' Dances with Wolves': Academy Award-winning western that wasn't what we wanted

Westerns were already a declining genre.

Westerns, which had been a popular Hollywood genre until the 1950s, began to decline in the 1960s due to the spread of television and the popularity of TV-made Westerns. At the time, Clint Eastwood, who had moved his career overseas, gained attention for his Italian-made western movie ``Macaroni Western'' and was able to revive the ``western movie'' by transforming it. However, Macaroni Westerns, which were ridiculed as a sub-version of Hollywood Westerns, were not a group of works that at the time were criticized for their authorship.

In 1985, there was a moment when Western movies showed signs of revival. This is because two Western movies, `` Pale Rider '' (1985), directed and starring Clint Eastwood, and `` Silverado '' (1985), directed and written by Lawrence Kasdan, received high praise. be. At the time, ``Kinema Junpo'' wrote that ``1985 was the year in which a Western revival was called for in America.'' This trend led to the production of the Western film Young Guns (1988), which co-starred young actors of the time such as Emilio Estevez, Charlie Sheen, and Kiefer Sutherland, and led to sequels being made.

“Pale Rider” preview

However, the reality was harsh, and although they received high praise, their box office numbers were ``so-so'', and neither ``Pale Rider'' nor ``Silverado'' were successful, especially in Japan. The above-mentioned ``Kinema Junpo'' analyzed that ``the Western genre has long since died out among young people,'' and a review at the time also stated that it ``made fun of Westerns.'' Unfortunately, for critics who knew the era when Western movies were popular, changing the genre was not acceptable.

In this context, a movie called ``Dances with Wolves'' was born that transformed the Western movie. Needless to say, this film is based on the stereotypes that were depicted in western movies up until the 1950s, where Native Americans (formerly known as "Indians" in movies) were portrayed as villains and white people were portrayed as good people. It was a groundbreaking film at the time in that it portrayed Western expansion from the perspective of Native Americans, eliminating traditional images. Since the intentions are different, I will not ask here.)

Kevin Costner and <Western>