Here"s what the 1990 movie Dances with Wolves is based on và how historically accurate its characters and setting are.

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Orion Pictures
Stories phối in actual historical events are fun for history buffs, as well as casual readers and viewers. There's something about being transported to a completely different time in history & still being able khổng lồ connect with the characters, as their journeys are filled with emotions we have all experience, that is interesting to see. Also, it allows one to know more about a specific period and the history of a city, country, or continent. Nevertheless, it is essential to lớn highlight that most movies and television shows are fiction, even if they are set in a moment that really happened or with people that actually existed.


For history lovers, it is easy to lớn see the moments the director or writer took creative licenses lớn make the best fictional story they could, not a documentary. But that is not so true for the casual genre fan, as some of the best stories try khổng lồ make everything: from clothes to lớn how they talk, feel authentic and accurate. This is true to the Academy Award-winning movie, Dances with Wolves. The Western is mix in a troubled period of American history & was a huge success, even if not all it shows it's what actually happened.


Here's what the Kevin Costner movie is based on và if it is historically accurate.

What Is Dances with Wolves About?


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Orion Pictures
Dances with Wolves is an epic three-hour Western released in 1990 và won an outstanding quantity of seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The international box office reached $424.2 million, becoming the fourth-highest engrossing movie of that year. Dance with Wolves used an impressive amount of animals to lớn shot & feel realistic, including 300 horses and 3,500 buffalos. It was Kevin Costner's directorial debut, and he also produced và starred in the movie. After the film, Costner was made an honorary member of the Sioux Nation — which is represented as an essential part of the narrative.

Related: Dances with Wolves Cast: Where They Are Today

This story is phối in the 1860s and tells the story of a Union Army Officer, Lieutenant John Dunbar, played by Costner. The story starts when Dunbar is hurt in a battle & discovers his leg will be amputated. Attempting suicide, he ends up helping the Union win a battle. Dunbar meets a surgeon after the battle, who saves his leg. The officer decides where he wants to be posted next và finds a deserted western post, Fort Sedgwick. That's where he meets a Lakota Sioux tribe. The character starts adapting his way of living khổng lồ mimic theirs, & his entire philosophy and way of living are questioned.

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Orion Pictures
The movie is an adaptation of tác giả Michael Blake's novel, released in 1988 with the same name, and was adapted as a screenplay by Blake himself. Surprisingly, Costner's acting debut was in another movie written by Blake, Stacy's Knights. While the adaptation & the book feel lượt thích a real story, it is mostly fiction. However, as many fans of historical fiction know, these stories require a lot of research to feel accurate — even if the characters and major plot points aren't real. This goes even for more fantasy-heavy stories, such as Outlander another novel-to-screen adaptation.

There was a real Christian missionary that was associated with the Pawnees in the early 1800s called John Dunbar, but there are no records of his involvement in the events shown in Dances with Wolves. Some other characters are based on real people, including Stands With a Fist (Mary Mc
Donnell). She was based on Cynthia Ann Parker's story; she was kidnaped and adopted by the Comanche & lived with them for many years.


Related: Great Movies About Meditative Journeys Through Nature

One of the most heavily researched elements of the story was the Lakota Sioux. The author learned how the Lakota Sioux, a nomadic tribe, lived at that time. Their cultural as well as spiritual beliefs, as they believe in nature và that everything is interconnected, as perceived in the movie và the novel. They were hunters và gatherers who ultimately relied on hunting bison for survival. In the film, the actors perform a ceremony called the buffalo dance, which is taken from real life. Therefore, while the main story was made up, the elements that make it stand out are those taken from reality và that respect this culture and its people, as most stories are part of the genre.


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FX
When Dances with Wolves was released over đôi mươi years ago, the representation was shown, and the casting was praised by many as it diverge from the prejudiced và one-dimensional characters they were written as. However, since the film was made, the perspective of how well the tribe has represented in the movie has had mixed reviews, as the "white savior" cliché having a significant part of this particular story. Nevertheless, a slow change has occurred regarding how Native Americans are represented on screen.


