So, Nicole Kidman's character hears about the free land in Oklahoma, decides to run away, they book a long sea passage to Boston. They live there for a long while, then Tom cruise does odd jobs around the country, then decides: what the heck, I may just go for that land after all! He starts walking, and arrives just a day or two before the big land rush????? Doesn't that seem a bit odd to you?
shareThey don't actually show how long he was walking, so he might have been walking for weeks. He was in the Ozark Mountains in Missouri when they were blasting through for the rail roads so it wasn't that far to get to Oklahoma. But yes, it was good timing that he got there a day before the race.
shareThe movie transpires over a year or so. plenty of time for the sequence of events to unfold as it should. Plus, if they dont compress, you get a 20 hour movie lol
shareYou must have forgotten that he was on a train that had stopped. There was a wagon train passing by and the men were teasing about how all those people were on their way to oklahoma to get the land. He then decided at that moment to join the wagon train, which was already on the way to the land grab. And they had been traveling from where they were blasting so it is quite probable that they were closer to ok than what you believe.
shareI believe Shannon had been planning to run away to America for a while but never had the courage to go through with it. Joseph gave her that courage. He was strong, knew how to fight, and like she said women didn't travel alone. He was the catalyst for her actually leaving. I don't think she would have ever gone had Joseph not shown up. That wasn't incredible timing, IMHO. It was one character providing the catalyst for another character to summon up the courage to do something she'd been wishing to do for a long time.
And about him walking to Oklahoma. First, he was builiding the railroad...probably the exact one that Shannon and her family rode in on. He actually mentions that to one of the men at the bar-thing the night before the race. So I don't really think he was that far from the place the race started. And we don't know how long he was walking...maybe one day, maybe two, maybe a week or two. Who knows? But I'm thinking he was probably walking 2-3 days. And yes, getting there only a few days before the race was a but coincidental, but no impossible.