Cowboys & Aliens is the first film I've ever been to where I actually got to attend the world premiere. As most of you probably heard, Jon Favreau had the world premiere for the film during San Diego Comic-Con 2011, and it became a huge geek fan event. Favreau did this all for the fans as a way of thanking them for all the support they've given him over the years, and I was extremely lucky enough to have been able to attend.
Cowboys & Aliens is a film I've been excited about seeing since Favreau showed off the first footage of it at last years Comic-Con. I've been following it very closely since the film's been announced, and I just got more and more excited about it as the release date approached. I'm a huge fan of both the sic-fi genre and the western genre, so mixing these two elements together just seemed like a great idea to me. Its Cowboys
fighting off aliens! How can that not be an entertaining film, and if anyone could pull this film adaptation off properly, it was Favreau.
In my opinion, Favreau ended up delivering one hell of a fun flick. He created a gritty dark hardcore western with an alien invasion element that took the film to a whole new level of awesomeness. If you would have taken out the whole alien element of the film, and turned the aliens into a gang kidnapping murdering ruthless bandits, the film would have been just as good as a regular old school western. The fact of the matter is the story was solid, it was exciting, I had a great time watching it and I don't think anyone other than Favreau could have pulled it off so well.
It's safe to say that this film is more of a western than a sic-fi film, and that's what I really liked about it. There aren't many good westerns getting made these days and I think that's a shame. So when I see a solid film like Cowboys & Aliens I can't help but get excited about the possibilities of what can be done with this genre to give it a fresh new life. There was a good balance between the drama and action in the film, but if you're expecting non-stop action this movie won't give it to you. This film has an actual story, character development and there's some fun humor added for some extra flavor. Yes, of course there is action, and the action sequences are amazing, I'm just saying that the film isn't one action scene after another. They take the time to tell the story, and that's a good thing.
I really loved the old school western grittiness of the film, mixed with this crazy torturous looking alien technology. The special effects in this film were great, and the alien creature designs were very menacing looking, these things were hardcore, big and badass. These are aliens I would not want to mess with, and while watching the movie I couldn't help but think how awesome it would be to see these aliens go to war with Ridley Scott's Aliens, and Predator, because I think these new aliens could give them a run for their money.
Unsurprisingly, the acting in this film was fantastic. You can tell everyone gave a hundred percent. Daniel Craig was a complete badass in the film and you can't help but love how he portrays the character. It was awesome seeing Harrison Ford play a ruthless cowboy. Olivia Wilde was both beautiful and great in her role, and Sam Rockwell is always fun to watch up on the big screen. Everyone else were great in their roles!
Cowboys & Aliens was truly entertaining, but I also don't think it's a movie for everyone. I like these kinds of movies, but I can see how some people might not buy into this kind of world. I noticed when the trailer would play in movie theaters the general audience would kind of blow off the film off with a laugh. But for those of you who read GeekTyrant, if this is a film that you've been looking forward to, then I don't think you'll be disappointed in what Favreau has created. If for some reason you think the film looks stupid from the trailers that have been released then you might just be pleasantly surprised.
That being said, I had such a great time watching the film that I can't help but recommend that you go out and watch the movie when it's released later this week! If for some reason you're on the fense about seeing the film, please give it a chance. This is simply a great classic western with aliens!
Here's the official synopsis for the film:
1873. Arizona Territory. A stranger (Craig) with no memory of his past stumbles into the hard desert town of Absolution. The only hint to his history is a mysterious shackle that encircles one wrist. What he discovers is that the people of Absolution don’t welcome strangers, and nobody makes a move on its streets unless ordered to do so by the iron-fisted Colonel Dolarhyde (Ford). It’s a town that lives in fear.
But Absolution is about to experience fear it can scarcely comprehend as the desolate city is attacked by marauders from the sky. Screaming down with breathtaking velocity and blinding lights to abduct the helpless one by one, these monsters challenge everything the residents have ever known.
Now, the stranger they rejected is their only hope for salvation. As this gunslinger slowly starts to remember who he is and where he’s been, he realizes he holds a secret that could give the town a fighting chance against the alien force. With the help of the elusive traveler Ella (Wilde), he pulls together a posse comprised of former opponents – townsfolk, Dolarhyde and his boys, outlaws and Apache warriors – all in danger of annihilation. United against a common enemy, they will prepare for an epic showdown for survival.
Review No. 2
Summary:
Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, and the supporting cast make "Cowboys & Aliens" a fun popcorn flick worth checking out. The combination of Western and sci-fi work great together thanks to Jon Favreau hitting the right tone.