On television, the comedy Reservation Dogs centers around a few teens on the Oklahoma reservation greatly impacted the industry regarding this particular representation. Created by Academy Award winner director, writer, and occasional actor Taika Watiti & writer Sterlin Harjo, the show now has two seasons, and FX announced a third one. One of the most notable elements of the show regarding representation goes further than the ones the audience sees on screen: almost all the directors, producers, and writers are Native Americans. It is important to highlight who gets the opportunity to lớn tell these stories, as someone who can attest lớn what is being shown on screen sometimes doesn't get to lớn say lớn them.

Bailando nhỏ lobos, Balla Coi Lupi, Danse avec les loups, Danza bé Lobos, Der mit dem Wolf Tanzt, mit dem Wolf Tanzt, Der
Dunbar is a Civil War soldier who requests a transfer to lớn the western frontier. Alone at his post, Dunbar befriends the nearby Sioux Indians, slowly becoming accepted into their culture. When the army returns, Dunbar finds himself torn between two worlds, & must decide where his allegiance lies.


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Kevin Costner
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Kevin Costner
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Dances With Wolves -- (Movie Clip) Coffee Up At the fictional Civil War battle of St. David"s Field, Lieutenant Dunbar (director and star Kevin Costner) finds himself being readied for surgery, the opening of Dances With Wolves, 1990.
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Dances With Wolves -- (Movie Clip) I Have Become A Target Following an unsuccessful encounter with the Sioux, Dunbar (director và star Kevin Costner) rides out & meets Mary Mc
Donnell (whom he will learn is "Stands With A Fist") in distress, in Dances With Wolves, 1990.
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Dances With Wolves -- (Movie Clip) Magnificent Looking Fellow Lieutenant Dunbar (director & star Kevin Costner) finds himself out of uniform on his first meeting with the native Kicking Bird (Graham Greene), alone at his frontier outpost in Dances With Wolves, 1990.
Bailando bé lobos, Balla Coi Lupi, Danse avec les loups, Danza nhỏ Lobos, Der mit dem Wolf Tanzt, mit dem Wolf Tanzt, Der
Leading man Kevin Costner made his directorial debut in 1990 with Dances with Wolves, the fictional tale of a despondent trắng man who regains his sense of purpose with a tribe of American Indians against the backdrop of the western frontier. The film was a hard sell: Westerns were not in vogue at the time, not to mention that Costner was insistent on keeping the running time at a potentially-lethal three hours as well as relying on the heavy use of subtitles. Accordingly, he was unable to lớn secure any funding for the project through typical US channels, ultimately getting aid from a British investor and paying the rest out of his own pocket. The critics were kind but ultimately panned the offering as an exercise in self-indulgence: one remarked that Costner"s Indian name would have been more accurate as "Obsesses with People Silhouetted Against Horizons." Concerns grew as budgets began to overflow and the shooting schedule continued to be extended; industry insiders tagged the project as "Kevin"s Gate", referring khổng lồ the infamous production catastrophe of Heaven"s Gate (1980) ten years before. Despite all the ominous signs, Dances with Wolves opened to enthusiastic audiences, eventually grossing over 400 million in worldwide box office receipts. The film was nominated for twelve Academy Awards & won seven, including Best Picture & Best Director for Costner, beating out the critics" darling Goodfellas (1990) & its director, Martin Scorsese. The roots of Dances with Wolves were seeded 8 years earlier, with Costner"s first screen credit, a largely forgettable offering titled Stacy"s Knights (1983). The film"s greatest contribution was the initial collaboration between Costner, the film"s director, Jim Wilson, & the scriptwriter Michael Blake. In subsequent years, Wilson và Costner would create a production company & make seven films together, including Dances with Wilson in the producer"s seat. Their continued friendship with Blake provided for an evening the writer spent at the Costner house several years later in which he first described the idea for Dances with Wolves in preparation for developing it as a screenplay. According to Blake from a 1990 Rolling Stone article, Costner was