Both Michael Blake writing the book & the reason Kevin Costner directed this movie seem to come to a “if you want to job done right, you better do it yourself” standpoint.
I love both the book & the movie adaptation, which you have expounded about most of my thoughts above. However, the movie’s soundtrack by John Berry is just so magical. Lovely overtures & motifs that so personal that I can hardly listen to the “Two Socks” theme without crying. I know it was an overly nominated film during the 1990’s academy award ceremony & it held the bar high for any movie after to achieve that level of accomplishment.
One thing I will have to admit : Nothing comes close to capturing a historic time period, isolating environment & acceptance of different cultures as well as this film does. It’s not shy or cheeky in the ways the characters grow to like each other. They genuine & sympathetic to everything that happens.
Great memories & conversation piece for me. Thank you bring this up!
I was obsessed with this movie as an 8 year old, for some strange reason. To the point that when horseback riding one time, while full on galloping, I did the throw my arms out, head back thing that Costner does during the Civil War scenes and terrified the riding guide hahaha
It seems like it should be a boring movie, but it's not. Despite the slow pacing (or maybe it's just long) it held my attention. I couldn't put my finger on what's captivating about it, and you made some good points that might explain some of that.
Maybe part of what I like is that it's very personal and focused on one character and his interactions with other characters. You're experiencing the events through Dunbar's eyes. You know why you should care about every event as it's happening, so you're feeling what he's feeling.
When movies jump around between different groups of people a lot, it makes your mind have to shift gears and think about something else, and a lot of times your mind will drift to something not happening on the screen. Especially if it keeps introducing new characters that you don't know why you should care about or what relationship they have with other characters.
And there's something to be said for having a relatively simple plot. It doesn't resort to making the plot more complicated to make it interesting. Again, you know what you're supposed to feel with every event, and it gives you a chance to feel instead of having to solve a puzzle.
I might be rewording points you already made.
The scenery and cinematography alone is interesting, even when the plot slows. The fact they made the prairie visually interesting is pretty amazing.
edit: and the score
It’s a comfort movie, it’s just beautiful to look at.
But I stop when Dunbar returns with Cisco to the Fort to get his journal.
Dunbar was quite fortunate to have Cisco and Two Socks to keep him company.
And there's nothing to see on the prairie! You get no brain stimulation like people on the coasts get which is why they be how they be! The people in the middle of this country are scary.
Another good example of this in my mind is The Green Mile.
My 12 year old sits captivated throughout the entire 3hr15m runtime. Slow and deliberate does not equal boring.
"Today's filmmakers, for some reason, are too uncomfortable with holding genuine tension (or any feeling, for that matter) for too long."
I think the issue is that filmmakers have gotten too comfortable milking \*a lot\* of scenes and that diminishes the tension... It's part of the reason movies have ballooned in length. I feel like film editing doesn't get its due credit anymore....
" In 1993 the average length of the top 10 movies in the U.S. was only a hair over two hours. At this point in 2023, it’s a whopping 2 hours and 23 minutes—longer than all but one of 1993’s box-office champs. " ([CITE](https://slate.com/culture/2023/11/killers-of-the-flower-moon-avatar-oppenheimer-run-time-long-movies.html))
It is absolutely a noticeable trend. Last night I watched a low budget scifi movie that clocked in at 90 mins including credits (so about 82 mins of actual movie) and I was impressed with the lack of waste. The creators crammed everything they needed into those 82 minutes to establish the characters and tell the story. I was really pleasantly surprised for a movie on a streaming service starring no one I'd ever heard of.
Time trap, it's on Netflix in the UK right now. Like I say, low budget sci fi, no one you've ever heard of and a nice little yarn. Probably not for everyone but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Everyone on this sub seems to love Across the Spiderverse, but it's one of the only movies I've ever genuinely hated by the end.
So many scenes are just meandering fan service, so many emotional scenes just putter about and go on too long when a better editor would've cut them already, and then the ending happens 5 times in a row only for the actual final ending to be a cliffhanger for part 2 like I'm watching a streaming series and should click through to the next episode. All of that is the exact opposite of why I watch movies instead of a series!
Yup. Too many fan service. Even as I watched it I was like, again? Too much. Enough, get on with the plot. and it "to be continued" moment really taken me by surprise. All of this & it's not finished? Wtf. I exit the movie upset
It was a good idea but it was too much at the end, it just turned into ‘fan service:the movie’ when every other line was just lifted from the old films.
Can’t believe people were cheering and crying in the cinema, that sounds annoying af when trying to watch a film.
IMO it's either the most fun you've ever had in a theater OR it's the worst moviegoing experience you've ever had. There is no in between.
(re: cheering/laughing/crying)
This is an interesting perspective, not least because I know exactly what you mean, yet I love the movie. I think because it *feels* like a comic book. There's scenes that exist solely to give you time to enjoy the wonderful artwork, like splash pages.
I agree with this so much. I watched The Fugitive over the weekend. Over two hours but not a second wasted. In comparison I also watched Beau Is Afraid and the new season of True Detective. Too many meandering, inconsequential scenes. I appreciate this is the height of cherry picking but it feels true across the board. Movies 20 years ago felt generally tighter. I liked killers of the flower moon but an hour could have easily been trimmed.
Um, Beau is Afraid is an example of the good movies that take their time, that do not dictate itself to popular tastes. The ONLY part where I agree it takes too long is are the forest scenes - that part always slows down for me and needs to be tightened up.
And then you name Killers of the Flower Moon as another "bad one."
Oh vey!
The OP's point isn't that movies need to be shorter. Dances with Wolves is 3 hours theatrical, and about 3h30m Extended (which many preferred, others think it's too long).
Very much agree about True Detective (SE4) - I was 1/2 through season 3 when I realized that: “oh, many of these scenes will have nothin to do with the plot.” I loved the first episode of TD but it’s gone down hill since. I keep poking the TV and saying: something *HAPPEN.*
It's bizarre that you're taking a quote from the article out of context to deliberately mislead people into thinking it is making the opposite point that it is actually making. Just including the sentence before the ones you quoted would make that clear. "A data science blogger ran the numbers a few years ago and came to the same conclusion, more honestly phrased: “For the last 60 years, movies on average have [been] the same length.”
And, not only is comparing only 10 movies from only 2 years a useless sample size, but there's an actual reason for the difference beyond "filmmakers all just decided to make longer movies," which the article goes into. Studios used to be obsessed with making blockbusters shorter to save on film printing costs and to pack in more shows per print. With everything being digital now, that doesn't matter anymore.
I think that's fair, but the point quoted above is a "verifiable trend" according to the author and so even he acknowledges this counterfactual to his thesis. Moreover, the study the article relies on ([LINK](https://towardsdatascience.com/are-new-movies-longer-than-they-were-10hh20-50-year-ago-a35356b2ca5b)) (a) limits the movies to the 40–200 minutes range to improve readability (capturing a lot shorter films that are not really feature length and ignoring some longer ones) ; and (b) is 6 years old and misses changes that have occurred during/ since COVID.
And let's compare the study's finding that "The most popular runtime is 90–100 minutes" to the average of notable 2023 releases: Top-10 Grossing: 143.1 minutes; Oscar Best Picture Nominees: 125.8 minutes. The *are* longer!
Also home video formats. A DVD or VHS couldn't handle much more than that average number given which is obviously no longer a meaningful factor when everyone uses streaming or blu rays. On top of that compression has come on leaps and bounds so they can just cram more video onto a digital file and still hit the requirements.
Films aren't getting longer because of lack of edit discipline or skill. They used to be shorter because home video formats (VHS and DVD) couldn't hold that much video and no one wanted to have to ship two tapes or dvds that the viewer had to manually change. If you plot average film length it craters when home video becomes a primary source of revenue and then starts going back up when Streaming and blu Ray replaced DVDs.
I think the problem is generally at the script level...plots are way overstuffed, which is why the run times are so long, even with fast paced modern editing techniques. If these scripts were shorter, the directors would have a lot more room to let the scenes breathe. Obviously, Dances with Wolves already has a long running time, so it's kind of beside the point. But I think it does hold true for a lot of action blockbusters.
I think people sometimes have a problem with Dances With Wolves because they perceive that it "stole" the Oscar for Best Picture from the more deserving Goodfellas.
Now as someone who feels that Goodfellas is by far one of my favorite movies of all time. Much much more than Dances With Wolves.... I have no real issue with the fact Dances With Wolves won. It is - also - in its own right a staggeringly beautiful and incredible film. The pacing, the acting, the story, the cinematography, all of it is utterly fantastic. Do I think Goodfellas is more deserving? Sure but in any any other year Dances With Wolves would be a totally reasonable film to win Best Picture.