Story:
When a stranger wakes up in the middle of New Mexico in 1873, he has no memory of his past. The only clue he has is a strange metal band clamped to his wrist. The stranger wanders into the town of Absolution and quickly runs afoul of the local cattle baron's son. Making matters worse, he discovers that he's a wanted outlaw. But all of that doesn't matter anymore when the stranger discovers the real reason behind his amnesia and a variety of other strange occurrences around the area – aliens.
"Cowboys & Aliens" is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of western and sci-fi action and violence, some partial nudity and a brief crude reference.
What Worked:
"Cowboys & Aliens" certainly wears its intentions on its sleeve. It intends to be a fun genre mash-up and that's exactly what it is. If there was any question whether you could blend a Western with a sci-fi premise, consider the question answered. They can go together like chocolate and peanut butter. That's thanks in large part to director Jon Favreau hitting the tone just right. They play it completely straight, yet amid the reality based premise Favreau and company still manage to inject the right amount of humor to let you know they're not taking everything too seriously. It's an incredibly fine line between becoming parody and being overly serious, yet Favreau does it seemingly effortlessly.
While I came for the aliens, I have to admit that I stayed for the cowboys. This movie belongs to Daniel Craig. He exudes cool in every frame of the film and perfectly nails the 'stranger with no name' from classic Westerns. Not only does he have the look of Steve McQueen or Paul Newman, but he brings the grittiness to "Cowboys & Aliens" that he brought to James Bond. His fights are brutal, bloody, and they will make you cringe. You start to think Craig might actually be getting beaten up.
Craig is well-teamed with Harrison Ford. While seeing Indiana Jones teamed with James Bond on the big screen is enough to make a geek swoon, the two make you forget their iconic characters and you start seeing just Dolarhyde and Lonergan. Ford fans might be disappointed that he doesn't get as much screen time as Craig, but Ford makes up for quantity with quality. He has some great scenes with Noah Ringer as Emmett Taggart and Adam Beach as Nat Colorado. One scene where he tells a story from his youth to Emmett is arguably one of the more memorable scenes in Ford's recent career. It's surprising to see Harrison Ford willing to share the spotlight with Daniel Craig, but in the end they both come out looking better for it.
I have to give credit to Favreau and writers Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, and Damon Lindelof – they handled this large ensemble cast well. Every character on the screen gets some moment to shine and win audiences over. Sam Rockwell gets to provide a lot of comic relief as Doc and he brings much needed laughs whenever the story gets too serious. I was also really impressed by Paul Dano as Percy Dolarhyde. He's great at playing the spoiled son of Woodrow and he and Craig are hilarious in every single scene they have together. Dano wasn't on my radar screen before this movie, but he is now. Clancy Brown, Adam Beach, Olivia Wilde, Noah Ringer, and Walton Goggins are all memorable, too.
As far as the aliens go, we actually don't see a lot of them in the movie. When we do see them, their design is pretty good, but you won't see people dressed as them at next year's San Diego Comic-Con. They don't have a landmark design like a Giger Alien or a Winston Predator. That being said, they do the job of providing a few scares here and there and they are lethal and powerful without being invincible. And their motivations for being are Earth are interesting, too. One of my first questions about this movie was how the creators were going to make it believable that a bunch of primitive cowboys could go toe to claw with space-faring aliens, and they do manage to succeed.
On a final note, the score by Harry Gregson-Williams is pitch perfect and hits the right notes as far as a Western feel mixed with epic orchestral sounds. It's one of the better scores of the summer.
What Didn't Work:
If I had to nitpick about anything, it's that the plot is somewhat predictable. If you were to guess how the movie would play out before seeing it, you would probably be pretty close if not spot on. The story is very linear in moving the characters from point A to point B. There are no real surprises here. It may be because the movie is playing out all of the Western tropes, you expect them to come well before they arrive. That being said, it's still entertaining. It's fun to see how the characters interact, how the fight scenes unfold, and the spectacle of the visual effects. A roller coaster is predictable, too, but it's still fun.
There's also one minor, nitpicky plot point that bugged me well after the movie was over. The heroes discover something in the New Mexico desert that simply shouldn't be there. I don't want to spoil it here, but it's obvious that the aliens put it there. How and why is never really explained. It seemed to be there simply to make an interesting visual.
The Bottom Line:
"Cowboys & Aliens" is a great summer popcorn flick. It has cool effects, cool stars, and a fun plot. It's well worth checking out on the big screen.
A quick tour through Favreau's credits reveals a helmer who has managed to spin hearty entertainment from ever more anemic sources -- first a bedtime story ("Zathura"), then a comicbook series ("Iron Man"), and now a mere illustration, intended to be the cover of a then-unpublished graphic novel. Still, of all the directors to work in exec producer Steven Spielberg's shadow (including J.J. Abrams and Michael Bay), Favreau has emerged the most immediate heir to the master's heartfelt showmanship. (Besides, what was "Raiders of the Lost Ark," if not a prototype for such a B-movie mash-up?)
