"Anyone see or watch Yellowstone prequels "1883" & "1923"?" Topic

I'm far from an expert on these eras. But it seems to me from my study/knowlegde of those times in the Wild West. They seem fairly accurate, AFAIK? 1923 seems to have a bit more of some love stories going on(don't really mind that). But I found that both were pretty entertaining. As both periods in US History were eventful, etc.

So, what do you who have more knowledge of those times think of the series. I know at the end of most of the episodes they have a little information about the filming, history, etc. And it appears they are going for some historical accuracy.

I watched only 1883. Very good. Very sad.

1883. While I am no expert, I thought it was very good and captured some of the challenges of heading west in a more accurate way than some previous movies. Good acting and scenery.

Watched 1883. Good watch, cannot vouch for accuracy or inaccuracy.

Watched 1883. Good watch, cannot vouch for accuracy or inaccuracy.

Same here. Tried watching 1923 and the modern one, but they were just about rich people crushing others, to hold onto their riches, power, and control. Not the slightest interest in these. The 1883 series was really good, really sad, but gripping my interest. The others, I could not care less about. Full stop.

If you have ever played the old computer game, Oregon Trail, you will understand, laugh, and enjoy the 1883 series, as it will bring back plenty of memories from that wretched computer game which I first played on a Teletype terminal, in 1979! Cheers!

For "1883", the geography of their travels in Texas is impossible to square with reality (the fictional relative locations of the Trinity, Brazos, and Red Rivers will leave a native Texan scratching his head).

That being said, I grew up in the West Texas areas of Comancheria. I found "1883" to capture the overall feel of the land, the people, and the era better than just about any show I've ever seen. I can forgive a few quibbles in the interest of telling a great story.

I watched ‘em both. Both are entertaining, but as historical portrayals of time and place, both need to be taken with a super-sized grain of salt. Let's do "1883" first.

The central conceit- a family crossing a wild land in a wagon train, touching at occasional privately-run forts in an empty West populated only by Indians, is an almost complete anachronism for 1883. It would have made perfect sense in the pre-Civil War era, and even as late as 1867 or ‘8 (particularly the theme of Confederates leaving the defeated South). But by 1883, the West was very different.

The most important and significant difference was the coming of the railroads- the second and third transcontinentals were completed in 1883, and the areas along and between the railroads were filling in with settlers. Ranching was already a big business in Montana and the Dakotas, and the era of the roaming Indians was largely gone- the Geronimo campaign, the last major one, started in May, 1885- but it was fought against a very small band of hostiles, and by 1883, the reservation system was (for good or for ill) for the most part in place, and the Indians had generally accepted Federal primacy. Those cowboys weren't just living wild on the plains: they herded Texas longhorns and trailed them up to Kansas for shipment by rail to Chicago. The development of the rail network had already transformed the west and anyone with the means to afford a complete wagon outfit would have gone to the Dakotas or Montana by train in 1883- indeed, Theodore Roosevelt did just that, for the same purpose. You might find the relevant chapter in Edmund Morris's "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt" to be interesting reading- for the west in those days was still plenty wild, but the railroads had already made the wagon trains and private forts (Bent's, most famously) relics of the past.

I also found some of the attitudes (particularly the attitudes toward the Indians) anachronistic. We're now sufficiently far from that era that most screenwriters are getting their ideas from pop history that itself draws on books that were written from second or third-hand sources. Encounters with our ancestors' views on the Indians can be eye-opening.

To give but one example, Laura Ingalls Wilder left her impressions of her parents attitudes toward the Osages in Kansas in "Little House on the Prairie," and they don't match a lot of modern stereotypes. It's clear that her father regarded the Indians with a certain respect (and admiration for their skills), and thought they could sometimes be trusted and befriended.

Not so her mother, whose views on Indians apparently fell somewhere between Phil Sheridan and Attila the Hun. It's seldom understood how the American woman's view of Indians drove the conflict in the West, but I think it had enormous influence. The Indian way of war was very different, and the perception among American women that its consequence for them would be rape, murder, or both did a lot to stoke conflict on the frontier- and to promote the idea that the best solution to the Indian "problem" was force, pure and simple. Those attitudes lingered a long time, and I couldn't help contrasting the Wilder's reminiscences of her family's experiences with the movie romance.