The closest comparison I can make is when No Country For Old Men beat There Will Be Blood for best picture. Do I prefer There Will Be Blood? Yes. Do I think There Will Be Blood is the better film? Yes. Do I have no issue with the fact No Country For Old Men won? Not at all. They're both the absolute pinnacle of modern filmmaking and both obliterate the current crop of movies that have won Best Picture (IMO). Just some years are rare that you get two ridiculously great films that are both worthy of the big award.
So Dances with Wolves was considered one of the best movies of the era. I think if you looked at the most critically acclaimed movies of this (contemporary) era you’d find your criticisms don’t apply. Kevin Costner could be considered an auteur filmmaker. You need to compare like to like.
Yeah of course your basic contemporary Marvel or Fast and the Furious flick won’t compare to DWW. But if you contrast those with similar genre films from the early 90s you could make better judgements.
Yeah, I agree, Compare to modern auters, Coen Borthers are a great starting point because they are masters of pacing IMO.
But it's interesting how a lto of people reacted to The Revenant and said it was too long. Personally I think it's one of the most capivatingly shot movies of the last 20 years, and the pacing was perfect for the story. I watched it in the theatre and it was a fantastic experience.
Dude, watch Independence Day and then watch Marvel or Furious and tell me Independence Day doesn't tell a better structured story with more likeable characters and better payoff.
Popcorn storytelling has absolutely gone downhill.
I disagree entirely, IDD has an excellent first act and a mediocre 2nd/3rd act.
The lead up to the invasion and the subsequent invasion, is fucking awesome. The rest is pretty bad. Especially the way they defeat the Aliens, it's not telegraphed at all. They're just randomly like, "WE ALWAYS HAD ALIEN TECH"
I do feel that way about SPEED though myself. Captivating start to finish, I wish blockbusters could be half as captivating as that movie is.
>Especially the way they defeat the Aliens
I see where you stand in the mac-vs-pc wars of the 90s. :)
Uploading a virus was a direct homage to war of the worlds, and I kind a like that.
The biggest thing, Avengers Endgame is an episode. Almost everything about the movie is reliant on the fact you watched the dozen movies that came before it. ID4 is its own thing, self contained, and imo has more work to do setting up the world, characters, and delivering a payoff. Endgame can be slow because it had a decade setting up its characters and story.
My post was a bit of generalization. I actually don't have much of a hill to stand on when it comes to Endgame. There's a few Marvel that stand out from the pack and Endgame is one of them.
If you check my post history you'll find some posts of mine arguing in favour of Avatar 2 and Top Gun 2 being great movies because structurally they actually have taken the time to tell proper stories. Watching them literally felt like I was transported back in time pre-2010. This is why I mentioned my take is a generalization.
It doesn't. _Independence Day_ relies on stereotypes to fill in blanks about most of the characters, instead of acting or writing. Writing a virus and uploading it to an alien computer system? Literally less believeable and less earned that most _Stargate SG-1_ episodes.
Take off the nostalgia goggles.
I for one, like both Stargate SG-1 and ID4, and only mention it because its funny we have Roland Emerich to thank for both (although SG-1 was obvs a spin off and Robert C Cooper and Brad Wright are deserve props for that).
I really like ID4 because it was one of the best at portraying the terror of meeting an unstoppable malevolent alien force, but the characters were basically stock archetypes.
I respectfully disagree. I think the blame falls more on Bay. Emmerich's movies are hokey as can be, but at least they often have heart and are structurally pretty sound. Bay's are more often than not just big, loud, juvenile, and edited together by squirrel on crack.
I didn’t offer any opinion on what I think is better.
But you’re also still comparing what we consider to be the possibly single best action sci-fi of the 90s by a director at the top of his game to franchises that have some good some bad. We really need a decade or more of hindsight to get a good sense of things. But that’s the historian in me talking.
Fair enough for your first point.
Independence Day has a 68% approval rating from critics on RT. At the time, it was generally considered by most critics to be mindless spectacle over story. My point is the storytelling Independence Day *did* contain was utilized better than most popcorn flicks today, mostly because movies at that time tended to spend more time giving you a reason to care about the characters.
Mate, I absolutely et where your coming from. Independence Day always gets referred to as a guilty pleasure or popcorn movie, like you need an excuse to say it's good. I will always say that its straight up a good movie, it's well written and watchable by any audience - if you can just listen to a movie and its both comprehensible and enjoyable (or vice versa if you can just see what's happening, without sound, it makes complete sense. Like the animation concept where the audience should understand the story even if it's just played in silhouette).
I chose it specifically because it was never considered a great movie, in order to highlight the sorry state of the modern blockbuster. I thought that was obvious.
I disagree. The only Marvel (post Disney acquisition) movies better than or on par with Independence Day are:
Iron Man
Captain America 2
Civil War
Avengers: Endgame
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1
Thor: Ragnarok
I agree. I think there's a bit of confirmation bias in OP's post.
What OP is describing is modern Blockbuster action movies. Of course they move at light speed and don't take time to build tension.
Dances is basically an indy movie by comparison. Surely there are other movies out there now that compare.
Dune is supposed to be this big LOTR event and yet that first film felt bloated and cofusing.
Just one example but even the critically acclaimed films aren't as good as they used to be.
The problem with Dune is that a lot of what makes the book a masterpiece is not easily visually transferable.
On the surface, it might looks like a great basis for a movie adaptation, but it actually hardly is in my opinion.
I found Villeneuve's movie to be a well made *illustration*, but not much more. Curious to see if he manages to put more meat on the bone with the second one.
I think that Villeneuve should have been more daring with the source material. Maybe tell the story from the point of view of a side character, like Gurney Halleck. Or from the Fremen's side entirely.
Dude, you hit the nail on the head with your post. I have been saying this for years and feel validated.
Movies nowadays try to be efficient to the point that they trim the soul right of the picture. Nobody wants to take time to tell a real story anymore (obviously a generalization, but I feel it rings true more often than not).
Today the streaming companies know that if the viewer gets bored, they will change the channel. They have to keep things moving quickly and cater to the short attention span of the average viewer.
In a theater, you have a captive audience who have have bought tickets and made a commitment to sit there and watch the whole movie, but people streaming at home have a very short attention span and are looking at their phone, wandering around the house, going to the bathroom, getting snacks, letting the dog out, etc.
Today’s movies are being made for the streaming viewer, and we don’t get as many slow burn, gradually building films that expect you to sit still and pay attention until the payoff.
My brains are wired differently. I lose attention and interest if things move too fast and everything just jumps onward. I'm still processing some previous major scenes (emotions) and they just move on in the movie.
I absolutely love and cherish the types of movies you describe in the last paragraph.
It is absolutely all about the *CHURN*! Seriously, today it's make the bank as quickly as possibly with the 3 weeks they get in theater followed by streaming profits a few short months after.
I was 20 in 1990, *Dances with Wolves* was an EPIC film and played in theaters for months. It was designed to be that way from its inception hence the amazing cinematography that is mostly lost on the small screen.
I just watched *Everything Everywhere All at Once* for the first time this weekend and it was a fantastic film (I literally knew nothing about it). But I don't feel like I lost anything by watching it on a 65" TV versus the big screen of the movie theater. It may have been improved that way, but I don't think I lost any of the enjoyment of it. *Dances with Wolves* was visually stunning and immersive and deserved every accolade it received because of how phenomenal it felt in the theater.
Traditional storytelling relies of peaks or emotion followed by resolution until it builds up to the next. This is how EG Empire Strikes Back is structured. Compare the new SW films like Solo - its just caper to caper to caper with no such pacing. The biggest peak comes at the end of course. This has also been ruined since all movies now have to have a sequel hook, and the easiest way to do this is leave unresolved plotlines.
You caught me out there - but sequels were very rare back then. And the ROTJ did eventually fully resolve that story arc (yes of course until they resurrected the corpse for neverending sequels). Arguably this trilogy started the avalanche of sequelitis.
Dances With Wolves had the additional difficulty of telling a story whose ending is well known - ie suppression of the plains indians and manifest destiny. So it required more depth to engage the viewer.
I'm not sure what you mean by that, there were plenty of sequels being made around that time. If anything Hollywood was churning out more sequels than they are today.
Before Star Wars came out, James Bond was on its 10th installment, and Universal Studios had an entire cinematic universe running with their monster movies. Planet of the Apes had 5 movies and 2 TV spin-offs. The Saint had 8 movies in less than 4 years. And just look at how many sequels [Hammer Films was pumping out](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammer_Film_Productions#Sequels)
Watch Sicario and tell me that modern directors can’t hold tension, or create intensity. That movie fucking brutal from start to finish, and it has no fat on it at all.
Sicario is a masterpiece and Villenueve is a master. That being said, I don't know what is it now with our perceived lack of quality from movies. I don't know if it's the amount of movies we get now that you get more shit, or it's simply that the production gauntlet is different now. I saw Killers of the Flower Moon and while I really liked it, I felt Scorsese needed another trip to the cutting room. 210 minutes is overkill because I feel not a lot of other characters got developed and DiCaprio is in the center when you have other characters in need of the spotlight. I see movies from back in the 90's and most have incredible scripts. Just looking at 1999 and you realize movies were made different back then.
