Kevin Costner, ladies and gentlemen. Yellowstone may be over for the Oscar winner, but Westerns are still on his mind. In fact, they’ve been on his mind since the ’80s, when he started envisioning the epic story of Horizon. He’s done multiple Western films since then (from making Dances with Wolves to starring in Tombstone and Wyatt Earp), but the passion project has remained with him until now, when he’s finally releasing the first chapter in a multipart vision.

Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 premiered in Cannes, where he apologized to the audience for having to clap so long during the ritualistic standing ovation. Should he also apologize for how long Horizon is, from its three-hour first chapter, to making us wait for two more installments? In this day and age, probably not. This kind of duration seems to be the norm these days, from blockbuster superhero movies to Best Picture winner Oppenheimer. And it’s all on his dime, after all. Sure, he got screenwriting help from co-writer Jon Baird, but this is Costner’s heart and soul, and it’s his gamble.

The reviews for Horizon are in, and it’s a mixed bag of reactions. The box office returns aren’t exactly exciting either, with the movie grossing $11 million on opening weekend, landing third place below Inside Out 2 and A Quiet Place: Day One. Its performance dropped 28% from Saturday to Sunday, according to The Numbers, with Horizon dropping to fourth place. So that being said, is it worth seeing, knowing that there are at least six more hours of this story? Chapter 2 will be released Aug. 16, 2024, and Costner hopes to premiere Chapter 3 at Cannes in 2025. Seeing Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 is already an investment, so is it worth the wait to continue this story?

Three Hours and a Hundred Characters
Horizon 2/5 Horizon centers around fictional characters and takes place in pre- and post-Civil War America, and details the exploration of the American West. Depicting a twelve-year span, the movies feature an ensemble cast portraying various characters and their experiences pioneering into new territory from their homes.Release Date June 28, 2024 Runtime 3h 1m Studio(s) Warner Bros. Pictures , New Line Cinema , Territory Pictures Distributor(s) Warner Bros. Expand

Even for a three-hour ordeal, Chapter 1 seems to take a while to find its groove. Costner knows you’re probably itching to see him come on-screen, and yet he makes you wait as Chapter 1 begins. First, you’ll settle in with a family in the Old West during the Civil War era, led by matriarch Frances (Sienna Miller), who experiences violence and tragedy as her community is invaded by a Native American tribe set out to reclaim what’s theirs. Sure, this is a gruesome, thrilling sequence, thereby setting off a chain of events to come, but then the pulse slows again.

It helps that Frances and her daughter soon meet the likes of Lt. Trent Gephart and Sgt. Major Thomas Riordan. They’re played by Sam Worthington and Michael Rooker, respectively, further rounding out a stellar cast of A-listers and household names that doesn’t seem to end as the story unfolds. Their boss, Col. Albert Houghton, is played by none other than Danny Huston, for example, a role that’s clearly in the character actor’s wheelhouse. There’s also Luke Wilson, Ella Hunt, Isabelle Fuhrman, Giovanni Ribisi, Will Patton, Tom Payne, and Giovanni Ribisi, who we only glimpse at the end. It’s too much for one movie, but is it worth three? Or four, for that matter?

In the meantime, the Apaches also offer promise as layered characters for the future chapters, such as leaders Pionsenay (Owen Crow Shoe) and Taklishim (Tatanka Means) who we meet in Chapter 1, but only in small doses. It all builds to a final montage that seems to come out of nowhere, begging the question: Should Horizon have been a limited series instead?

7:04 Related Danny Huston Details His 2024 Westerns: Viggo Mortensen’s The Dead Don’t Hurt & Kevin Costner’s Horizon Danny Huston on the differences between The Dead Don’t Hurt and Horizon: An American Saga, and trying not to laugh in The Naked Gun.

Kevin Costner Should Have Made Horizon Literally Episodic

The juicier, more appealing plotlines that play out simultaneously belong to other beloved performers you’ve seen everywhere, including the reliably superb Jena Malone. She plays Ellen, a family woman with a shady past now in a Wyoming town, juggling her dopey, opportunist husband, Walt (Michael Angarano), and family friend, Marigold (Abbey Lee). Marigold’s supposed to be babysitting their kid when she’s not trying to offer herself to the cowboys passing through their hillside community.

