Dances with Wolves - 20th Anniversary Edition (Extended Cut)

[Scott Jentsch]

I have a positive regard for Dances with Wolves, so I was looking forward to the combination of watching the extended edition of the movie, and sharing a favorite movie with my teenagers.

After taking two sittings to watch the 4-hour movie, I have to say that the extra bits do not make for a better movie. It's a longer movie, to be sure. Some information is fleshed out more, to be sure. However, there's a reason that Film Editing is an Academy Award category.

Looking through the IMDb trivia items, there's one that says that Kevin Costner (director and star) was not involved in the making of this extended cut. I don't know if that's true, but I can imagine a scenario where someone wanted to make a bigger version of the movie, so they combed through the 5+ hours of footage and added a bunch of stuff in.

It's still a good movie, but it takes too long to tell its story. The shorter version did just as fine a job.

Aside from that, though, still a well-done movie. Great shots, pretty good acting, and the score is one of my favorites. This is a movie that deserves an isolated score, just to enjoy the visuals backed by John Barry's composition.

[Erik Olsen]

This is one of my favourite movies.

The most important is that you watch a letterboxed edition.
I have never been so disappointed in my life when I rented Dances with wolves on VHS in glorious pan and scan.
My favourite movie from the cinema was just butchered on VHS and I ended up turning it off.
I actually bought a Laserdisc player because of that experience, just so I could import the Dances with wolves extended cut version in letterbox.
And since then, I have never looked back.
A few years ago I was lucky enough to find an German extended version on Blu-ray.

I love the extended cut, I dont remember all the differences now, since I have not seen the theatrical version since 1991 or '92.
But If I remember right there is at least two scenes that I think makes the Extended version the one to watch.

I am not sure, but I think after the scene where the major is sending Dunbar on his way to the frontier. There is a whole new cut of him beeing confused and asking for his crown before he puts the gun to his head.
I think this extended scene makes this scene better.

And also the scene showing the soldiers abbandon the camp that Dunbar later finds and cleans up.
For me this extra scene makes the whole movie a little better.

Still, the photography ( or is it called cinematography?) , the music and the story makes it one of my favourites.
It's time to feed my Blu-ray player with this movie once again.