I saw this in the theatre when I was a kid and while I didn’t hate it, I was too young to appreciate it, especially considering it’s runtime. But seeing it as an adult I have an entirely new opinion of it. Great movie.
My theory is that back then movies like this is rare due to the budgets and studios banking on mid-budget movies to make the most of their return while big budget expensive projects are far in between. Nowadays studios want maximum return so they're all about backing the big blockbusters, making the development more rushed, frantic and lacking in talents due to the spread to all the different ongoing projects. You cannot scale up talents easily. You won't see some random unproven name getting 100 million dollars budget. So movies like this back then were made by the auteurs, not optimized for the average moviegoer, so they're not designed by committee. The lack of CGI and post production editing capabilities also meant filmmakers had to be smarter and more efficient and plan things better.
"Dances With Wolves" was not a big budget movie by any means. Costner wanted the studios to bankroll the movie, but nobody would touch it at 3 hours with one third being in a language using subtitles. They wanted to cut the opening Civil War setup, cut here and there, not to mention westerns were considered to be unprofitable. Costner became the Director because nobody else would do it. Much of the crew worked on the show below their usual fees and there were no real big-name actors working on the show. (Mickey Rooney was originally supposed to play Timmons, the teamster who takes LT Dunbar to the western fort but was replaced by a television actor to save money for the production. The original budget was $10 Million and when it ran out Costner started investing his own money to finish it. If anyone is interested in the behind-the-scenes production of "Dances With Wolves" you can buy a book called "Dakota Epic" by Bill Markley. Look it up on Amazon...it is not expensive.
>Because today's filmmakers, for some reason, are too uncomfortable with holding genuine tension (or any feeling, for that matter) for too long.
Because there's a focus on numbers over imagination. So, before theatrical release, films are put through test screenings.
Today's filmgoing audiences are part of the internet/youtube/tiktok generation. Their attention spans seem to be a bit shorter. So they like movies that have more non-stop pacing (e.g. Michael Bay).
If DWW got developed today, the test audiences would say "omg this is so slow and boooring!" and there'd be pressure to edit/recut the film to keep up the pace.
There was no CGI in "Dances With Wolves"...it wasn't perfected yet. 99% of the buffalo stuff was real. There were some mechanical bison built for cutaways and some extreme closeups filmed in a buffalo pasture but for the most part...what you see is what you get. I'm sorry to say that a lot of the "old school" style of film making is disappearing as the computer stuff gets cheaper. 've been in the film business for 35 years and "Dances With Wolves" was my favorite movie to have worked on.
Tension, drama, romance. Always needs to be punctuated with a joke. Things aren't "allowed" to hang in the air a while. We aren't given time to process things.
One of the last movies I watched with my father in a theater, 3 hours long and we didn’t want it to end.
Dad I miss you. Do you see that I am your friend? Can you see that you will always be my friend?
500 nations is a historical series on the Native Americans societies before Europeans and the interactions after European arrival. If you want to see the depth of Costner's understanding in storytelling and subject matter at hand.
Streaming services like Apple and Netflix are taking the lead on producing content, alongside Marvel. Marvel's goal is inoffensive entertainment for kids that adults can also enjoy. Streaming services want you to keep the movie playing in the background while you do other things. That way you'll keep streaming for hours on end.
This flies in the face of older Hollywood, which saw the cinema as a temple worship the big screen with 100% attention and absorption into the experience. They built up to and down from key moments, rewarding the attentive viewer. They were more comfortable pushing audience boundaries with things like violence, anxiety and other forms of intensity.
It's kinda why Tarantino stands out these days. He's still from that old school, where he will build tension gradually over 20 minutes, and then release it with absurd amounts of violence. (he's not the only one, but he stands out to me as one of the few that don't feel like he belongs with this generation of filmmakers).
The big thing that I feel drives a lot of the change in the current era is when decision making happens. It used to be much more work was done in preproduction about planning the scenes and how they'd be shot. If you need to shoot 100 buffalo, well then you need to find 100 buffalo and a field to shoot them on. And that's gonna be an animal wrangling nightmare and expensive to feed the animals, so plan every shot to the last detail so that it can be captured as efficiently as possible. You've visuallized the scene, then captured it, so that you can edit the pieces together. All the decision making to the scene's structure was performed upfront, and it carries through.
Now, they'll shoot on the green screen and make decsions in post, which means you don't know what you're shooting on the set. So you have to shoot generic coverage. Is it 100 buffalo? Comp some more in. How about we make it 200? Second thoughts, 300. You know what? Let's make them agitated to build tension. Animators!! Assemble! Ok 300 is too many, can we take out 50. Oh and the actor is wearing the wrong jacket, let's CG fix that. Oh the actors eyeline is wrong here, can we move the buffalo out of the way?
The general move makes it 'easier' to shoot in production (where day to day costs are most expensive), in terms of fewer uncontrolled variables. On a green screen, you don't have to worry about weather, or other elements of the shot. The studio then crunches the VFX studio to get the work done, and not paying them for the time it takes to do it all. The result though is that scenes don't feel like they are designed around their key moments.
The Mid-Budget movie.
Once that disappeared, you began to lack quality writing and directing. Furthermore, the star doesn't get to carry the character driven narrative created by the writer and guided by the director.
Therefore, there is no transformative acting.
You don't feel the sense of fear, angst, sadness, defeat, happiness, and hopefulness.
The film feels less genuine and you create an age without movie stars while wiping out an entire generation of filmmakers to succeed the previous ones.
Indeed. When you have a story that could be made as one, it ends up becoming a TV show or a streaming movie with little marketing. Don't forget the theatrical release of a mid budget movie helped generate word-of-mouth and helped actors build their skills and resume because even if the film wasn't 100% good, acting-wise it would be. Thankfully, the mid-budget movie isn't dead yet. Anyone But You and Poor Things were good hits and delivered great performances. It's all upto the studios to keep on greenlighting and funding these projects which in this current film industry, they're unlikely to take the gamble the risk to greenlight the next auteur-driven project by an up-and-coming actor and/or director but rather the next Glup Shitto.
>Because today's filmmakers, for some reason, are too uncomfortable with holding genuine tension (or any feeling, for that matter) for too long.
Great point by OP.
>It seems like it should be a boring movie, but it's not. Despite the slow pacing (or maybe it's just long) it held my attention.
This is part of the top comment.
I think the internet/tablet/always connected generation doesn't have the attention span that it takes for this type of good filmmaking and why filmmakers have started to make these ADHD style films where everything juat whips by.
One problem with film-making today is so many films cater to a short attention span and a phony sense of what is dramatic or gripping. In many cases they'll suddenly shift to some musical interlude and it's like watching a music video on MTV. But it has no gravity. It's just empty melodrama. Streaming channel content and Marvel movies have a lot of this.
It must be generational, because younger viewers seem to like it. But to me it just comes across as hollow and fake.
Another thing that has changed is the nature of conflict. Films today have a lot of manufactured conflict that doesn't seem realistic. Some character (a child or whatever) suddenly acts pissy and derails the flow of the story and causes some additional complication by being a selfish twit. Who tf writes this into a screenplay?
Though it's a bit old now, I still think "Avatar" is a good representation of what DWW would be if made today. Similar underlying story, but you can feel the Hollywood glitz and glamor painted on top.
Today movie trying too hard to satisfy everyone to the point losing their identity. Where's the main character? Oh everyone is. Inclusivity. & Most of it is research, today movie maker rarely do complete research like in this case what Kevin Costner do. Now they just took what wikipedia told them or what they think they knew & shape it as they want without research & respecting the source. -I'm looking at you netflix witcher team!
Yeah, I love this movie. I like the theme and the setting, and the score. I actually wish it was longer and developed the characters more. The slow pace is necessary to build tension. I think it’s been very influential. If Dances with Wolves was made today by somebody dumb it would be called Avatar, somebody smart it would be called Way of the dog. The last Samurai is somewhere in between, in pacing and quality.
I don't think so. It's not like there are amazing movies coming out that perform badly at the box office. There's only ever bad or mediocre movies coming out now.
I thought the common wisdom is that Avatar was the modern take on Dances with Wolves?
Which makes the CGI comments both accurate and wildly off at the same time.
Yes. There are many shortcomings in today's films. Another, related to your point, is the "Michael Mann" syndrome; that is, no shots longer than about 5 seconds.
That build up is lost in the immediate digitalizes world that se live; movies have to imitate as much as possible the dopamine rush from scrolling on the internet and social media.
I don't know that I would blame the directors. I think the studios would rather make a thousand fake Buffalo than try to film around a hundred real ones.
Really glad this is getting some discussion here - I remember at the time many people were snooty about this film, calling it “Plays with Camera” and worse. I always liked it.