If you're interested in a good fictional portrayal of the Yellowstone area from that era, the best bar none is Owen Wister's novel "The Virginian," perhaps the ur-Western. Wister visited Wyoming repeatedly between 1885 and the publication of the first of the stories that eventually became "The Virginian" in 1892, and his descriptions can be taken as colorful but reasonably informed depictions of Wyoming, Montana and the Dakota Territory of the 1880s.

Similarly, "1923" feels to me like it ought to have been "1893," as that was the year that the Johnson County War ended. The range wars were more of a pre-WWI phenomenon, and while there were a great many conflicts over water and grazing rights, the world of "1923" felt artificial to me- if you were to want to see a movie about the mountain West of the 1920s, I would say something like "A River Runs Through It" would do a better job (although the events described in the book took place at a later period of Norman Maclean's life, in the 1930s- they backdated the story and changed it slightly).

For range wars, there is a lot of literature and art out there- the Johnson County War has been written about and filmed so many ways, it's hard to know where to start (although the source of conflict was big ranchers versus small, rather than sheep herders versus cowboys).

The dispute between the two types of stock breeders was bitter, and Norman Maclean's wonderful short story "USFS 1919: The Ranger, The Cook, and. a Hole in the Sky" expresses it with more wit and economy than any other I have read: "Bill had been acquitted by a court of killing a sheepherder, but none of us held that against him, because we all knew that being acquitted of killing a sheepherder in Montana isn't the same thing as being innocent."

I love them both, hands down!

Russ Dunaway

Saw and loved both of them. 1883 was a excellent show for showing the dangers of the old West. 1923 high point is the story of a solder from WW1 as a African hunter. I didn't care for the modern version of Yellowstone. All three had big time named actors and actresses with good performances !

I am looking forward to season 2 of 1923. For those watching it, it looks like payback time.

The premise of 1883 was very wrong. By 1883 one did not need to travel the west in a wagon train. There were rail roads all through out the west that would have been much cheaper than buying a wagon and horses and provisions ect. Then, it was near the end of the "wild West" so no wild Indians or tons of outlaws everywhere. The idea that a black man could have an open affair with a white woman would never have happened. Nor a white woman and a Native American. Simply no way.

The "American in British colony" storyline felt like a missed opportunity; Brits and Americans of 1923 saw themselves as very different nations, exemplifying very different qualities. The British in those days had an enormous cultural self-confidence: they had painted two-fifths of the map red, and built an empire whose territories were often in better shape than they are today. They had a very defined set of yardsticks for behavior and success, and those yardsticks weren't wrong. The Americans, by contrast, looked to Europeans like people who were playing the game by a different set of rules- and succeeding by their own standards, but to European eyes, omitting or ignoring those elements of the code that they didn't care about (but which were, in a European and colonial context, often serious and important). Most writers and historians have a hard time not making American informality seem like disruptive raffishness, just as they can't resist making the British sense of responsibility and fair play seem like procedure-focused pomposity.

Me and the wife loved both of them

Liked them both although Jerome Flynn(Bronn in GOT)' Scottish accent is atrocious.

I thought both were excellent and entertaining stories. After watching 1883 and seeing what John Dutton's ancestors went through you, get a good understanding of why John Dutton was so intent on holding onto his land.

'1883' kind of reminds me of 'Lonesome Dove', but without any of the 'happy' parts…

Ahhh "Lonesome Dove", now that was good, both the mini series and the book.

I only watched the first episode of "Yellowstone" and decided it was not for me. "1883" kept my interest to the end and it was a grim end to a grim story. As Lucius pointed out the Texas geography was bizarre. The plot was outdated but interesting and I was impressed by the quality of the acting. Billy Bob's Ft. Worth marshal was especially great. "Lonesome Dove" it was not.

I loved 1883. I did a little googling about the wagon trains. There were still a few in 1883 and 1884, but had certainly peaked as the dominant mode if you could get where you wanted to be by train.

My wife loved 1883 but the scenes of the young white female protagonist gallivanting all over the prairie with her Hollywood handsome Indian boyfriend were a little too far fetched for me