Does Kevin Costner Belong in the Ranks of Western Legends?

Summary

• Circling back after early glory in the genre, Kevin Costner is once again attempting to rekindle the Western genre with his new film
  Horizon: An American Saga
  .
• Costner’s past films, such as
  Dances with Wolves
  and
  Open Range
  , showcase his affinity for the Western genre and traditional storytelling.
• With recurring neo-westerns like
  Yellowstone
  and
  Let Him Go
  , Costner aims to recreate the success of
  Dances with Wolves
  and earn his place among the greats of the past.

True to its title, Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1, we can expect to see a lot more of Kevin Costner in a brimmed hat and stache. From the announcement of the franchise, Costner is bullish on a Western revival, not only lending his talents in front of the camera but behind it as a director and producer. It’s no wonder why he’s made so many Old West films. His stoic, blunt speech pattern and gruff but upstanding persona were perfectly suited for a lawman or avenging cowpoke, his reputation built on channeling the spirit of Hollywood icons in movies like Dances with Wolves and Open Range.

Since Unforgiven, the luster has worn off the genre and never really returned. John Wayne is long dead, and Clint Eastwood has been deferring cowboy roles in the latter years, even though he remains the living embodiment of the Western for Baby Boomers. Who took up the mantle in the ’90s and onward? Don’t rack your brain too hard. There aren’t really that many options to choose from to complete our hypothetical Mount Rushmore of gunslingers.

A lot of performers have saddled up with some success, including Jeff Bridges, Viggo Mortensen, Russell Crowe, and Timothy Olyphant, but you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who considers any of them integral to the canon or essential in revitalizing interest in the cowboy film as an art form. The one exception? In modern entertainment, the first name that comes to mind when it comes to six-shooters and dusters is Kevin Costner. How on Earth did a kid from Compton, California, become the face of the Western genre for a whole generation?

Costner Breaks Into a Dying Genre

There was arguably no worse period possible to try and jump-start fan appeal in the Western genre than the mid-’80s. Blockbusters were taking off, but they were shrugging off the low-concept shoot-em-up for adventures starring Nazi-fighting archaeologists, space wizards, and time-traveling high school students, a trend that continues, now with sequels. Film historian Pete Falconer, in his book The Afterlife of the Hollywood Western, observed there have only been sporadic hit Westerns, but “there has been no significant or sustained return to the regular production of Westerns in Hollywood since the 1970s.”

Foreshadowing his later success, Costner achieved recognition in the irreverent buddy comedy Silverado, alongside other new blood to the genre, Kevin Kline, Jeff Goldblum, and Danny Glover. In truth, Silverado took inspiration as much from Indiana Jones as from other cowboy flicks. Though stumbling at the box office, it has since been reappraised as one of the most underrated movies of the decade.

Segueing into spy thrillers (No Way Out), several baseball-themed movies (Field of Dreams and Bull Durham), and crime pictures (The Untouchables), he always professed a love of the Western. Sadly, by the late ’80s, he was probably the only one who still did. Sensing that the Western format had great stories to tell and still had not fully tapped into audiences’ demand for a frontier saga, the actor — now taking on duties as director and producer — took a huge gamble that could have permanently derailed his career. Following a long dry spell and a barrage of what author James Russell dubbed revisionist “Vietnam Westerns,” Costner brought back the traditional epic.

Costner Abandons His Boots for Superstardom

Made for what was then quite a large sum estimated at around $20 million in 1990, Dances with Wolves bucked the downward trend of the cowboy projects, avoiding the catastrophic fate that befell Michael Cimino’s legendary Heaven’s Gate a decade prior, a film that bombed so hard it temporarily killed the genre.

In one fell swoop, Costner had essentially made a big-budget indie passion project into a beloved blockbuster. Everyone noticed. We’re not saying that Tombstone or The Quick and the Dead wouldn’t have gotten greenlit if it wasn’t for Costner putting his butt on the line, but you have to think the movie making back its budget 20 times over played some role. No single actor or writer has sparked as much renewed attention than Costner in the genre before or since, as Russell noted in his essay on the film’s box-office haul:

“[…] the success of Dances with Wolves appeared to contradict negative preconceptions of the epic and Western films. In subsequent years the major Hollywood studios initiated a range of related productions, each designed to capitalize on the success of Costner’s unexpected hit.”

Then, an interesting thing happened, or rather, failed to happen. Costner got bored. Aside from a few projects, he ignored the genre. The next couple of decades were more like lost decades for the auteur, with seemingly nothing left to prove after winning a Best Picture Oscar. His career remained red-hot in the early ’90s, churning out solid roles in The Bodyguard, JFK, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (never mind that dodgy accent). All of these were massive hits with audiences, even if they didn’t go over too well with critics, a trend with his films, as we’ll see.

It demonstrated his ability to carry diverse films, but that would come to an end. In 1994, he returned to the Old West in Wyatt Earp. The dismal performance of Wyatt Earp soured him, and from there on he’d toss himself into every random comedy that came his way. This cruel awakening initiated a foray into big dumb action films, sci-fi, and post-apocalyptic popcorn movies that somehow fared even worse. We might be able to chuckle and enjoy Waterworld for the cheesy cult classic it is, but Costner’s days as the supreme undisputed A-lister were finished.

Who Is the Western’s Last Great Icon?

At the time of his career, when it looked like he was spent as a creative force, Costner devoted himself to telling tales of the frontier, whether that be the 1860s or 2020s, producing TV dramas, films, and documentaries set in the rural Western US. Longing for another go around, he starred in Open Range in 2003, and then in the neo-western Paramount drama Yellowstone as the main protagonist, John Dutton. Yellowstone has generated its own extended universe, its notoriety in large part thanks to his presence, with two spin-offs currently airing and at least two in the rumor stages. However, Costner is not involved in any official capacity.

Following that performance with another modern-day Western, he starred in Let Him Go, riding his Yellowstone acclaim before a disagreement would lead to his permanent exit from the popular franchise. Quite a feat, as Yellowstone‘s youngest viewers cannot recall a time when Westerns had any cultural footprint or relevancy outside the Red Dead Redemption video game franchise. In the next three years, we should expect to see the continuation of the Horizon film series, hoping to make the best of Chapter 2 in the wake of Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1‘s anemic start.

There have been some high-profile Westerns made in the last 20-something years, including Hidalgo, 3:10 to Yuma, Appaloosa, and the Deadwood made-for-TV movie by HBO. Yet, the pickings are slim if you want the caliber of classics we used to get. Although Costner has taken pains to expand his resume with every possible type of role imaginable, he has finally seemed to come to grips with the fact that he’s the last of a dying breed.

In the mid-2020s, he’s the one person maintaining any sort of momentum. With the possible exception of Kurt Russell and character actor Sam Elliot, no one of his age group will probably be so synonymous with stetsons and spurs as the fella from Compton. Whether he can lead another Western renaissance is another matter. Judging by his output over the last eight years, Costner’s banking on it. Horizon: An American Saga is out now in theaters.