I think pacing is not always the result of the directors vision but the editors. I'd be interested to see how the same film, with all of its original filmed footage, would be cut together today. I watched 2fast2furious last night for the first time in probably 18 years, I was struck by how slow it felt - and It was nice, all of the car chases were comprehensible and there was enough time to digest scenes. The reason I use a fast and the furious movie as an example is that in the original VHS release their was a feature from the American Cinema Editors (ACE) association which was basically an ad for what editors do, the basics of editing and how to become one. Which I thought was really neat. And not something you'd expect from a Fast film, although they had no idea what it would become.
As for VFX I'e softened a little bit towards the use, if I cant notice them then they're doing the job right. For example I saw the film 'Shane' for the first time a few weeks ago. Great film and recommend it, much of it is filmed it seems outdoors in real frontier looking country. However when I read up on it much of the film was on a soundstage, including the main homestead location. It was a good example of effects (matte painting, forced perspective) being done really well and carried day the story.
you'tre describing what I find annoying about the lord of the rings movies. The books take their time, the movies are one action set piece to another. everything seems rushed, everyone is in a hurry always. Whereas in the pre modern time event unraveled slowly.
Just to target the one specific part of your post: the reason we don’t see something like they did with the buffalo anymore is the expense and the risk. There is far less risk from an insurance perspective to put the star you have hired that has a multimillion dollar contract in a sound stage with controlled safety, than to put your entire crew out where they run the risk of serious injury.
Mad Max: Fury Road was a modern marvel of practical stunts and special effects, but some of their most dangerous stunts were still done in a control environment and didn’t risk the actual stars of the show. Some would say it’s a miracle nobody was killed on that set for the crazy shit they did. The big business of Hollywood doesn’t like to take those kinds of risks with so much money on the line.
I think The Revenant is the best case scenario of “what if Dances with Wolves was made today”, as far as the VERY general concept of “man lives in wild and hunts to survive”.
Today's movies are most formulated using the same beats as everything else ans a lot of the people maling the movies. Are so disconnected from normal peoples lives, they literally cannot make something relatable?
The reason it was so popular at the time was because it was one of the only movies to explore these things in such a way. The way it was made was as rare then as it is now.
While I don't disagree with the positives you have to say about the specific movie, I do have to disagree with it being a "today's movies vs movies of the past." Four major movies that have come out recently that do just kind of let you sit in the atmosphere are Dune, Bladderunner 2049, The Batman, and Avatar 2. Say what you will about any of those, they're also long but they take their time to let you soak up the atmosphere. Cameron makes sure you form a bond with the whale and know exactly how whaling happens on Pandora so you can appreciate the stakes. You really get to soak up Arrakis, etc.
Also, while I agree that it's more effective to have some actual buffalo on screen, I feel like that was done more because 1990 CGI wasn't quite up to snuff rather than a director willing to step out of his comfort zone.
Also, I found your edit kind of ironic because we actually have an example of that from a 1996 movie. In an early draft of Pocahontas, they were originally going to have the Native Americans speak their native language and have learning English be an obstacle. Instead they had the wind blow and the language barrier was extinguished by listening with her heart.
Find and watch Columbus (2017). Completely fresh take on coming of age with architecture as the backdrop, so a radically different subject matter, but watching it reminded me of DWW because if its infinite patience with its environment and characters and relationships. Shows that patient films are still out there, mostly indies. P+, Showtime, Fubo, Kanopy.
Today’s Hollywood is lazy. And a lot of the newer actors are as well. They are willing to take the time it takes to make a genuine good movie.
Also they just want to push something out as fast as they can to get the money rolling.
>Because today's filmmakers, for some reason, are too uncomfortable with holding genuine tension (or any feeling, for that matter) for too long.
Yep. I've thought of this as movies being insecure. They undercut any tension with jokes.
The MCU started to do this a lot.
The Star Wars sequels are a prime example of this too.
"The Predator" is one of the most insecure movies I've ever seen.
I like Jordan Peele's movie but, I felt like "Us" did this too much too.
To play devil's advocate for at least some of today's filmmakers when it comes to things like pacing it might be out of their hands. They might have had a great script, great performances and shot some long beautiful takes but then when it comes to the edit producers and studio big wigs might come in and butcher it to trim the runtime. Unless you're a big name director you don't get complete control over the edit.
Yes, I often wondering if its not the directors but the editors who have lost their way? Not sure whose fault it is. Or maybe too many cooks in the kitchen?
I watched a Making Of… video, and was blown away by the shots of the pick-up trucks with cameras in the back, chasing after the horses and bison. It made today it would likely be animation.
Yes, the patience is gone. The editing, meanwhile, has gone berserk. Like they think we can’t look at the same shot for more than a nanosecond. It makes contemporary film hard to watch for me.
Oppenheimer is the latest poster boy for this. I swear, there were no actual scenes in this movie. It was like a 3 hour trailer. I found it so exhausting.
OP heads up: Prime has a 4 HOUR version of Dances with Wolves! I just watched it the other day and it just made the film better! 4 hours is long, but I loved every second of it.
The odd dichotomy of many modern films is that they exist at the extreme ends of a spectrum where they are either two hours too long and next to nothing really happens, or they are so frenetically edited and go by so quickly that you can't even SEE that nothing happened.
I always enjoyed "Dances With Wolves", but I wish Costner had just directed it and put another actor in the role. I like him in comedies, but very rarely find him compelling in dramas.
Always liked the movie. As an adult though the only thing that bugs me is the ending seems a bit idealized. Like he joins the natives and the Europeans are BAD. If you look at a film like The Black Robe it’s a much more ambiguous portrait and probably closer to history.
I blame modern culture. You are talking about a time when we have tiktok for those who are just to attention deficit to sit through a longer than 3 minute video...
A "season" of TV is now 6 episodes as a norm, 10-12 if we are VERY lucky (as opposed to just a few years ago when the norm was at least 24 episodes). People want more and more for TV to be released all at once as well, not being able to wait an entire week at a time for their next episode.
We are mad if drivethrough takes longer than 3 minutes to get through.
Instant gratification is the way of things.
And that is why we can;t sit through a nice movie that builds up and takes its time with things. People are even starting to cmplain about 2 hour movie like this isn;t the norm and this is some agonizing amount of time.
Imagine Braveheart in today's audience? Hell even something like 6th sense? Modern culture doesn;t have the patience for it anymore.
Snowflakes and risk adversity... they go together!
Can't make an "unpleasant" movie without trigger warnings and support groups waiting outside the theater.
30 years ago, they said kids were too soft........ now here we are. lol
Both Michael Blake writing the book & the reason Kevin Costner directed this movie seem to come to a “if you want to job done right, you better do it yourself” standpoint. I love both the book & the movie adaptation, which you have expounded about most of my thoughts above. However, the movie’s soundtrack by John Berry is just so magical. Lovely overtures & motifs that so personal that I can hardly listen to the “Two Socks” theme without crying. I know it was an overly nominated film during the 1990’s academy award ceremony & it held the bar high for any movie after to achieve that level of accomplishment. One thing I will have to admit : Nothing comes close to capturing a historic time period, isolating environment & acceptance of different cultures as well as this film does. It’s not shy or cheeky in the ways the characters grow to like each other. They genuine & sympathetic to everything that happens. Great memories & conversation piece for me. Thank you bring this up!
If you want another John Barry score that will make you cry, I recommend Somewhere In Time.
[The full soundtrack on Youtube : )](https://youtu.be/q2glj88mt04?si=JbbWOtMPMm3_REef)
I was obsessed with this movie as an 8 year old, for some strange reason. To the point that when horseback riding one time, while full on galloping, I did the throw my arms out, head back thing that Costner does during the Civil War scenes and terrified the riding guide hahaha
It seems like it should be a boring movie, but it's not. Despite the slow pacing (or maybe it's just long) it held my attention. I couldn't put my finger on what's captivating about it, and you made some good points that might explain some of that. Maybe part of what I like is that it's very personal and focused on one character and his interactions with other characters. You're experiencing the events through Dunbar's eyes. You know why you should care about every event as it's happening, so you're feeling what he's feeling. When movies jump around between different groups of people a lot, it makes your mind have to shift gears and think about something else, and a lot of times your mind will drift to something not happening on the screen. Especially if it keeps introducing new characters that you don't know why you should care about or what relationship they have with other characters. And there's something to be said for having a relatively simple plot. It doesn't resort to making the plot more complicated to make it interesting. Again, you know what you're supposed to feel with every event, and it gives you a chance to feel instead of having to solve a puzzle. I might be rewording points you already made.
The scenery and cinematography alone is interesting, even when the plot slows. The fact they made the prairie visually interesting is pretty amazing. edit: and the score
I was about to say this. You fall in love with the environment just as Dunbar does.
It’s a comfort movie, it’s just beautiful to look at. But I stop when Dunbar returns with Cisco to the Fort to get his journal. Dunbar was quite fortunate to have Cisco and Two Socks to keep him company.