"Cowboys & Aliens" begins like a 19th-century Bourne movie, with Daniel Craig playing a stone-cold killer who wakes up in the middle of the New Mexico desert, his memory a blank. He reaches for a bloody wound at his side and discovers a strange manacle cuffed to his wrist and a lovely stranger's tintype photograph lying in the dust at his feet -- and so begins the mystery of how this loner will come to save humankind from a battalion of unidentified, unfriendly and most unwelcome flying objects.
After the muddled "Iron Man 2," this feels like a return to a more patient, more coherent storytelling style for Favreau, who finds imaginative ways to introduce each character before bringing on the alien mayhem. Back in town, a dirtheap fittingly named Absolution, Paul Dano plays the tyrannical son of local cattle baron Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford). The youth carelessly provokes Craig's character, whose unflinching response indicates the kind of hero we're dealing with.
Ever so gradually, further clues emerge, revealing the amnesia-stricken Jake Lonergan as a wanted man and … well, anything else said about his origins would constitute a spoiler. Besides, it's more fun to unpack Jake's past as he does, in a fit of flashbacks and seat-of-his-pants epiphanies. The first breakthrough concerns his bracelet, which reveals itself to be some sort of turbo-charged blaster cannon, pretty much the only weapon strong enough to fight back with when the aliens attack. The sheer uselessness of spears, arrows and bullets marks a running joke in a lopsided intergalactic battle that unites sworn enemies -- cowboys and indians, lawmen and outlaws -- in a common cause.
Shot to look Clint Eastwood-tall, Craig offsets much of the pic's potential hamminess through the same brute mix of ruthlessness and sensitivity he brought to the recent 007 pics. Olivia Wilde, who plays his equally enigmatic love interest, works in the opposite direction, however. She not only appears out of place among her grizzled co-stars but also embodies the film's biggest risk, an outlandish trial-by-fire twist that breaks the rules of both horse and space operas. Thirty years ago, Ford could have easily tackled the lead role in such an adventure; here, he goes against type, bringing an intriguing emotional dimension to a character who would traditionally ride under a black hat.
Historically speaking, sci-fi killed the Western genre: Instead of looking back, Hollywood projected its themes of frontier survivalism and fear of the other forward, into the equally lawless realms of outer space. So there's a certain karmic beauty in the fact that sci-fi should be the reason to dust off the oater, if only just this once. While "Cowboys & Aliens" offers little in the way of sociological insight (except perhaps giving the white man a taste of his own resource-stealing medicine), it's still a ripping good ride.
Beneath all the state-of-the-art special effects beats an old-fashioned heart, one that prizes both of the genres in play. Echoes of "Rio Bravo" and "3:10 to Yuma" resonate through the first act, while the finale uses neato dragonfly-shaped UFOs and truly menacing monster design to update tropes from corny 1950s alien-invasion movies. In between, the script cobbles together a bumpy second act, tossing off serial-style cliffhangers -- cut off by bandits! surrounded by Indians! -- en route to the big showdown promised by the film's title.
Ironically, Hollywood never would have lavished this much money on a cowboy or alien picture in the pre-Spielberg era. Today, such lowbrow genres enjoy the most extravagant budgets, and Favreau leverages his resources for maximum impact. A canny blend of CG and practical effects serve the sci-fi elements well, while location shooting (featuring stunning widescreen lensing by Matthew Libatique) and Mary Zophres' form-fitting period duds make the West look its best.
This comic book movie from Jon Favreau spends a gratifying amount of time on its characters and actors rather the visual FX.
SAN DIEGO — Fusion is everything in gourmet cuisine these days, so why shouldn’t filmmakers mix and match movie genres no matter how crazy? Cowboys & Aliens -- well, the title says it all. Taking the idea from a Platinum Studios graphic novel by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, this film from Jon Favreau shrewdly blends an alien-invasion movie into a Western. The key to its success lies in the determination by everyone involved to play the damn thing straight. Even the slightest goofiness, the tiniest touch of camp, and the whole thing would blow sky high. But it doesn’t.
A big hit here at its Comic-Con world premiere, the Universal release looks primed to round up box-office gold with its target audience, all in ample supply this weekend in San Diego. But you suspect this is one monster movie that might even reach older audiences, who would love to slap on chaps and get rough and dirty with a good, old-fashioned Western. Well, here’s that opportunity. Nor does it hurt the movie’s appeal to an older crowd that the film unhesitatingly pairs two mature stars,Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford, to go up against the aliens.