instantly attracted to the project but strongly urged the writer khổng lồ write the story as a novel first versus a script. Blake obliged, producing a tome which thoroughly engaged Wilson & helped him visualize the story. Costner soon agreed, deeming the book, "the clearest idea of a movie I"d ever read." Although Blake always saw Costner in the director"s chair, he had another actor in mind when writing the story: Viggo Mortensen, most recently of The Lord of the Rings trilogy fame. Blake explained, "I said, "Kev, I don"t know if anyone is going to lớn really believe in you after seeing your other movies." and he said, "Don"t worry about it." One thing I"ve learned about Kevin is that you vày not bet against him, no matter what he"s going to do. As it turns out, I think he"s done some of his best acting work in this movie."As a first-time director, Costner impressed many not only with the ambitiousness of the epic project but his ability lớn handily pull it off: the project spanned a five-month shoot schedule on location in South Dakota with over 700 cast members and extras with temperatures ranging from a boiling 115 in the height of the summer months down to đôi mươi degrees as the chilliness of Autumn phối in. In a marked departure from a typical shoot, almost every scene (save the opening Civil War ones) were filmed in sequence. This was done in order khổng lồ ensure weather realism from scene to lớn scene, since so much of the kích hoạt takes place outdoors. A tremendous amount of time and resources were allocated to the learning & delivery of the Lakota Sioux dialect, making Dances the first major feature film to lớn use authentic Indian language onscreen with subtitles. Costner defended his atypical decisions with passion: "You"ve got lớn want to vì it because you believe in your story. People don"t go into directing for power. They go in for the completion of something they want khổng lồ see. Dances needed a tone. Somebody else might not have done subtitles. I wanted to see it in the Native American language. Somebody else might have made it shorter, because they don"t think people can sit with this movie. I think they can." Despite his independent streak, Costner still knew when lớn ask for help: friend and director Kevin Reynolds helped him film the difficult buffalo hunt scene. Reynolds, who gave Costner one of his first breaks with Fandango (1985) would direct him again in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), as well as the disastrous Waterworld (1995). Some little known buffalo facts: 3500 were used in the production, with two of the tamed ones belonging khổng lồ rocker Neil Young. Và how vày you get a buffalo to lớn charge on film? Tempt him with Oreo cookies.While Costner was inarguably the star of the show both in front và behind the camera, the supporting cast of Dances with Wolves are not khổng lồ be overlooked: Mary Mc
Donnell played his love interest, Stands With A Fist. Bringing a 20-year stage history lớn the production, Mc
Donnell gained celluloid notice with the film, spurring her breakthrough performance a few years later with John Sayles" Passion Fish (1992). She earned Oscar® nominations for both roles. Graham Greene as holy man Kicking Bird had memorable roles later with Val Kilmer in Thunderheart (1992) và Mel Gibson in Maverick (1994). Character actors Robert Pastorelli & Maury Chaykin also contribute to lớn the solid featured cast, with Pastorelli best remembered as Murphy Brown"s housepainter on the long-running television series, và Chaykin portraying detective Nero Wolfe on the popular series of television films. Costner"s own daughter Annie, then six years old, makes a brief appearance in a flashback sequence. SNL diehards might spot Charles Rocket in a small part; the actor was featured on the sketch comedy show for one season. Và Wes Studi, who plays the villainous Pawnee Indian in Dances later played the cunning, malevolent Huron Indian in the 1992 remake of The Last of the Mohicans. Producer: Bonnie Arnold, Kevin Costner, Jake Eberts, Derek Kavanagh, Jim Wilson
Director: Kevin Costner
Screenplay: Michael Blake
Cinematography: Dean Semler
Film Editing: William Hoy, cpu Masamitsu, Stephen Potter, Neil Travis
Art Direction: William Ladd Skinner
Music: John Barry, Peter Buffett
Cast: Kevin Costner (Lt. John Dunbar), Mary Mc
Donnell (Stands With A Fist), Graham Greene (Kicking Bird), Rodney A. Grant (Wind In His Hair), Floyd "Red Crow" Westerman (Ten Bears), Tantoo Cardinal (Black Shawl). C-181m. Letterboxed. By Eleanor Quin