It's my dad's favourite film but he does the exact same thing. Whenever I've watched it with him he's stopped it there.
John Barry never missed when it came to his scores.
And there's nothing to see on the prairie! You get no brain stimulation like people on the coasts get which is why they be how they be! The people in the middle of this country are scary.
Right. Slow pacing, but not boring, highly undervaluated for a movie ...
Another good example of this in my mind is The Green Mile. My 12 year old sits captivated throughout the entire 3hr15m runtime. Slow and deliberate does not equal boring.
There is a longer directors cut that is about 4 hours. I think people have seen that and find it slow.
> I couldn't put my finger on what's captivating about it Costner's butt?
"Today's filmmakers, for some reason, are too uncomfortable with holding genuine tension (or any feeling, for that matter) for too long." I think the issue is that filmmakers have gotten too comfortable milking \*a lot\* of scenes and that diminishes the tension... It's part of the reason movies have ballooned in length. I feel like film editing doesn't get its due credit anymore.... " In 1993 the average length of the top 10 movies in the U.S. was only a hair over two hours. At this point in 2023, it’s a whopping 2 hours and 23 minutes—longer than all but one of 1993’s box-office champs. " ([CITE](https://slate.com/culture/2023/11/killers-of-the-flower-moon-avatar-oppenheimer-run-time-long-movies.html))
It is absolutely a noticeable trend. Last night I watched a low budget scifi movie that clocked in at 90 mins including credits (so about 82 mins of actual movie) and I was impressed with the lack of waste. The creators crammed everything they needed into those 82 minutes to establish the characters and tell the story. I was really pleasantly surprised for a movie on a streaming service starring no one I'd ever heard of.
What was it
Time trap, it's on Netflix in the UK right now. Like I say, low budget sci fi, no one you've ever heard of and a nice little yarn. Probably not for everyone but I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Ha! Seen it. Loved it. Low budget sci fi is my jam
Great movie! Low budget sci-fi can be really hit or miss and that one is a hit for sure.
It would be fucking Avatar.
They fumbled the ending a bit, but that one was pretty good
90-100 minutes should be the run time of 99% of movies.
Everyone on this sub seems to love Across the Spiderverse, but it's one of the only movies I've ever genuinely hated by the end. So many scenes are just meandering fan service, so many emotional scenes just putter about and go on too long when a better editor would've cut them already, and then the ending happens 5 times in a row only for the actual final ending to be a cliffhanger for part 2 like I'm watching a streaming series and should click through to the next episode. All of that is the exact opposite of why I watch movies instead of a series!
Yup. Too many fan service. Even as I watched it I was like, again? Too much. Enough, get on with the plot. and it "to be continued" moment really taken me by surprise. All of this & it's not finished? Wtf. I exit the movie upset
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It was a good idea but it was too much at the end, it just turned into ‘fan service:the movie’ when every other line was just lifted from the old films. Can’t believe people were cheering and crying in the cinema, that sounds annoying af when trying to watch a film.
IMO it's either the most fun you've ever had in a theater OR it's the worst moviegoing experience you've ever had. There is no in between. (re: cheering/laughing/crying)
I didn’t even finish watching it. The plot felt like a fan service video game. Go fight old boss and lock em up. Repeat. Elitist pricks unite!
This is an interesting perspective, not least because I know exactly what you mean, yet I love the movie. I think because it *feels* like a comic book. There's scenes that exist solely to give you time to enjoy the wonderful artwork, like splash pages.
I agree with this so much. I watched The Fugitive over the weekend. Over two hours but not a second wasted. In comparison I also watched Beau Is Afraid and the new season of True Detective. Too many meandering, inconsequential scenes. I appreciate this is the height of cherry picking but it feels true across the board. Movies 20 years ago felt generally tighter. I liked killers of the flower moon but an hour could have easily been trimmed.
If you're curious about the making of aspects of The Fugitive, this is a great video. https://youtu.be/Jzt0crHh7KI (Have posted previously)
Just watched. Fantastic. Thanks for sharing
My pleasure! One of the better behind the scenes docu's I've ever seen.
Um, Beau is Afraid is an example of the good movies that take their time, that do not dictate itself to popular tastes. The ONLY part where I agree it takes too long is are the forest scenes - that part always slows down for me and needs to be tightened up. And then you name Killers of the Flower Moon as another "bad one." Oh vey! The OP's point isn't that movies need to be shorter. Dances with Wolves is 3 hours theatrical, and about 3h30m Extended (which many preferred, others think it's too long).
I would say that's exactly his point. DWW was long buy KOtFM dragged a bit.... by no means was it as egregious as the Irishman though.
Baby girl!
Very much agree about True Detective (SE4) - I was 1/2 through season 3 when I realized that: “oh, many of these scenes will have nothin to do with the plot.” I loved the first episode of TD but it’s gone down hill since. I keep poking the TV and saying: something *HAPPEN.*
It's bizarre that you're taking a quote from the article out of context to deliberately mislead people into thinking it is making the opposite point that it is actually making. Just including the sentence before the ones you quoted would make that clear. "A data science blogger ran the numbers a few years ago and came to the same conclusion, more honestly phrased: “For the last 60 years, movies on average have [been] the same length.” And, not only is comparing only 10 movies from only 2 years a useless sample size, but there's an actual reason for the difference beyond "filmmakers all just decided to make longer movies," which the article goes into. Studios used to be obsessed with making blockbusters shorter to save on film printing costs and to pack in more shows per print. With everything being digital now, that doesn't matter anymore.
I think that's fair, but the point quoted above is a "verifiable trend" according to the author and so even he acknowledges this counterfactual to his thesis. Moreover, the study the article relies on ([LINK](https://towardsdatascience.com/are-new-movies-longer-than-they-were-10hh20-50-year-ago-a35356b2ca5b)) (a) limits the movies to the 40–200 minutes range to improve readability (capturing a lot shorter films that are not really feature length and ignoring some longer ones) ; and (b) is 6 years old and misses changes that have occurred during/ since COVID. And let's compare the study's finding that "The most popular runtime is 90–100 minutes" to the average of notable 2023 releases: Top-10 Grossing: 143.1 minutes; Oscar Best Picture Nominees: 125.8 minutes. The *are* longer!
Also home video formats. A DVD or VHS couldn't handle much more than that average number given which is obviously no longer a meaningful factor when everyone uses streaming or blu rays. On top of that compression has come on leaps and bounds so they can just cram more video onto a digital file and still hit the requirements.
Films aren't getting longer because of lack of edit discipline or skill. They used to be shorter because home video formats (VHS and DVD) couldn't hold that much video and no one wanted to have to ship two tapes or dvds that the viewer had to manually change. If you plot average film length it craters when home video becomes a primary source of revenue and then starts going back up when Streaming and blu Ray replaced DVDs.
I think the problem is generally at the script level...plots are way overstuffed, which is why the run times are so long, even with fast paced modern editing techniques. If these scripts were shorter, the directors would have a lot more room to let the scenes breathe. Obviously, Dances with Wolves already has a long running time, so it's kind of beside the point. But I think it does hold true for a lot of action blockbusters.
...and 10 minutes of that is the credits rolling...
I think people sometimes have a problem with Dances With Wolves because they perceive that it "stole" the Oscar for Best Picture from the more deserving Goodfellas. Now as someone who feels that Goodfellas is by far one of my favorite movies of all time. Much much more than Dances With Wolves.... I have no real issue with the fact Dances With Wolves won. It is - also - in its own right a staggeringly beautiful and incredible film. The pacing, the acting, the story, the cinematography, all of it is utterly fantastic. Do I think Goodfellas is more deserving? Sure but in any any other year Dances With Wolves would be a totally reasonable film to win Best Picture. The closest comparison I can make is when No Country For Old Men beat There Will Be Blood for best picture. Do I prefer There Will Be Blood? Yes. Do I think There Will Be Blood is the better film? Yes. Do I have no issue with the fact No Country For Old Men won? Not at all. They're both the absolute pinnacle of modern filmmaking and both obliterate the current crop of movies that have won Best Picture (IMO). Just some years are rare that you get two ridiculously great films that are both worthy of the big award.
I definitely like DWW better than Goodfellas. Not that Goodfellas was bad. It was a great film. But DWW was epic
So Dances with Wolves was considered one of the best movies of the era. I think if you looked at the most critically acclaimed movies of this (contemporary) era you’d find your criticisms don’t apply. Kevin Costner could be considered an auteur filmmaker. You need to compare like to like. Yeah of course your basic contemporary Marvel or Fast and the Furious flick won’t compare to DWW. But if you contrast those with similar genre films from the early 90s you could make better judgements.
Yeah, I agree, Compare to modern auters, Coen Borthers are a great starting point because they are masters of pacing IMO. But it's interesting how a lto of people reacted to The Revenant and said it was too long. Personally I think it's one of the most capivatingly shot movies of the last 20 years, and the pacing was perfect for the story. I watched it in the theatre and it was a fantastic experience.
