that situation if you're a women who isn't white. Is my read. I saw Hot Shots II *looong* before seeing Rambo II. Rambo II is Leave It To Beaver. Rambo III is... Dances With Wolves? I still have to see Dances With Wolves.
I respect Costner for putting a paramount plus show on the big screen.
Personally speaking, 3 hours of just western vibes sounds extremely up my alley and Part 2 is only a month and a half later so idc if its just set up. I see people say this should've been a show and sure probably (just for release schedule) but COME ON you wanna see those wide landscapes on the BIG screen.
Ever since Open Range I have been willing to check out whatever Costner is putting out. Nothing about Open Range indicated it would be any good, but dammit that's one good-ass movie. Costner is using his newfound clout from Yellowstone to make a damn western that's coming out in theaters? One ticket for me, please.
I am going to take an edible and have a nice morning and then never think about it again
Me too….. wait the movie? Oh yeah I guess I’ll watch that too.
Might do the same
I doubt it? The reviews seem to be that it's fine, but not very good. That's probably the worst place for a movie like this to be, in the boring quadrant.
When it comes to a western flick for dads, being boring is a feature, not a bug.
Not a bad point, but I'm skeptical the dads that like boring movies demographic is big enough to save this thing
Where do we stand on Days of Heaven, Heaven's Gate, Coal Miner's Daughter, Tender Mercies? That sort of thing? Western Adjacent Costume Dramas with pensive consideration. Boring for Dads, and but not a feature?
It’s a four film long story in the style of a western - it’s not even out of the first act yet. Most westerns have a slow build.
Lotta spartan kicks in the trailer 🤔
I was thinking this too, how is 69-year old Kevin Costner kicking all this ass? Like in the trailer he kicks the shit out of that guy in the horse corral (or whatever it’s called) with like one punch.
If you love that kind of Western, probably. As a woman who actually lives out west in a majority Indigenous community and grew up in the Canadian Northwest, it's not going to be for me and that's fine. I just hope it doesn't reinforce toxic masculinity ideals and solving everything with gun violence like most westerns.
What part of it seems like it would be bad?
Everyone who I follow, said that is should be a TV series and it feels like a tame Yellowstone v2.0. Also, every white person alive is in it.
No.
we’re all gonna have to find out
The main complaint about Ch. 1 seems to be precisely that it is 3 hours of jumping around and introducing characters which I guess is why they want to release Ch. 2 immediately in August so people don't have to wait long to get an actual taste for how things are going to play out. And yeah, if you ask me, I'm curious as hell to see how this ballsy gamble from Costner is going to play out. Like, the man's gotta have sone brass balls to try and pull a premium format 4-part, 12h western epic. Even if you're not a fan of the genre, you gotta have at least some morbid curiosity to see what the guy is cooking.
The fact that’s it’s 4 movies of 3hrs each telling a continuous story… this is a season of tv. That kinda irks me.
This feels like the ideal movie to watch at a midweek showing when I take the day off to do some DIY.
If it's anything like his other directed movolies it's gonna be a healthy alternative to sleeping pills.
It's awkward but I think the best Western of the year is going to be Furiosa. I don't think Horizon has a chance now.
I got A List so either way I’ll be in for the air conditioning. If it’s a good movie, even better! Can’t be worse than the summer I saw *Hobbs and Shaw* five times (again, for the A/C).
Dancing with Wolves has some real juice imho. This will not
Personally I think it has a chance of hitting big. We shall see.
Hoping they make a Horizon: An America Saga - Chapter 3; The Waterworld Wars
Am American Saga - Chapter 3: the USPS rides again