Stephen King defending Kevin Costner’s ‘movies for men’ by throwing Marvel under the bus isn’t quite as bad as it sounds

The most ambitious campaign of Kevin Costner‘s cinematic career has begun, with Horizon: An American Saga having kicked off with Chapter 1 in theaters last Friday. For audiences, this has turned into an equally ambitious test of patience.

Indeed, the first film in Costner’s epic Western tetralogy was about as dire as they come, and at three hours long, that tediousness plays a devilish long game. At this rate, neither the critic scores nor the box office returns for Horizon will be anywhere close to flattering, and that is not something that anybody should be happy about.

Unfortunately, heaping scorn on the whole enterprise is the only happiness the internet seems capable of deriving from Costner’s film. It’s likewise earned a lot of unwarranted controversy due to his admittance that he “makes movies for men” on the Happy Sad Confused podcast being taken out of context — Costner actually stressed that he’s committed to building said manly movies around “strong female characters,” for example. Honestly, we haven’t see this much concentrated Costner criticism since 1995. What is, this Waterworld 2?

Perhaps that’s why Stephen King has had just about enough of the snarky glee that has surrounded the relative failure of Costner’s new film, and was all too happy to take a potshot at one of the most popular Hollywood franchises in history to make his point.

Now, there’s a lot to unpack here; is Horizon Chapter 1 a good movie? No, not really. Is it refreshing to see someone take a big swing with something original in this current era of Hollywood, in spite of the risk of failure on multiple fronts? Yes, absolutely. Should we feel obligated to support not-very-good movies because of their originality and the dedication that went into them? No, absolutely not. Should we actively want certain movies to be bad for the sake of some twisted self-actualization? No, and you should maybe to talk to somebody about that if so.

That’s not to say we should be hoping for the failure of Marvel movies or other franchise fare, either, but that’s not what King is saying here. Costner is trying to make something new that’s in service to itself as art rather than as a product, and despite how poorly it’s going so far, that effort is an invaluable resource so long as franchise filmmaking keeps looking more like empty-calorie content rather than honest movies; a course that Deadpool & Wolverine will hopefully mark the end of in the case of Marvel.

In short, we should never want movies to be bad; movies should be honest about wanting to be something, and we should be honestly critiquing them in turn. I personally will be the first to lacerate the shortcomings of the Kevin Costners and M. Night Shyamalans of the world, and so too will I be the first to keep my fingers crossed that they stick the landing, because good art is a victory for everybody.

Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 is now playing in theaters.