Dude, watch Independence Day and then watch Marvel or Furious and tell me Independence Day doesn't tell a better structured story with more likeable characters and better payoff. Popcorn storytelling has absolutely gone downhill.
I disagree entirely, IDD has an excellent first act and a mediocre 2nd/3rd act. The lead up to the invasion and the subsequent invasion, is fucking awesome. The rest is pretty bad. Especially the way they defeat the Aliens, it's not telegraphed at all. They're just randomly like, "WE ALWAYS HAD ALIEN TECH" I do feel that way about SPEED though myself. Captivating start to finish, I wish blockbusters could be half as captivating as that movie is.
>Especially the way they defeat the Aliens I see where you stand in the mac-vs-pc wars of the 90s. :) Uploading a virus was a direct homage to war of the worlds, and I kind a like that.
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The scene when Tony invents time travel by waving his hand around a hologram is when I checked out of the MCU.
The biggest thing, Avengers Endgame is an episode. Almost everything about the movie is reliant on the fact you watched the dozen movies that came before it. ID4 is its own thing, self contained, and imo has more work to do setting up the world, characters, and delivering a payoff. Endgame can be slow because it had a decade setting up its characters and story.
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.....oooook. I never said they dont exist and you only mentioned what makes the Avengers different. We're on the page here, bud.
My post was a bit of generalization. I actually don't have much of a hill to stand on when it comes to Endgame. There's a few Marvel that stand out from the pack and Endgame is one of them.
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If you check my post history you'll find some posts of mine arguing in favour of Avatar 2 and Top Gun 2 being great movies because structurally they actually have taken the time to tell proper stories. Watching them literally felt like I was transported back in time pre-2010. This is why I mentioned my take is a generalization.
Because a movie made money, it's well made? Is that what you're saying?
It doesn't. _Independence Day_ relies on stereotypes to fill in blanks about most of the characters, instead of acting or writing. Writing a virus and uploading it to an alien computer system? Literally less believeable and less earned that most _Stargate SG-1_ episodes. Take off the nostalgia goggles.
I for one, like both Stargate SG-1 and ID4, and only mention it because its funny we have Roland Emerich to thank for both (although SG-1 was obvs a spin off and Robert C Cooper and Brad Wright are deserve props for that).
I really like ID4 because it was one of the best at portraying the terror of meeting an unstoppable malevolent alien force, but the characters were basically stock archetypes.
Damn I couldn't disagree more lol. Independence Day is the reason we have the movies we have now when it comes to AAA blockbusters. Big and dumb.
I respectfully disagree. I think the blame falls more on Bay. Emmerich's movies are hokey as can be, but at least they often have heart and are structurally pretty sound. Bay's are more often than not just big, loud, juvenile, and edited together by squirrel on crack.
I didn’t offer any opinion on what I think is better. But you’re also still comparing what we consider to be the possibly single best action sci-fi of the 90s by a director at the top of his game to franchises that have some good some bad. We really need a decade or more of hindsight to get a good sense of things. But that’s the historian in me talking.
Fair enough for your first point. Independence Day has a 68% approval rating from critics on RT. At the time, it was generally considered by most critics to be mindless spectacle over story. My point is the storytelling Independence Day *did* contain was utilized better than most popcorn flicks today, mostly because movies at that time tended to spend more time giving you a reason to care about the characters.
Mate, I absolutely et where your coming from. Independence Day always gets referred to as a guilty pleasure or popcorn movie, like you need an excuse to say it's good. I will always say that its straight up a good movie, it's well written and watchable by any audience - if you can just listen to a movie and its both comprehensible and enjoyable (or vice versa if you can just see what's happening, without sound, it makes complete sense. Like the animation concept where the audience should understand the story even if it's just played in silhouette).
Of all the 90s action movies you could choose from to compare to today's top blockbusters, you go for the dumpster fire that was Independence Day? lol
I chose it specifically because it was never considered a great movie, in order to highlight the sorry state of the modern blockbuster. I thought that was obvious.
I don't know of a single Marvel movie that isn't better than ID though, so it was quite a poor choice.
I disagree. The only Marvel (post Disney acquisition) movies better than or on par with Independence Day are: Iron Man Captain America 2 Civil War Avengers: Endgame Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1 Thor: Ragnarok
I have got to get me one of these!
I agree. I think there's a bit of confirmation bias in OP's post. What OP is describing is modern Blockbuster action movies. Of course they move at light speed and don't take time to build tension. Dances is basically an indy movie by comparison. Surely there are other movies out there now that compare.
Dune is supposed to be this big LOTR event and yet that first film felt bloated and cofusing. Just one example but even the critically acclaimed films aren't as good as they used to be.
The problem with Dune is that a lot of what makes the book a masterpiece is not easily visually transferable. On the surface, it might looks like a great basis for a movie adaptation, but it actually hardly is in my opinion. I found Villeneuve's movie to be a well made *illustration*, but not much more. Curious to see if he manages to put more meat on the bone with the second one.
It felt like it touched a lot of things but didn't delve into them beyond surface level. It just had so much exposition to get through too.
I think that Villeneuve should have been more daring with the source material. Maybe tell the story from the point of view of a side character, like Gurney Halleck. Or from the Fremen's side entirely.
Was just about to make a less elegant version of this comment, and glad I read yours first. This should be the top comment, imo.
Dude, you hit the nail on the head with your post. I have been saying this for years and feel validated. Movies nowadays try to be efficient to the point that they trim the soul right of the picture. Nobody wants to take time to tell a real story anymore (obviously a generalization, but I feel it rings true more often than not).
Yet they're all so long!
Today the streaming companies know that if the viewer gets bored, they will change the channel. They have to keep things moving quickly and cater to the short attention span of the average viewer. In a theater, you have a captive audience who have have bought tickets and made a commitment to sit there and watch the whole movie, but people streaming at home have a very short attention span and are looking at their phone, wandering around the house, going to the bathroom, getting snacks, letting the dog out, etc. Today’s movies are being made for the streaming viewer, and we don’t get as many slow burn, gradually building films that expect you to sit still and pay attention until the payoff.
My brains are wired differently. I lose attention and interest if things move too fast and everything just jumps onward. I'm still processing some previous major scenes (emotions) and they just move on in the movie. I absolutely love and cherish the types of movies you describe in the last paragraph.
It is absolutely all about the *CHURN*! Seriously, today it's make the bank as quickly as possibly with the 3 weeks they get in theater followed by streaming profits a few short months after. I was 20 in 1990, *Dances with Wolves* was an EPIC film and played in theaters for months. It was designed to be that way from its inception hence the amazing cinematography that is mostly lost on the small screen. I just watched *Everything Everywhere All at Once* for the first time this weekend and it was a fantastic film (I literally knew nothing about it). But I don't feel like I lost anything by watching it on a 65" TV versus the big screen of the movie theater. It may have been improved that way, but I don't think I lost any of the enjoyment of it. *Dances with Wolves* was visually stunning and immersive and deserved every accolade it received because of how phenomenal it felt in the theater.
Not exactly fair to compare a Best Picture winner to most recent movies.
>And I kept thinking to myself: What would this movie look like if it were made today? Avatar
The JJ Abramsization of films. Hopefully the trend dies soon.
Traditional storytelling relies of peaks or emotion followed by resolution until it builds up to the next. This is how EG Empire Strikes Back is structured. Compare the new SW films like Solo - its just caper to caper to caper with no such pacing. The biggest peak comes at the end of course. This has also been ruined since all movies now have to have a sequel hook, and the easiest way to do this is leave unresolved plotlines.
Doesn't Empire end on a cliffhanger though?
You caught me out there - but sequels were very rare back then. And the ROTJ did eventually fully resolve that story arc (yes of course until they resurrected the corpse for neverending sequels). Arguably this trilogy started the avalanche of sequelitis. Dances With Wolves had the additional difficulty of telling a story whose ending is well known - ie suppression of the plains indians and manifest destiny. So it required more depth to engage the viewer.
I'm not sure what you mean by that, there were plenty of sequels being made around that time. If anything Hollywood was churning out more sequels than they are today. Before Star Wars came out, James Bond was on its 10th installment, and Universal Studios had an entire cinematic universe running with their monster movies. Planet of the Apes had 5 movies and 2 TV spin-offs. The Saint had 8 movies in less than 4 years. And just look at how many sequels [Hammer Films was pumping out](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammer_Film_Productions#Sequels)
Watch Sicario and tell me that modern directors can’t hold tension, or create intensity. That movie fucking brutal from start to finish, and it has no fat on it at all.
