American Primeval 2025 Netflix

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Roy
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American Primeval 2025 Netflix

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IMDB rating 8.1/10
It follows the gritty and adventurous exploration of the birth of the American West, the violent collisions of cults, religion, and men and women fighting for control of the new world.
68% rotten tomatoes
A mother and son fleeing from their past form a found family while confronting a harsh landscape of freedom and cruelty in the American West.
The show is historical fiction and touches on true events but then takes creative license. I personally am a fan of historical fiction and I enjoy digging into what was historically accurate and what was changed for the sake of storytelling. It does not depict interaction Mormon pioneers and church leaders in a favorable light.

The main critique that church defenders have used are that it is not 100% historical. I've seen others on the bloggernacle counter that Work & the Glory and many other faith promoting historical fiction take similar creative license.
"It is not so much the pain and suffering of life which crushes the individual as it is its meaninglessness and hopelessness." C. A. Elwood

“It is not the function of religion to answer all the questions about God’s moral government of the universe, but to give one courage, through faith, to go on in the face of questions he never finds the answer to in his present status.” TPC: Harold B. Lee 223

"I struggle now with establishing my faith that God may always be there, but may not always need to intervene" Heber13
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nibbler
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Re: American Primeval 2025 Netflix

Post by nibbler »

:lol: Sunday School manuals took creative license.
If you erase the mistakes of your past, you would also erase all the wisdom of your present. Remember the lesson, not the disappointment.
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nibbler
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Re: American Primeval 2025 Netflix

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I got curious and watched the first episode. It refers to Mormons mostly in passing except for the final scene which I'm guessing is supposed to be the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

It's certainly not historical, I can't imagine that they intended it to be. It's a show that's all about creating exaggerated drama to drive views.

They definitely portray Mormons in an unfair and exaggerated negative light but here I'd say they're not treating the Mormons any different than all the other groups they portray. The show presents humanity in the worst possible light.

I'll probably bail on the series after this first episode. It's a shame. I don't know what I was expecting going in, maybe something partially rooted in history and church leaders were just getting upset over unflattering but perhaps more historically accurate portrayals but it really is just a show about humans being suspicious of one another, hateful, greedy, murderous, etc. minute after minute and unrelenting. Mormonism is just one of the backdrops for their show. Just another group in their narrative that's pushing conflict.
If you erase the mistakes of your past, you would also erase all the wisdom of your present. Remember the lesson, not the disappointment.
— I dunno
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DarkJedi
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Re: American Primeval 2025 Netflix

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I watched the whole series a couple weeks ago, and I am also a fan of historical fiction. I enjoyed it, but I tend to like this sort of gritty western. The main plotlines don't really develop until about halfway through, but it's not the slow burn type of series which seem to be more common nowadays. I think the whole key is that it's a fictional story which happens to take place around some actual historical events and includes as minor players some actual historical figures. This is not the first time poetic license has been taken with historical events or figures and it won't be the last. The story isn't about Mormons, Brigham Young, or Jim Bridger, they're just in it.

I was actually surprised it took a bit for the church to say anything about it. They were sort of proactive with The Heretic and the Mormon wives thing, but this series had been out for a couple weeks before they made a statement. (https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.or ... -does-harm
In the absence of knowledge or faith there is always hope.

Once there was a gentile...who came before Hillel. He said "Convert me on the condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot." Hillel converted him, saying: That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and learn it."

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Roy
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Re: American Primeval 2025 Netflix

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Yeah, I have yet to see it because I don't currently have Netflix but from what I've read it focuses on the grittier and cruel aspects of the power struggles of settling the west.
"It is not so much the pain and suffering of life which crushes the individual as it is its meaninglessness and hopelessness." C. A. Elwood

“It is not the function of religion to answer all the questions about God’s moral government of the universe, but to give one courage, through faith, to go on in the face of questions he never finds the answer to in his present status.” TPC: Harold B. Lee 223

"I struggle now with establishing my faith that God may always be there, but may not always need to intervene" Heber13
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DarkJedi
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Re: American Primeval 2025 Netflix

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Roy wrote: 04 Feb 2025, 10:25 Yeah, I have yet to see it because I don't currently have Netflix but from what I've read it focuses on the grittier and cruel aspects of the power struggles of settling the west.
Yes, I would agree with that assessment. Most people aren't dressed in clean, pressed clothes with no dirt, and there is violence. That said, I think the depiction of Mountain Meadows, which happens near the beginning, is less brutal than it actually was. There are other creative licenses taken with the event as well. For example, watching the series you'd gather Mountain Meadows was somewhat close to Fort Bridger, when in fact it was hundreds of miles away.
In the absence of knowledge or faith there is always hope.

Once there was a gentile...who came before Hillel. He said "Convert me on the condition that you teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot." Hillel converted him, saying: That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and learn it."

My Introduction
Roy
Posts: 7363
Joined: 07 Oct 2010, 14:16
Location: Pacific Northwest

Re: American Primeval 2025 Netflix

Post by Roy »

This article on Deseret News provides an excellent fiction vs. reality comparison and it doesn't sugar coat the horror of MM.

https://www.deseret.com/faith/2025/01/2 ... heres-why/

One example:
Fiction: Paiute men participated in the massacre so they could take captive and rape several white women who were spared the slaughter. One man, a Latter-day Saint who happens to be traveling with the wagon train, is nearly scalped but survives. Shoshone men soon encounter these Paiutes, murder them, then slit the throats of all the captive women except for one: another Salt Lake City-bound Mormon who happened to be traveling with the emigrants. The Shoshone then kidnap that woman, leading Mormons to wipe out an entire band of Shoshone people as punishment for the kidnapping.

Fact: In reality, no one over the age of 6 survived the Mountain Meadows Massacre. No Latter-day Saints were traveling with the wagon train when the massacre occurred, nor is there any evidence of scalping. The Southern Paiute and Shoshone did not kidnap, rape and murder white women, nor would they have interacted with each other, as their homelands were hundreds of miles apart. Latter-day Saints settlers did not massacre Shoshone, though some did kill Ute and Paiute Indians in other 19th-century conflicts further south.
The show's director, Peter Berg, has defended this depiction by pointing to real accounts of Indigenous tribes abducting women.

I did some digging and found a true story of a young woman whose family had broken from the Brighimite faction of the church and she was kidnapped by members of a Yavapai tribe in current day Arizona and forced into servitude for a year and then traded to the Mojave, which adopted her as a member of the tribe.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/814 ... rked-woman

In summary, it seems that much of the elements of American Primeval are true in that stuff like that actually did happen in the American West but the depiction in the series jumbles up the timelines, geography, and who actually did what (for example, defending depictions of Southern Paiute and Shoshone kidnapping white women because members of other native tribes did this - as though they're not actually separate and distinct tribes) for dramatic and narrative purposes.
"It is not so much the pain and suffering of life which crushes the individual as it is its meaninglessness and hopelessness." C. A. Elwood

“It is not the function of religion to answer all the questions about God’s moral government of the universe, but to give one courage, through faith, to go on in the face of questions he never finds the answer to in his present status.” TPC: Harold B. Lee 223

"I struggle now with establishing my faith that God may always be there, but may not always need to intervene" Heber13
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