Movies and TV Horizon: An American Saga

Kevin Costner's 4 movie western epic -

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Kevin Costner has released the first full trailer for Horizon: An American Saga, his wildly ambitious, four-part post-Civil War Western epic that helped lure the actor away from his other Western - Paramount Network's Yellowstone.

The trailer (below) has a sweeping, old-fashioned grandeur and is full of scenic vistas, gunfights, romance, wagon trains, and a clash of civilizations between calvary soldiers and Indigenous people. "There's no army on this earth that are going to stop those wagons coming," a character played by Danny Huston warns.

Costner co-wrote, directed and stars in the Horizon series. The first film will be released in theaters June 28, followed by its second chapter just two months later. The second two films haven't yet been shot. The film has been a 30-year journey for Costner, who even took out a loan on his Santa Barbara home to help finance the picture (Costner notes the first two films added $100 million the economy in Utah, where they were shot).
"When no one wanted to make the first one, I got the bright idea to make four," Costner said dryly during a moderated discussion about the Horizon trailer. "So I don't know what's wrong with me. But I wanted it to step away from what we usually see in Westerns where there's a town that's already there. No one knows how [the town] came to be. There's a guy comes in off the horizon, if you will. We don't know much about him, except that he has some skills he'd like to put behind him and this town ends up needing those stills desperately … Too often, it's just a convenience for the hero guy to knock down a dumb guy."

He continued, "We have a lot of Westerns that aren't good too because they get simplified [but] this isn't Disneyland. These are real lives. People just making their way, women just trying to keep their families clean and fed … I'm drawn to that. I'm always gonna get to my gunfight, but I'm drawn to the little things that people had to endure. So to me, Horizon was worth holding on to because I just felt like I wanted to tell it. It grew and it grew and it grew until suddenly I realized that I just had to make it, and I had to look to myself financially to do it - which is not the smartest thing. But I count on the movie speaking louder than anything I can say."

Asked what was a bigger struggle, Horizon or making his Oscar-winning Dances With Wolves, Costner said the new films - which he spent six years writing - were tougher. "This is by far the biggest struggle. I shot Dances in 106 days. I shot the movie you're just seeing right now in 52. I learned a lot and I was able to use every trick in the book to bring this movie to an audience - and there's four of them."

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Regarding the film's depiction of clashes between white settlers and Indigenous people, Costner said, "I'm ashamed of what happened - I don't know that I'm ashamed or embarrassed - but I want to project what really happened," he said. "There was a great injustice occurred in the West, but it doesn't minimize the courage it took for my ancestors to cut loose and go there. And I recognized the resourcefulness it took and the bravery it took to leave and make this march across this country. It's just a movie that shows the class of cultures. It's our history. I love it. I can enjoy watching a movie like this if I feel like I can see myself in it, and I tried really hard for that to happen."

Going a bit deeper on the subject of morality and the Old West - and being wading into some potentially controversial subject matter - Costner added, "I think it's really a mistake to judge other people how they had to perform or act in another century. We kind of apply our own sensibilities where we live a life today where, when we're offended, we have to get a lawyer or agent or publicity person - somebody to arbitrate our problems. Back then, you had to arbitrate your problems by yourself - which was terribly dramatic, especially if you're dealing with a sociopath. You have to understand we were coming out of that terrible Civil War. And if anyone believes in post-traumatic stress, there was only about 30 million people in America at the time and that war went on for four years. We lost 56,000 men in Vietnam. We lost 600,000 in the Civil War. People came West, sometimes with a lot of hope, bringing their family, and others came West because they were damaged and were running away from something."

He continued, "The stranger was a boogyman. If you were a stranger 120 years ago, people were afraid of you because they didn't know if that was really your name or what you'd really done. Like the trailer says, if you were strong enough, if they were mean enough, they could hold on to something, they could take it away from you. And when you can create that architecture in a movie where anything is possible, some people get lucky and some people are not lucky. And when they tried to look at their wife who asked, ‘Why are we going out here?' The man simply said, ‘We're going to be luckier than that.' And that's how this country got settled and the American native Indians were crushed under this movement. They didn't stand a chance."

https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/new...on/ar-BB1iVij5

[Reply]

Originally Posted by roman gnome:
I hope it lives up to the hype, big fan of good western movies!

I guess I could give my impressions after last night; I've been busy with some work stuff and distracted by some other things this morning.

First of all, it is a gorgeous film, the cinematography is wonderful and the locales are exactly what we conjure up in our minds when thinking about the the untarnished beauty of the old west, from the mesas and buttes of the southwest to the golden aspen lined mountain sides of the Wyoming territory. It is worth seeing on the big screen for that alone.

As one might expect out of a four movie series, this first one is a lot of introducing these different characters at these various points around the country, either directly, or not even knowing where they are ending up, heading to a converging point with each other. Very much a set up film but, still very entertaining.

One thing that Costner chose to do is instead of giving a bunch of back story to these characters we just join them in progress, knowing little to nothing about them. For example: the storyline involving the wagon train is not started off at its jumping off point in St. Louis, or Independence, going around introducing us to all of these people and their plans and reasons for heading west - we first find them in the middle of the Kansas plains with no explanation of who any of them are or what they are looking for at the end of their journey. I do not know if, even with four films, it was deemed too time consuming or, if might be an artistic approach, treating these people as representatives of the nameless, faceless masses that made the trek out west, with different individual goals but, the same ultimate hope. I have no problem with it either way, it was just something that stuck out to me. Definitely looking forward to Chapter 2 in August.
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Originally Posted by Fishpicker:
I went and saw this yesterday. I like the way Costner paces his movies. the movie is very detail oriented but it never tells you the details outright. the locations are gorgeous but dont always match the supposed setting. like the wagon train is just starting on the Santa Fe trail (Western Mo.) and the wagons are passing by red rock mountains. WTF? The scenes taking place in Wyoming look like they are shot in Michigan.

Still, the movie was entertaining enough that I watched the entire thing. I want to watch part 1 once more before part 2. If I am still lost after seeing part 2, I probably wont bother with the rest.

If I were able to advise Costner, I would tell him to take the next 3 movies and edit them into 5 movies. (or) turn the last two into 3 or 4 movies.

What? It actually said on the screen that their location was in Kansas, and it was pretty clearly a plains location. In fact, I threw a :-) look when they said to pull the wagons underneath a ridge into some shade. Also, not nearly windy enough for the Western Kansas plains. But those are just picking nits.
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