1990: Dances with Wolves

Screenplay by Michael Blake
Adapted from the novel Dances with Wolves by Michael Blake

After being decorated for bravery during the American Civil War, Lieutenant Dunbar requests to be posted to the frontier. When he arrives at Fort Sedgewick, however, Dunbar finds his new post deserted. His only companions are his horse and a lone wolf, until he begins to encounter Native Americans. Dunbar has been warned about their vicious, savage nature, and is therefore surprised to find them intelligent and just as human as he is. Soon the lieutenant finds himself torn between two worlds: the white world he was born into as John Dunbar, and the Indian world he grows to love as Dances with Wolves.

As has been the case with pretty much all of these Oscar-winning screenplays that were written by the author of the source material (I believe this was the 13th, counting ones that the original author co-wrote with other people), both versions of Dances with Wolves are quite similar. There are, however, a few extremely significant differences. The Natives in the book are Comanches, while in the movie they're Sioux, but almost all of the details about their culture and life are exactly the same. I don't know if that's because the Comanche and Sioux tribes are in fact very similar, or if they could just find more actors who could speak the Sioux language and therefore went through and changed every reference to Comanche in the original script to Sioux, but either way it struck me as a little odd. I did appreciate that they seem to have actually found Native actors to play the Native characters, which happens so rarely in Hollywood movies, but I would be curious to hear their thoughts on the accuracy of how their culture was portrayed.

Apart from changing tribes, there aren't a lot of major alterations to the story until the very end. Beyond that, the film depicts most of the main events of the book almost exactly as they originally appeared, but not always in the same order. The most glaring example of this is the beginning. The book starts with Dunbar on his way to Fort Sedgewick, and explains the events leading up to this later. The movie shows these events in chronological order, starting with Dunbar fighting the war. This doesn't make too much difference to the story itself, and I think it works well in both versions. But then there's the end. The end of the movie is completely different from the end of the book, which just feels strange given how similar the rest of it is. Granted, the final conclusion is the same: white people continued to invade and steal all the land. But the specific destinies of Dances with Wolves and his wife, Stands with a Fist, are on very different paths when each version of the story leaves them. Personally, I much prefer the ending of the book, but that's mostly because it's a little bit happier, and the rest is so sad that I really like seeing something even slightly good come out of it.

Stay tuned for the seventh and most recent Best Adapted Screenplay winner to also win Best Picture and Best Actress: Silence of the Lambs, aka the perfect Christmas story, based on the novel by Thomas Harris.