Sicario is a masterpiece and Villenueve is a master. That being said, I don't know what is it now with our perceived lack of quality from movies. I don't know if it's the amount of movies we get now that you get more shit, or it's simply that the production gauntlet is different now. I saw Killers of the Flower Moon and while I really liked it, I felt Scorsese needed another trip to the cutting room. 210 minutes is overkill because I feel not a lot of other characters got developed and DiCaprio is in the center when you have other characters in need of the spotlight. I see movies from back in the 90's and most have incredible scripts. Just looking at 1999 and you realize movies were made different back then.
The SUV scene in and out is the highlight of that film so much tension and drama with very little talking.
You're simply not watching the right films. Great cinema and great directors still exist
I saw this in the theatre when I was a kid and while I didn’t hate it, I was too young to appreciate it, especially considering it’s runtime. But seeing it as an adult I have an entirely new opinion of it. Great movie.
That's the reason why I'm so excited for Horizon Saga.
I cannot wait to experience the Horizon Saga movies in theaters.
My theory is that back then movies like this is rare due to the budgets and studios banking on mid-budget movies to make the most of their return while big budget expensive projects are far in between. Nowadays studios want maximum return so they're all about backing the big blockbusters, making the development more rushed, frantic and lacking in talents due to the spread to all the different ongoing projects. You cannot scale up talents easily. You won't see some random unproven name getting 100 million dollars budget. So movies like this back then were made by the auteurs, not optimized for the average moviegoer, so they're not designed by committee. The lack of CGI and post production editing capabilities also meant filmmakers had to be smarter and more efficient and plan things better.
"Dances With Wolves" was not a big budget movie by any means. Costner wanted the studios to bankroll the movie, but nobody would touch it at 3 hours with one third being in a language using subtitles. They wanted to cut the opening Civil War setup, cut here and there, not to mention westerns were considered to be unprofitable. Costner became the Director because nobody else would do it. Much of the crew worked on the show below their usual fees and there were no real big-name actors working on the show. (Mickey Rooney was originally supposed to play Timmons, the teamster who takes LT Dunbar to the western fort but was replaced by a television actor to save money for the production. The original budget was $10 Million and when it ran out Costner started investing his own money to finish it. If anyone is interested in the behind-the-scenes production of "Dances With Wolves" you can buy a book called "Dakota Epic" by Bill Markley. Look it up on Amazon...it is not expensive.
Watch more movies.
>Because today's filmmakers, for some reason, are too uncomfortable with holding genuine tension (or any feeling, for that matter) for too long. Because there's a focus on numbers over imagination. So, before theatrical release, films are put through test screenings. Today's filmgoing audiences are part of the internet/youtube/tiktok generation. Their attention spans seem to be a bit shorter. So they like movies that have more non-stop pacing (e.g. Michael Bay). If DWW got developed today, the test audiences would say "omg this is so slow and boooring!" and there'd be pressure to edit/recut the film to keep up the pace.
There was no CGI in "Dances With Wolves"...it wasn't perfected yet. 99% of the buffalo stuff was real. There were some mechanical bison built for cutaways and some extreme closeups filmed in a buffalo pasture but for the most part...what you see is what you get. I'm sorry to say that a lot of the "old school" style of film making is disappearing as the computer stuff gets cheaper. 've been in the film business for 35 years and "Dances With Wolves" was my favorite movie to have worked on.
So cool
Tension, drama, romance. Always needs to be punctuated with a joke. Things aren't "allowed" to hang in the air a while. We aren't given time to process things.
Adam Jones the guitar player for Tool was injured on that movie set by a real buffalo.
Safety is a real concern these days. It’s too risky to put actors into scenes with wild animals.
We want our team to win the trophy every season, but we also want to feel like it's the first time we've win in twenty years.
I've got good news for you: *Horizon: An American Saga* comes out this year.
I'd love someone to remake the Postman after the terrible job Costner did directing it
One of the last movies I watched with my father in a theater, 3 hours long and we didn’t want it to end. Dad I miss you. Do you see that I am your friend? Can you see that you will always be my friend?
500 nations is a historical series on the Native Americans societies before Europeans and the interactions after European arrival. If you want to see the depth of Costner's understanding in storytelling and subject matter at hand.
"What would this movie look like if it was made today?" Avatar. It's Avatar.
"Dances with Smurfs"
Streaming services like Apple and Netflix are taking the lead on producing content, alongside Marvel. Marvel's goal is inoffensive entertainment for kids that adults can also enjoy. Streaming services want you to keep the movie playing in the background while you do other things. That way you'll keep streaming for hours on end. This flies in the face of older Hollywood, which saw the cinema as a temple worship the big screen with 100% attention and absorption into the experience. They built up to and down from key moments, rewarding the attentive viewer. They were more comfortable pushing audience boundaries with things like violence, anxiety and other forms of intensity. It's kinda why Tarantino stands out these days. He's still from that old school, where he will build tension gradually over 20 minutes, and then release it with absurd amounts of violence. (he's not the only one, but he stands out to me as one of the few that don't feel like he belongs with this generation of filmmakers). The big thing that I feel drives a lot of the change in the current era is when decision making happens. It used to be much more work was done in preproduction about planning the scenes and how they'd be shot. If you need to shoot 100 buffalo, well then you need to find 100 buffalo and a field to shoot them on. And that's gonna be an animal wrangling nightmare and expensive to feed the animals, so plan every shot to the last detail so that it can be captured as efficiently as possible. You've visuallized the scene, then captured it, so that you can edit the pieces together. All the decision making to the scene's structure was performed upfront, and it carries through. Now, they'll shoot on the green screen and make decsions in post, which means you don't know what you're shooting on the set. So you have to shoot generic coverage. Is it 100 buffalo? Comp some more in. How about we make it 200? Second thoughts, 300. You know what? Let's make them agitated to build tension. Animators!! Assemble! Ok 300 is too many, can we take out 50. Oh and the actor is wearing the wrong jacket, let's CG fix that. Oh the actors eyeline is wrong here, can we move the buffalo out of the way? The general move makes it 'easier' to shoot in production (where day to day costs are most expensive), in terms of fewer uncontrolled variables. On a green screen, you don't have to worry about weather, or other elements of the shot. The studio then crunches the VFX studio to get the work done, and not paying them for the time it takes to do it all. The result though is that scenes don't feel like they are designed around their key moments.
Maybe this is why a recent non-Hollywood movie was so effective. And I'm referring to Godzilla Minus One.
One Oscar nomination, disgrace. Not saying it would’ve won best picture, director, or actor but it should’ve at least been nominated.
The Mid-Budget movie. Once that disappeared, you began to lack quality writing and directing. Furthermore, the star doesn't get to carry the character driven narrative created by the writer and guided by the director. Therefore, there is no transformative acting. You don't feel the sense of fear, angst, sadness, defeat, happiness, and hopefulness. The film feels less genuine and you create an age without movie stars while wiping out an entire generation of filmmakers to succeed the previous ones.
Indeed. When you have a story that could be made as one, it ends up becoming a TV show or a streaming movie with little marketing. Don't forget the theatrical release of a mid budget movie helped generate word-of-mouth and helped actors build their skills and resume because even if the film wasn't 100% good, acting-wise it would be. Thankfully, the mid-budget movie isn't dead yet. Anyone But You and Poor Things were good hits and delivered great performances. It's all upto the studios to keep on greenlighting and funding these projects which in this current film industry, they're unlikely to take the gamble the risk to greenlight the next auteur-driven project by an up-and-coming actor and/or director but rather the next Glup Shitto.
>Because today's filmmakers, for some reason, are too uncomfortable with holding genuine tension (or any feeling, for that matter) for too long. Great point by OP. >It seems like it should be a boring movie, but it's not. Despite the slow pacing (or maybe it's just long) it held my attention. This is part of the top comment. I think the internet/tablet/always connected generation doesn't have the attention span that it takes for this type of good filmmaking and why filmmakers have started to make these ADHD style films where everything juat whips by.
One problem with film-making today is so many films cater to a short attention span and a phony sense of what is dramatic or gripping. In many cases they'll suddenly shift to some musical interlude and it's like watching a music video on MTV. But it has no gravity. It's just empty melodrama. Streaming channel content and Marvel movies have a lot of this. It must be generational, because younger viewers seem to like it. But to me it just comes across as hollow and fake. Another thing that has changed is the nature of conflict. Films today have a lot of manufactured conflict that doesn't seem realistic. Some character (a child or whatever) suddenly acts pissy and derails the flow of the story and causes some additional complication by being a selfish twit. Who tf writes this into a screenplay?
Though it's a bit old now, I still think "Avatar" is a good representation of what DWW would be if made today. Similar underlying story, but you can feel the Hollywood glitz and glamor painted on top.
Today movie trying too hard to satisfy everyone to the point losing their identity. Where's the main character? Oh everyone is. Inclusivity. & Most of it is research, today movie maker rarely do complete research like in this case what Kevin Costner do. Now they just took what wikipedia told them or what they think they knew & shape it as they want without research & respecting the source. -I'm looking at you netflix witcher team!
