‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Turned Out to Be “Far Different” From Scorsese’s Original Vision

Now this is an interesting quote from “Killers of the Flower Moon” star, Lily Gladstone. She stars in the film alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, Jesse Plemons and Robert De Niro.

Gladstone’s at Sundance promoting her new film, “Fancy Pants,” but it’s her description of Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” that has caught my attention. It’s a peculiarly phrased statement:

It’s a different movie than the one [Scorsese] walked in to make almost entirely because of what the community had to say about how it was being made and what was being portrayed.

If you remember, “additional shooting” on the film took place in Pawhuska, Oklahoma back in May. Then we had more reshoots in mid-August, this time in New York City. That’s just what we know of. There have been rumors of extra shooting having taken place a third time back in Oklahoma.

Back to Gladstone. That quote in itself is fascinating in more ways than one. Firstly, it tells me that Scorsese wanted an authentic portrayal of Oklahoma’s Osage Community. Osage Nation chief, Geoffrey Standing Bear, even served as a consultant on the movie. It’s quite obvious that the Osage Nation ended up changing ‘Flower Moon’ from what Scorsese originally planned.

However, immediately after reading what Gladstone said about the film, I couldn’t help but remember what someone had commented just a few months ago on this very site about the reasons for the persistent delays with “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

The main reason for the reshoots is fear of the political optics of the film and the fear of how mainstream critics will respond to it, as well as the various thought-pieces that will ensue.

The issue is that the film primarily focuses on white characters, with the only non-white person with a very significant role being Lily Gladstone, who is given a very submissive role... You'll understand what I mean if you read the book, but she has a ghoulish presence throughout.

However, the plot does basically focus on a white savior (Jesse Plemons) and a "complex bigot" (DiCaprio). The reshoots primarily focused on placing certain scenes to give the non-white characters a more substantial role. The plan WAS to premiere it this year as Apple's main priority.

I could just be over-analyzing Gladstone’s quote, but obviously in today’s climate, if you’re representing a minority group on screen and they personally come up to you with concerns about how they are being portrayed, you need to listen to them. You don’t want them to bad-mouth your representation of them — the optics would be terrible.

Scorsese did the right thing. However, is the movie that he ended up making better than the original vision that he had? I’ve been hearing for a few months now that Paramount and Apple are ecstatic about what they’ve seen so far with ‘Flower Moon,’ so hopefully Scorsese has indeed delivered.