If you were to assess the mix, it would be about 70 percent Western paired with 30 percent alien invasion. Which is pretty bold given that aliens are all the rage and the most recent Western to make a lasting impression was probably Clint Eastwood’s 1992 Unforgiven. But that’s where shrewdness comes in: You expect space invasions; a Western is a tricky thing to pull off.
Take a look at the credit box for this film, and you’ll see an all-star team of Hollywood producers, exec producers and writers. But such is the overriding intelligence and singular vision in this picture that you have to assume Favreau deserves the credit for keeping things true to both genres. A surprisingly good Western is taking place before those creatures drop down from another planet. True, the Western characters and story are awfully familiar to those who still treasure the genre, but the Western was always a conservative genre that stuck close to its traditions while allowing plenty of room for storytelling.
All good Westerns begin when a stranger rides into town. But this stranger, in 1875 New Mexico territory, suffers from amnesia. Played by Craig, the man awakens in the middle of the desert with a strange shackle on his left wrist and no memory of what happened to him. When he encounters three men who would take advantage of his situation, he quickly learns -- as does the audience -- he is not a man to be messed with.
The town he rides into, on a horse belonging to one of those unfortunate men, is called Absolution, a name that would give anyone pause. It is ruled by a tyrannical cattle baron, Colonel Dolarhyde, and that would be Ford who lets his face and body sag under the weight of his own ferocious and bitter sense of power. You get the impression he really wants someone to stand up to him.
When the man with no name challenges the colonel's cowardly son (an amusing Paul Dano), it looks like the colonel has found such a man. But not before a few townsfolk get introduced into the drama -- which would include the town’s preacher (Clancy Brown); a stressed saloon-keeper (Sam Rockwell) and his plucky wife (Ana de la Reguera); the colonel’s unappreciated Indian cowhand (Adam Beach); and the beleaguered sheriff (Keith Carradine, evoking his late father’s considerable impact on the Western form) and his eager-to-grow-up grandson (Noah Ringer).
Drifting mysteriously on the periphery but making sure that the stranger stays in town when everyone else is keen to see him gone is a woman, Ella (Olivia Wilde), who might understand his plight and amnesia.
Just as a showdown of epic proportions seems imminent, an even greater showdown explodes in the town in a great WTF moment. Alien spacecrafts strafe the town and abduct a number of its citizens, including the colonel’s son. Equally surprising is how the stranger’s wrist ornament suddenly springs to life as the only successful weapon against these alien forces. The stranger, as strangers always do in Westerns, has demonstrated his usefulness.
Cowboys & Aliens has now reached the crucial juncture that will either make or break this odd admixture of a movie. Had the film given way to this sci-fi onslaught, the whole thing might have turned into the fiasco that was 1999’s Wild Wild West.
But no, Favreau and his legion of screenwriters wisely cling to the Western framework. The clear model for the rest of the movie is John Ford’s The Searchers, about a Comanche abduction of a white girl and her would-be rescuers led by John Wayne’s virulently racist uncle, to whom Indians were on the same level as reptilian space aliens.
Faced with the demise of the planet, all the Western’s warring parties -- the cowboys and Indians, cattle barons and downtrodden townsfolk, the stranger and the colonel -- suddenly realize they all belong to the same species. So they band together to form a search-and-rescue party to free loved ones and eliminate the alien scourge.
As this posse tracks the aliens down to their lair with some unexpected help from the mysterious Ella, the movie becomes perhaps a tad more conventional. Some of the movie’s niftiest sequences and best character-reveals happen during this rescue, but if there is a weakness here, it’s the aliens themselves.
Thanks to quite a few filmmakers -- including Steven Spielberg, one of the many exec producers here -- audiences are used to greater detail and more empathy for movie space creatures, even as recently as the one in Super 8. The alien villains here -- while ingenious from a CGI standpoint with multilayered malevolence in bodies that pull back endoplasmic surfaces to reveal further weapons of destruction -- don’t rate as characters. They are more like moving blobs you shoot at in a video game. Bam -- gotcha!
Nonetheless, as the first of undoubtedly a bunch of copycat genre mashups, some of which are bound to be horrendous, Cowboys & Aliens is a solid success. For a tentpole Comic-Con movie, this one devotes a gratifying amount of time to character and achieves most of its success because Favreau has intelligently cast his film and let his actors do their thing. As good as the visual effects are, you walk away from the movie with a memory of actors’ faces, lines of dialogue and actions that speak more to character than to shock and awe.
And another thing: That wrist accessory worn by Craig should be a merchandising stroke of genius.
The Bottom Line
It sounds kooky on paper, but on the screen, cowboys and aliens make beautiful, fun music together.
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