5 Worst Best Picture Oscars Winners of All-Time

Dances with Wolves

Remember when Kevin Costner had a mullet? Well that’s the most memorable part of Dances with Wolves. And yet somehow it still managed to win Best Picture.

The drama follows the story of a lieutenant stationed at Union Army outpost in the Dakota Territory. Dunbar mans the station himself and engages in a variety of activities, such as befriending a wolf and introducing himself to the local Native American community. He ends up falling in love with a Sioux woman named Stands with a Fist, and eventually becomes part of the tribe. The movie has a bittersweet ending as Dunbar, now known by the name “Dances with Wolves”, has to leave the tribe with his wife. A credits scrawl lets us know that the U.S. government took all the land from the remaining free Sioux about a decade later, ending the conquest of the Western frontier. Welp. That’s a downer.

The movie isn’t very accurate in terms of its portrayal of Native American peoples, and at times has a pretty creepy White Savior vibe going on. Dances with Wolves isn’t awful – once you get used to Costner’s hair – but it certainly wasn’t the greatest film of 1990. That, by the way, was a surprisingly good year for movies. But the movie that really should have taken home the statue was Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic Goodfellas. Not only is this arguably a legendary director’s best film, he’d previously missed out with both Raging Bull and Taxi Driver. Scorcese wouldn’t get an Oscar until The Departed in 2007. Which was definitely a solid film. But it wasn’t his best. (His best had already missed out on its Oscar glory.)