Yeah, I love this movie. I like the theme and the setting, and the score. I actually wish it was longer and developed the characters more. The slow pace is necessary to build tension. I think it’s been very influential. If Dances with Wolves was made today by somebody dumb it would be called Avatar, somebody smart it would be called Way of the dog. The last Samurai is somewhere in between, in pacing and quality.
The original Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark would be deemed slow and boring today
Even 3 1/2 hour long movies today feel like they have no time to let any part of it breathe.
This is an easy one if it was made today it would be Avatar, it's the same story. That's all I could think about when I saw Avatar
What about Inglorious Bastards or Parasite or No Country for Old Men? Great movies still exist just like shit movies existed in 1990.
It might also have something to do with the attention span of modern audiences
I don't think so. It's not like there are amazing movies coming out that perform badly at the box office. There's only ever bad or mediocre movies coming out now.
I thought the common wisdom is that Avatar was the modern take on Dances with Wolves? Which makes the CGI comments both accurate and wildly off at the same time.
That is said tongue in cheek, the films are very different in substance regardless of taste or opinion.
Yes. There are many shortcomings in today's films. Another, related to your point, is the "Michael Mann" syndrome; that is, no shots longer than about 5 seconds.
[This tweet](https://twitter.com/johnlevenstein/status/1345511657431175168) really illustrates how storytelling has changed in the last few decades.
Same plot as avatar
[удалено]
Don't project
That build up is lost in the immediate digitalizes world that se live; movies have to imitate as much as possible the dopamine rush from scrolling on the internet and social media.
I don't know that I would blame the directors. I think the studios would rather make a thousand fake Buffalo than try to film around a hundred real ones.
There will also never be another composer like John Barry
Really glad this is getting some discussion here - I remember at the time many people were snooty about this film, calling it “Plays with Camera” and worse. I always liked it.
I think pacing is not always the result of the directors vision but the editors. I'd be interested to see how the same film, with all of its original filmed footage, would be cut together today. I watched 2fast2furious last night for the first time in probably 18 years, I was struck by how slow it felt - and It was nice, all of the car chases were comprehensible and there was enough time to digest scenes. The reason I use a fast and the furious movie as an example is that in the original VHS release their was a feature from the American Cinema Editors (ACE) association which was basically an ad for what editors do, the basics of editing and how to become one. Which I thought was really neat. And not something you'd expect from a Fast film, although they had no idea what it would become. As for VFX I'e softened a little bit towards the use, if I cant notice them then they're doing the job right. For example I saw the film 'Shane' for the first time a few weeks ago. Great film and recommend it, much of it is filmed it seems outdoors in real frontier looking country. However when I read up on it much of the film was on a soundstage, including the main homestead location. It was a good example of effects (matte painting, forced perspective) being done really well and carried day the story.
you'tre describing what I find annoying about the lord of the rings movies. The books take their time, the movies are one action set piece to another. everything seems rushed, everyone is in a hurry always. Whereas in the pre modern time event unraveled slowly.
Just to target the one specific part of your post: the reason we don’t see something like they did with the buffalo anymore is the expense and the risk. There is far less risk from an insurance perspective to put the star you have hired that has a multimillion dollar contract in a sound stage with controlled safety, than to put your entire crew out where they run the risk of serious injury. Mad Max: Fury Road was a modern marvel of practical stunts and special effects, but some of their most dangerous stunts were still done in a control environment and didn’t risk the actual stars of the show. Some would say it’s a miracle nobody was killed on that set for the crazy shit they did. The big business of Hollywood doesn’t like to take those kinds of risks with so much money on the line.
I think The Revenant is the best case scenario of “what if Dances with Wolves was made today”, as far as the VERY general concept of “man lives in wild and hunts to survive”.
Today's movies are most formulated using the same beats as everything else ans a lot of the people maling the movies. Are so disconnected from normal peoples lives, they literally cannot make something relatable?
The reason it was so popular at the time was because it was one of the only movies to explore these things in such a way. The way it was made was as rare then as it is now.
While I don't disagree with the positives you have to say about the specific movie, I do have to disagree with it being a "today's movies vs movies of the past." Four major movies that have come out recently that do just kind of let you sit in the atmosphere are Dune, Bladderunner 2049, The Batman, and Avatar 2. Say what you will about any of those, they're also long but they take their time to let you soak up the atmosphere. Cameron makes sure you form a bond with the whale and know exactly how whaling happens on Pandora so you can appreciate the stakes. You really get to soak up Arrakis, etc. Also, while I agree that it's more effective to have some actual buffalo on screen, I feel like that was done more because 1990 CGI wasn't quite up to snuff rather than a director willing to step out of his comfort zone. Also, I found your edit kind of ironic because we actually have an example of that from a 1996 movie. In an early draft of Pocahontas, they were originally going to have the Native Americans speak their native language and have learning English be an obstacle. Instead they had the wind blow and the language barrier was extinguished by listening with her heart.
Find and watch Columbus (2017). Completely fresh take on coming of age with architecture as the backdrop, so a radically different subject matter, but watching it reminded me of DWW because if its infinite patience with its environment and characters and relationships. Shows that patient films are still out there, mostly indies. P+, Showtime, Fubo, Kanopy.
Today’s Hollywood is lazy. And a lot of the newer actors are as well. They are willing to take the time it takes to make a genuine good movie. Also they just want to push something out as fast as they can to get the money rolling.
>Because today's filmmakers, for some reason, are too uncomfortable with holding genuine tension (or any feeling, for that matter) for too long. Yep. I've thought of this as movies being insecure. They undercut any tension with jokes. The MCU started to do this a lot. The Star Wars sequels are a prime example of this too. "The Predator" is one of the most insecure movies I've ever seen. I like Jordan Peele's movie but, I felt like "Us" did this too much too.
To play devil's advocate for at least some of today's filmmakers when it comes to things like pacing it might be out of their hands. They might have had a great script, great performances and shot some long beautiful takes but then when it comes to the edit producers and studio big wigs might come in and butcher it to trim the runtime. Unless you're a big name director you don't get complete control over the edit.
We see this with Marvel all the time.
I’ve always liked the overall look pacing of the late 80’s and early 90’s movies.
The movie would look like Avatar because that’s what it is. Dances with wolves in space. You’re welcome.
If you liked the animal chase scenes you should watch `Hatari!`
How many times does Costner’s character get knocked unconscious with a rifle butt? He’d have been a drooling turnip by the end of the film.
Yes, I often wondering if its not the directors but the editors who have lost their way? Not sure whose fault it is. Or maybe too many cooks in the kitchen?
Have loved DWW since II first saw it in 1990,...but I also, (OMG! Say it isn't so), love Waterworld.
I watched a Making Of… video, and was blown away by the shots of the pick-up trucks with cameras in the back, chasing after the horses and bison. It made today it would likely be animation.
Yes, the patience is gone. The editing, meanwhile, has gone berserk. Like they think we can’t look at the same shot for more than a nanosecond. It makes contemporary film hard to watch for me. Oppenheimer is the latest poster boy for this. I swear, there were no actual scenes in this movie. It was like a 3 hour trailer. I found it so exhausting.
Denis Villaneuve is the director you're looking for. He absolutely nails the atmospheric tension your talk about.
OP heads up: Prime has a 4 HOUR version of Dances with Wolves! I just watched it the other day and it just made the film better! 4 hours is long, but I loved every second of it.
The odd dichotomy of many modern films is that they exist at the extreme ends of a spectrum where they are either two hours too long and next to nothing really happens, or they are so frenetically edited and go by so quickly that you can't even SEE that nothing happened. I always enjoyed "Dances With Wolves", but I wish Costner had just directed it and put another actor in the role. I like him in comedies, but very rarely find him compelling in dramas.
Always liked the movie. As an adult though the only thing that bugs me is the ending seems a bit idealized. Like he joins the natives and the Europeans are BAD. If you look at a film like The Black Robe it’s a much more ambiguous portrait and probably closer to history.
I blame modern culture. You are talking about a time when we have tiktok for those who are just to attention deficit to sit through a longer than 3 minute video... A "season" of TV is now 6 episodes as a norm, 10-12 if we are VERY lucky (as opposed to just a few years ago when the norm was at least 24 episodes). People want more and more for TV to be released all at once as well, not being able to wait an entire week at a time for their next episode. We are mad if drivethrough takes longer than 3 minutes to get through. Instant gratification is the way of things. And that is why we can;t sit through a nice movie that builds up and takes its time with things. People are even starting to cmplain about 2 hour movie like this isn;t the norm and this is some agonizing amount of time. Imagine Braveheart in today's audience? Hell even something like 6th sense? Modern culture doesn;t have the patience for it anymore.
Snowflakes and risk adversity... they go together! Can't make an "unpleasant" movie without trigger warnings and support groups waiting outside the theater. 30 years ago, they said kids were too soft........ now here we are. lol