Is Fonda so good or Wayne so bad?

I thought John Wayne was just fine here. Around the same time period, he also gave excellent performances in "Red River", "She Wore A Yellow Ribbon" and "The Sands of Iwo Jima". I do feel he's underrated as an actor. Granted, he was not the actor you'd want for "The Merchant of Venice", but for these types of roles who else could match him for presence and authority?

Also, I think Fonda is excellent here, you really hate the guy, but in some roles I find him awfully wooden, even affected with that folksy Nebraska twang of his.

Wayne himself was fulla crap.

His theory insinuates that given a more complex part, he would have been capable of giving as good a performance as Fonda.

Which is a total fallacy.

Wayne couldn't have given as good a performance on his best day as Fonda on his worst.

That said - this was not one of Fonda's better performances. He plays Owen Thursday as your standard one-note villain. It was one of his more wooden interpretations.

"Fonda has by far the better and more complex part, Wayne is a good old soldier mostly just reacting to Thursday's actions."
Spot on Hancock!

Yes it's a John Wayne film directed by John Ford, but the film is dominated by Fonda's Thursday (I'm not a martinet!) as it should be. Every one else, including the Indians are reactive to Thursday's actions.

The Duke's screen time especially in the first half is minimal, compared to Fonda's and as Hancock and other posters have indicated, he acts in accordance to his subordinate status.

Fonda plays the far more interesting character. I think Wayne is perfectly fine in his role. Was he as great of an actor as Fonda? No. Few people were.

And for anyone thinking the Duke was a lousy actor, watch The Searchers. He was brilliant in that.

I like Wayne I think he is great actor as well but I am a great fan of Fonda therefore I might be biased but I think Wayne's performance was overshadowed by Fonda too. Also Bond (O'Rourke snr) was great.

''they should have a spell check button for non-native speakers''

I think that is part of Fonda's genius. His character was forced into his role at Fort Apache and didn't like it. The fact that Fonda was able to portray this so successfully may lead some to think his acting was wooden. No, he was playing a wooden character. But even so, you get depths in Thursday; sometimes a human being peers out from behind the martinet. It's a layered performance.

I love John Wayne movies, esp. the early ones, and he was very good in this, but he was upstaged by Fonda. In their scenes together, it's Fonda who draws attention, not Wayne, who was quite a presence on film himself. I think this works for the movie because Wayne's character is hamstrung by Fonda's all the way through, since the Colonel refuses to listen to anyone and won't admit that other people might have more experience than he does. Clearly Wayne's character understand the Apache as people, while Fonda's does not see them as real human beings, thus his fatal blundering.

One thing that makes this movie so intriguing to me is that Wayne's character eulogizes Fonda's at the end and at the very end we see him dressed like Fonda's, with the implication that he will end up acting like him too as time goes on. At least that's how I see it.