But we know perfectly well what’s going on: it’s a virtue-signaling lick-ass to the Academy to “compensate” for having a strong white male star.

Let’s have a frank and earnest discussion about black people in the movies. Are we not yet beyond giving the benefit of the doubt for exactly why black folk are cast 99% of the time? I mean there was an explicit mandate by the Academy to include multiple black characters or the movie won’t be considered for Oscar contention. To quote Richard Dreyfuss “it makes me sick”. What an affront to artistic license. Artists are FORCED to use actors based on the color of their skin. Virtue-signaling run amok indeed.

I actually want to see a craven beaten down black man apologize to a white man in public. I want to see him take orders from a cracker. Why? In order to compensate for all the explicit anti-white male bias we’ve had to endure over the years. It’s time for some reverse-reverse discrimination to compensate for the over-engineered social morality is what I say.

Hey, the Academy didn’t specify all the black characters have to be gods and the white males their sinveling lickspittle did they?

The movie was good. It was so disjointed I couldn’t follow it but then I was like oh screw it and I just sat and watched “stuff happen”. Worked for me.

American history isn’t quite as clear-cut as that.

Unlike those ridiculous European dramas that black-wash ancient Celtics, Viking warriors and members of the royal family, there were many free black persons living in America in the 19th century. Many of them did go out west. And I’m guessing that if you’re a pioneer or a cowboy carving a civilization out from the wilderness, the color of your neighbor’s skin is likely not as important as whether or not he is an honest person you can count on when trouble strikes.

Granted, wokeness has been so thoroughly ingrained in the pop cultural consciousness for so many years now that even I have trouble telling the difference between an ordinary black character and a Boring Brown Person, even when I want to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Otherwise I thought all the acting and cinematography was great. I wasn’t bothered by the disconnected stories because I knew going in that the movie would be abnormal in this regard, and it would be a slow setup for the continuation. Going to the theater to enjoy 3 hours of high quality western was a joy. And I didn’t find the movie slow at all, the multiple storylines kept the pace and intrigue up all the time.

If you love westerns I really recommend going to the theater to watch it. 3 hours of western bliss!