Horizon: Kevin Costner's epic American saga

At a glance

• Why Kevin Costner keeps returning to the Wild West

• Telling a historical truth

• Turning one film into four parts

• It's about the journey

• Receiving a standing ovation

• An epic cast for an epic saga

The first of four films set in the pre- and post-Civil War expansion of the American West, Horizon: An American Saga is Costner’s most sprawling epic since Dances with Wolves (1990), which he also part-funded, netting him seven Oscars, including 'Best Picture' and 'Best Director'.

And if he loses his pants on Horizon, it’s clear that he went into it with eyes wide open and his sense of humour intact.

Indeed, whatever the critics say, he is still basking in the afterglow of the standing ovations from his peers both at this year's CinemaCon in Las Vegas and the Cannes Film Festival.

Talking about what still keeps him saddling up to make movies about the Wild West, he says, “It’s hard to explain why I put these shoes on. There's things that speak out loud to you and for me to make a living doing this, I have to somehow find what gave me great joy. And what I could figure out that would bring someone entertainment.

“And when I think about the promise of America, what it was… there was a promise out here that if you could go, if you were tough enough, if you were mean enough, if you're resourceful enough, if you were lucky enough - you could take what you wanted in America.

“And that promise meant that we stepped on a whole group of people that had been here for thousands of years. But that's how it happened. America. We came across it. And I don't pass judgment, because I don't want to look down on people's resourcefulness to create what they created here in America. But it was the promise that if you could come west, if you could survive it, you could make a home - at the expense of a lot of things.

"And so, to me, that's drama. Can we create drama, laughter, and sadness in three hours?” Costner, 69, teased the audience at CinemaCon.

Asked how the original standalone film grew to become four films instead, he says, “Well, I have a tendency to like journey movies, a lot of people like plot movies where we're going to rob the bank. I gotta get the crew together. Gotta get the guy that was bad last time. I don't want him.

"No, you’ve gotta have him. We need him. And we’re gonna get a map and we're gonna tunnel and we're gonna either get the dough or not get the dough and that's a plot in a movie,” he says, satirising what could be any one of hundreds of familiar plot lines.

“So, for me, I enjoy it when we don't know where the movie is going to take us. It's like when the lights go out, we can just take the ride - and Horizon is a journey. It covers about 12 years before the Civil War - it doesn’t really deal with the Civil War - but before the Civil War, and through it, the people that have come west because it didn't last long. Once that Civil War ended the west closed up in a blink of an eye.”

In describing his character of Hayes Ellison, Costner reveals, “Well, I named my son Hayes, because I needed to put up some kind of like, ‘I gotta get this movie done moment’. And so I started this in 1988. Tried to make it in 2003, I couldn't. In 2012 I decided to write four more of the one I couldn't make,” he says, cracking the audience up with his brutal honesty.

“And so I play a character named Hayes Ellison who is a drifter who wants to find a home - and who doesn’t? Who doesn’t want to find a place where they belong? And so when my son Hayes was about 12, I said, ‘This has to happen’. And so I decided that nothing was going to stop me from making these four movies.

"I make these movies and hopefully people will keep coming. There's just something in me that wanted to make this movie and I never make one that I don't think can blow up,” promises Costner, who also received the prestigious CinemaCon Visionary Award.

STACK was there and it was a truly emotional moment as the entire audience at the Colosseum in Caesar’s Palace rose to give him a standing ovation - a rare honour among CinemaCon audiences.

“That was thoughtful and that was warm. And it reminds me to just keep making choices for an audience,” he said, clearly emotional as the audience slowly sat down.

“I made the first one for myself. Does it get above a bar that I think it can be about something we'll never ever forget? Will it? I don't know. But that's what I want it to be. Thank you for honouring me with this and again for standing up. God bless,” added the filmmaker, who follows in the tradition of Jimmy Stewart, Henry Fonda, and John Wayne, giants who were also associated with the cinema of the American West.

Meanwhile, at the Cannes Film Festival in May, the audience gave a further seven-minute standing ovation as Costner - flanked by his co-stars on one side and five of his seven children on the other - fought back tears. “I’ll never forget this, and neither will my children,” he said.

Living up to its title of “saga”, the Horizon story is experienced through the eyes of many - families, friends, and foes - Costner and Worthington’s co-stars including Sienna Miller, Jena Malone, Owen Crow Shoe, Tatanka Means, Danny Huston, Abbey Lee, Michael Rooker, Will Patton, Luke Wilson, Isabelle Fuhrman, Jamie Campbell Bower, Wasé Winyan Chief, Michael Anganaro, Angus Macfadyen, Kathleen Quinlan, James Russo, Jeff Fahey, Tom Everett, and Giovanni Ribisi.

Their individual journeys are fraught with peril and intrigue, from the constant onslaught of natural elements to the interactions with the Native American people and the determination and, at many times, ruthlessness of those who sought to settle it.

Set against a visually stunning landscape of the vast frontier, Horizon offers a thought-provoking and unforgiving look at America’s past.