Trouble brews when a business opportunity of Walt’s goes south, and Ellen’s past indeed catches up with her. It’s a sort of film noir sequence that sets more events into motion, leading Ellen’s pal Marigold to hitch a ride with the newly arrived Hayes Ellison (Costner himself, finally), who swoops in to save the day and evade the evil forces that have come after Ellen and whoever she’s connected with.

Related Jena Malone Discusses Horizon & Kevin Costner: ‘They Just Don’t Make Humans Like That Anymore’ The celebrated actress spoke to MovieWeb about her ‘wild woman’ in Kevin Costner’s new film and how she became a “creature actor” for Rebel Moon.

It’s too bad all this takes its sweet time coming to fruition; if it wasn’t distracted by so many subplots and side characters, along with clumsy editing, this storyline could’ve made an excellent episode of television on a broader streaming series. It seems as if Costner’s ambition and love of old-fashioned cinema itself has sabotaged the storytelling of Horizon, which had a chance to be masterful as a miniseries (or a book — Danny Huston called it “a fat novel”) but is just befuddling as a film. He’s creating an episodic film franchise when he should’ve made a literally episodic TV series, in the vein of Lonesome Dove.

Which is a shame, because Costner’s passion does shine through at almost every turn, so you can’t help but want to forgive the man. It’s like watching the unbridled imagination of an eager kid unfold as he plays with limitless toys. It brings to mind the lead character of The Artist (2011), played by Oscar winner Jean Dujardin, as his silent movie star character efforts one last hurrah, a self-financed movie he produces, finances, and directs. Similarly, Costner is the utter brains behind the risky operation that is Horizon. He likely imagined a much happier ending for his passion project, considering he’s still riding off the success of Yellowstone. So what happened, and is it all over before Chapter 2 even begins?

Related Horizon Stars Luke Wilson, Isabelle Fuhrman & Ella Hunt Talk ‘Rising Up’ to Kevin Costner’s Passion The three co-stars spoke to MovieWeb about the epic production of Kevin Costner’s highly anticipated new Western movie, Horizon: An American Saga.

Horizon Wants to Be a Cinematic Universe

The aforementioned ending montage teases more characters and more stories, arriving not with the satisfying conclusions of main plot threads, but seemingly out of nowhere, as if it was obligatory for the three-hour mark. We could forgive the jarring nature of this conclusion if Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 felt like its own stand-alone film, and if it made us excited about Chapters 2 and 3. Unfortunately, it doesn’t, and it didn’t.

We live in a world where one is never enough, and the assembly line of cultural consumption continues to ramp up speed. Instead of weekly television series, we don’t have to wait to watch the next episode; we can binge a season of television in one day. Instead of editing scripts down to roughly two hours, they are being expanded into limited series on streaming so that they can last six, seven, or 10 hours. Instead of a single movie telling its story and creating a singular experience, it now must be tethered to a cinematic universe or a franchise.

Related Kevin Costner Dishes on Not ‘Spoon-Feeding People’ Who See Horizon: An American Saga Horizon: An American Saga’s filmmaker and star, Kevin Costner, says, “I’m so tired of everybody trying to be so delicate about things.”

But the KCCU (Kevin Costner Cinematic Universe) Doesn’t Work

Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan knows this well, and has turned that Western-tinged family crime drama into a sprawling, intergenerational saga that comprises multiple television series (that are at least simplified by just being titled numerically — 1883, 1923, 6666, and more). That continues to be a big success, and Costner likely hoped that the massive Yellowstone audience would flock to the theaters to see Horizon.

But not everything needs or deserves a cinematic universe. The ones which do it well are able to tell individual stories which get resolved with each film while advancing overarching plot threads and developing characters throughout. What Horizon does, however, is throw enough plot threads and characters for two or three films into one, failing to resolve most of them or develop enough interesting characters you would want to see again. Its release strategy is akin to putting out 100 pages of Ulysses or War and Peace, waiting two months to release another 100 pages, and then waiting 10 months to release another 100 pages, all the while unsure of when the novel will actually end.

Horizon wants to be The Wire of the Wild West, but as Marlo says in The Wire, “You want it to be one way. But it’s the other way.” From Warner Bros. Pictures, Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 hit theaters June 28, 2024.