Westerns were dead. That was the industry consensus in the late 1980s. If you walked into a pitch meeting in Hollywood back then and told executives you wanted to make a three-hour epic about the frontier—half of which would be subtitled in Lakota—they would’ve laughed you out of the building. Honestly, most did. Kevin Costner was at the peak of his "Bull Durham" and "Field of Dreams" fame, yet he had to put up his own money to get dances with wolves 1990 across the finish line.
It was a massive gamble.
People called it "Kevin's Gate," a nasty reference to the legendary flop Heaven’s Gate. They expected a vanity project that would sink faster than a stone. Instead, the movie grossed over $400 million and took home seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It didn't just revive a genre; it fundamentally shifted how Hollywood looked at Native American representation, even if that legacy has become more complicated as the years roll by.
The Raw Reality of Dances with Wolves 1990
What most people forget is how quiet this movie is. It’s a slow burn. Lieutenant John J. Dunbar, played by Costner, is a man looking for his soul at the edge of the world. He’s sent to a deserted outpost, Fort Sedgewick, and basically finds nothing but wind and a wolf he names Two Socks. This isn't your grandfather’s Western where the cavalry rides in with bugles blaring to save the day from "savages." It’s a lonely, introspective look at a man who realizes the "frontier" he was sent to conquer is actually a home to a thriving, complex civilization.
Costner hired Michael Blake to write the screenplay based on Blake's own novel. Blake had been struggling, living out of his car at one point, but his vision was uncompromising. He wanted the Lakota characters to feel like real human beings. They have jokes. They have marital spats. They have political disagreements. When Graham Greene’s Kicking Bird and Rodney A. Grant’s Wind In His Hair appear on screen, they aren't tropes. They are the heart of the story.
The production was grueling. Filming took place mostly in South Dakota, utilizing the Triple U Standing Butte Ranch. They needed thousands of buffalo for the centerpiece hunt scene. It took weeks to film that sequence alone. No CGI. Just real animals, real riders, and a lot of dust. You can feel that weight when you watch it today. It feels tangible. It feels sweaty and dangerous.
Why the Lakota Language Was a Game Changer
Before dances with wolves 1990, Native characters in film usually spoke a kind of "Tonto-speak"—stilted, broken English that stripped away their intelligence. Costner insisted on authenticity. He brought in Doris Leader Charge, a Lakota language instructor from Sinte Gleska University, to translate the script and coach the actors.
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She didn't just translate the words; she stayed on set to make sure the inflection was right. She even ended up playing Pretty Shield, the wife of Kicking Bird. Using subtitles for such a massive chunk of a blockbuster was unheard of in 1990. It forced the audience to listen. It forced them to respect the culture on its own terms rather than through the lens of an English-speaking interpreter.
However, it wasn't perfect. Some critics and linguists have noted over the years that because the Lakota language has gendered dialects, and many of the male actors were taught by a female instructor, they ended up speaking in a feminine register. It’s a fascinating, tiny detail that most viewers would never notice, but it shows the complexity of trying to capture a culture that Hollywood had spent a century trying to erase.
The "White Savior" Criticism
We have to talk about it. If you search for critiques of the film today, this is the big one. The "White Savior" trope. This is the idea that a white protagonist enters a non-white culture, learns their ways, and somehow becomes their best defender or a "better" version of them.
Is John Dunbar a white savior? Sorta.
He certainly facilitates the story, and the audience sees the Lakota through his eyes. But there’s a nuance here that often gets missed. Dunbar doesn't save the Lakota. He can't. The ending of the film is profoundly tragic because, despite his efforts to warn them and live among them, the "coming tide" of white settlement is inevitable. He doesn't ride in and win the war. He leaves because his presence makes them a target. He’s a witness to a tragedy, not a hero who prevents it.
Compare this to something like Avatar or The Last Samurai. Those films owe a massive debt to the structure of dances with wolves 1990, but they often lean much harder into the "hero" fantasy. Costner’s film feels more like a mourning song.
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Technical Brilliance and the Score
You can't talk about this movie without talking about John Barry’s score. It’s arguably one of the greatest film scores ever written. It’s sweeping, romantic, and deeply melancholic. Barry had been through a rough patch—he’d suffered a ruptured esophagus and was out of the game for a while—but he came back with a vengeance.
The music does the heavy lifting in those long stretches without dialogue. When Dunbar first sees the buffalo herd, the music doesn't just play; it soars. It captures the sheer scale of the American West before it was fenced in and paved over. Dean Semler’s cinematography works in tandem with that music. He used wide-angle lenses to capture the horizon in a way that makes the characters look small, which was the whole point. Man is small. Nature is big.
The Real People Behind the Scenes
- Graham Greene (Kicking Bird): An Oneida actor who earned an Oscar nomination for this role. His performance is subtle and inquisitive. He’s the bridge between the two worlds.
- Rodney A. Grant (Wind In His Hair): He provided the fiery contrast to Kicking Bird’s diplomacy. His shout from the clifftop—"Do you see that I am your friend?"—is the emotional peak of the movie.
- Mary McDonnell (Stands With A Fist): Playing a white woman raised by the Lakota, she had the difficult task of portraying a character who had forgotten her native tongue. Her performance is physical and jagged.
- Floyd Red Crow Westerman (Ten Bears): A legendary activist and musician who lent an incredible gravity to the Lakota elders.
Practical Insights for Modern Viewers
If you’re going to revisit dances with wolves 1990 or watch it for the first time, don't watch the theatrical cut. Look for the "Director’s Cut" or the "Extended Version." It adds nearly an hour of footage.
Why? Because the extra scenes actually help fix some of the pacing issues and provide much-needed context for why Fort Sedgewick was abandoned in the first place. It shows the decay of the army outposts and the insanity of the frontier. It makes Dunbar’s transition into the Lakota lifestyle feel more earned and less like a sudden whim.
Also, pay attention to the animals. The "wolf" Two Socks was actually played by two different wolves, Buck and Teddy. They were notoriously difficult to work with, which is why so many of the scenes involve them just staring from a distance. That limitation actually made the relationship between Dunbar and the wolf feel more mystical and respectful, rather than a Disney-fied version of a pet.
Actionable Steps for Film Buffs
- Watch the 4K Restoration: If you have the setup, the 4K scan of the original 35mm film is stunning. The colors of the prairie—the golds and deep blues—are vital to the experience.
- Compare with 'The Searchers': To see how far the genre moved, watch John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) and then watch this. The shift from "Native Americans as the faceless enemy" to "Native Americans as the protagonist's family" is the most important evolution in Western cinema history.
- Read Michael Blake’s Novel: The book provides a lot more internal monologue for Dunbar that didn't make it into the movie, explaining his disillusionment with the Civil War in much darker detail.
- Explore Contemporary Indigenous Cinema: Use this movie as a jumping-off point. Check out films like Smoke Signals or the works of Sterlin Harjo to see how Native storytelling has evolved when Native directors are behind the camera.
The legacy of dances with wolves 1990 isn't just about the Oscars or the box office. It's about a moment in time when a massive movie star decided to slow down and look at American history with a sense of regret and wonder. It’s not a perfect history lesson, but as a piece of myth-making, it remains incredibly powerful. It asks us to consider what we lost in the process of "winning" the West. That’s a question that still doesn't have an easy answer.