MovieChat Forums > Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 (2024) Discussion > Critics hate it because it's not PC and ...

Critics hate it because it's not PC and Pro-America


Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It's a great film and one of the best this year

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PC in what way? There were black people in it, indians did kill settlers, etc. etc.

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[deleted]

They don't even know what they complain about 😂

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Those aren't PC things

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What PC means?

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"indians did kill settlers"

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what exactly does your OP mean ?

What are the not PC things that the critics dont like ?

... or the missing PC things that the critics wanted ?

which critics are we talking about anyway ?

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Not sure i'd call it great yet but its gearing up to be a very authentic and expansive view of the shaping of the Western frontier, plus its a breathtakingly beautiful movie to look at. That people aren't supporting this vision more is disheartening.


If anyone's interested, I reviewed the movie on my youtube channel. Appreciate any feedback. Trying to improve -
https://youtu.be/3Pkh7hOGdX8

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[deleted]

"American Flyers" is terrible. Everything in it about bicycle road racing is phony. Costner bears no resemblance to a pro cyclist.

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[deleted]

Most people I've seen comment about working with Kevin Costner have said he's great to work with.

Open Range is more than "decent enough." It a very fine western. It's quite a different film from Horizon, however. Horizon is much broader in its scope and has a more epic feel.

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[deleted]

The Postman sucked but you're wrong about Open Range. It's highly respected by western fans and widely regard as an A-list film from the genre.

Wyatt Earp was good but it had the unlucky fate of coming out alongside Tombstone and living in its shadow. If Earp had come out a few years earlier I think it would have a better reputation.

Have you even seen this film? You call it low-energy, boring and slow but that sounds like the comment of someone who hasn't seen it. The film opens with a murder and then a white-knuckle Apache attack on a group of settlers. I was never bored during this film.

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[deleted]

I can only speak for myself but I think that long movies are only a problem when they FEEL long. In the last couple of years I saw four movies that were over 2 1/2 hours:

Napoleon
Oppenheimer
Killers of the Flower Moon
Horizon Part 1

Of those, Napoleon, Oppenheimer and Horizon all managed to capture and hold my interest. Killers of the Flower Moon, however, bored me so much that I was nearly desperate to escape the theater by the end. The difference is simply in the stories and the way they are told. With Horizon, I never FELT the length of the film because I was invested in what I was watching.

You may be right about "most people." But then again, Oppenheimer, despite any complaints that there may have been regarding its length, still made nearly a billion dollars.

Don't forget that some of the best movies of all time are very long. Ben-Hur and Gone With the Wind, for example, are both ~3 1/2 hours long and both are stone cold classics.

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Dances with the Wolves was 3 hours long - it flew by like nothing.
Braveheart - 3 hours - same.
Saving Private Ryan - nearly 3 hours - had moments of sheer terror combined with bouts of boredom.
Avengers: Endgame - a film made for the tiktok crowd - 3 hours long - 2nd highest grossing film of all time, so clearly even tiktok crowd can handle long films.

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Agreed. Just saying "long films can't be successful today" is obviously not true.

Even John Wick 4, of all movies, was just 11 minutes shy of being 3 hours long and it made $440 million.

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[deleted]

It may be a different world, but that doesn't mean it's a better one.

Another example I thought of though was John Wick 4. It's 2 hrs 49 mins long and made $440 million. So again, for the right movie, people WILL come out and watch ~3 hour long movies.

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[deleted]

wasn't Costner starring in yellow stone in the last few years? I'd call that a win.

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[deleted]

You've previously said that he wasn't a republican - if he voted for Biden, I think you are spot on - isn't he quite consistent in that regard then?

So, here is the thing about money - something I missed.
He was getting paid 1.3 million per episode in season 5 (he would make 13 mill for the season).
For season 6/7/8, he wanted 12 mill per season - which is less than what he was being paid for season 5, but the studio wanted to pay even less. In other words, it was Paramount that started acting oddly.

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[deleted]

You seem to be a big fan of Cruise - lol
I'd take Costner over Cruise any time of the day, unless he goes full DeNiro.

I will admit though that I haven't been following what he says about politics and whatnot.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/31/business/media/actors-strike-bob-hearts-abishola-pay.html

Seems to me like paycuts are happening across the board. This is not good news for Taylor Sheridan, who's got a long-term contract with Paramount. I suspect the quality of his future films/series will drop significantly moving forward.

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[deleted]

I'm curious, what are your political and religious affiliations?

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[deleted]

Seems like you are awake - that's cool.

I'd like to introduce you to one fascinating theory regarding Christianity.

The first is the rise of Christianity during the Roman/Jewish wars. The argument has been fleshed out here, but per Nietzsche and various other astute commentators11, including Jewish ones, the argument is that Jews crafted Christianity as a revenge strategy against Rome, who was the dominant military power in the world and impossible to defeat militarily. This isn’t an attack by Nietzsche on the figure of Jesus himself, who he viewed as a pure-hearted rebel against the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and the “only true Christian.” But Nietzsche noted that all of the early Christians were Jewish, and he saved his vitriol especially for Paul of Tarsus. By Paul inverting Roman values from warrior to priestly values12, evangelizing the masses of poor, slaves, and women steeped in resentment by telling them they were morally and spiritually equal or superior to the Roman emperor, it would destabilize the hated Roman Empire and provide revenge. Nietzsche wrote regarding this strategy of spiritual bolshevism, “The Jews, a people ‘born for slavery’, ‘the chosen people among peoples,’ as they themselves said and believed, achieved the amazing feat of inverting values, thanks to which life on earth for two millennia has possessed a new and dangerous appeal. Their prophets fused ‘rich,’ ‘godless,’ ‘evil,’ ‘violent,’ and ‘sensuous’ into a unity. In this inversion of values (to which belongs the use of the word for ‘poor’ as a synonym for ‘holy’ and ‘friend’) lies the significance of the Jewish people: with them begins the slave rebellion in morality.”13

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part 2
By gentiles buying into the notion that Jews were originally the Chosen People, by adopting their Old Testament as a cornerstone of their belief system, and by adopting the Jewish God, gentiles become unable to fully oppose Judaism; while there are periodic pogroms over the centuries, it was a half-hearted opposition based on Jews killing Christ where the Jews represented an errant cousin religion. In other words, gentiles adopting Christianity resulted in elevating Jews to a special position which they never possessed among the Hellenists. Romans had treated Judaism as an unexceptional sect among a multitude of sects that the Roman Empire managed without special status or preferment. Green posts many videos of Orthodox Jewish rabbis who publicly argue this point: they state, in a semi-conspiratorial tone, that Peter and Paul were Jewish double agents sent to convert pagans to Christianity so they would obey the Noahide laws and worship the Jewish God.16 Therefore Christian antagonism to Jews is half-hearted and it serves Jewish purposes by preventing assimilation. The same argument would apply to Islam, which is another religion “of the Book”.

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Apparently, the public doesn't want to see it. What did you like about it?

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It sounds as if any issues about the film center around the script. Possibly a need to organize people and places better. When you have a series of films that will run four installments in total, it can be easy to lose focus.

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