Movie Review: Cowboys and Aliens

As I have done in the past, I've decided to review a movie. To quote myself in my review of Daybreakers: “Perhaps the most prevalent and popular form of writing today is the kind we see in movies. While many people simply "hate books," nearly everybody watches movies.”

Cowboys and Aliens is a 2011 movie directed by the same guy who made both Iron Man films. It earned a 44% from Rotten Tomatoes, which means it's quite rotten. It also means that it's rated lower than Daybreakers (67%) but much better than 2005's Doom (20%).

Remember his name? I sure don't.

I like to think that the title of the movie was invented when a parent watched his children play with action figures. When I was a kid, I'm pretty sure I made Batman fight aliens. Maybe they'll make that into a movie!

On the surface, the film seems to offer everything I like about Summer movies: Action. Explosions. Harrison Ford. What went wrong? Films that mash up two genres are rare but not unheard of. According to this series of captioned photographs, “[Bladerunner was a] sci-fi and hardboiled film noir; Alien was a haunted house movie [in] outer space.” So it's not like this kind of thing is new.

The problem lies in the way the movie was created, it doesn't blend two films; it is two films. Like dysfunctional siblings, these two movies fight it out to be dominant almost the whole time. In the beginning, it's a fairly boring Western starring James Bond. Halfway through, there's a transition from Western into a pretty serious sci-fi flick. Then for the rest of the movie each genre ruined the suspension of disbelief for the other. Worse still, I got flashbacks of Krull.

If you're not familiar with Krull, watch this trailer.

Like most films with a bloated budget (Matrix 2 and 3, any Star Wars prequel), character development takes the backseat to what Hollywood executives would excitedly refer to as “the Action.” Unfortunately this means that there's no character development of any kind in the beginning of the movie. James Bond wakes up with no memory, so we as the audience are left to solve this “mystery” for ourselves as the film progresses. This is not a J.J. Abrams mystery that leaves the audience with an “I MUST KNOW” desire. This is a slow, plodding and ultimately unimportant side plot that seems to get in the way of the Action.

This explosion is more important than the characters.

In fact, this veiled "mystery" trickles down throughout the entire production (Spoilers ahead). Why are the aliens abducting people if they're only visiting earth to harvest gold? If Olivia Wilde is an alien who can take the form of a human, why can't the other aliens? Is she the last of her race? How come the Indians speak exclusively Chiricahua but can clearly understand English? Was this all an excuse to give Harrison Ford a Chewbacca-like Indian sidekick? Why do the aliens seem so evil?

In a weird twist of fate, the writers of the movie tried to make an ensemble cast of characters, but they don't take the time to develop any of them beyond an initial archetypical doodle, and this includes the main character.

The main character: Jake Lonergan, a mysterious amnesiac who turns out to be just an outlaw with James Bond's prowess for hand-to-hand combat.

Harrison Ford's character: A rich cattle rancher who learns something about himself through the eyes of a young boy while chasing down the aliens.

Olivia Wilde: A mysterious young woman who looks like she wears pajamas for the whole film.

The Preacher: A caricature of what Hollywood thinks ministers in the wild west were like, except he's both Catholic and Christian, but with some distinct humanist vibes.

...And three or four other people whose names you won't know until you read the credits on IMDB!

Probin' time.

This movie was basically a 1.5 million dollar Freddy Wong video, except without the fun Freddy Wong bits. Instead of watching this, watch True Grit and District 9, two much better films that do their genres justice.

The Good:

Great explosions, aliens, effects

James Bond's wrist gadget

The Bad:

The plot is boring

The movie is never as cool as the title made it sound

The characters are undefined and shallow as a hastily-dug mafia grave

The end was much like Krull

It didn't mash up the two genres well
This list of mistakes

Overall: 2/5

Please Do Not Plagiarize

I don't think anybody living today can say they've never accidentally plagiarized something, whether it was on purpose or by accident. We Americans live in a culture that seems to revel in stealing the work of others and either turning it into a joke or a competing product.

Lets say you've just finished reading something that really got your imagination flowing, like Steph Meyers' The Host. When I read it, I became very interested in alien invasion stories. To be clear, I don't mean I started researching alien abductions and close encounters; I simply enjoyed the idea of aliens coming to earth for some mysterious purpose. This was the basic idea behind many episodes of the original Twilight Zone in one form or another, and sometimes the aliens turned out to be us.

After reading The Host, I didn't start trying to write a better alien invasion/romance story. I don't want to copy anything, especially not something filled with romantic mush. Instead I started trying to think of new spins on the idea.

What if the aliens are actually ancient Earthlings returning to Earth to capture a relative who has no idea his ancestors flew off in a saucer?

What if aliens land and do nothing but lie about everything? Though they already did this in a Dr. Who. SPOILERS: The alien invasion is just a cover while the real aliens subvert all of the governments of the world. END SPOILERS.

If you read enough sci-fi short stories, inevitably you're going to read something about one kind of alien invasion or another. Star Trek has done it many times, Isaac Asimov has done it more. In one episode of The Next Generation, they even had the humans dress up like aliens and move around among the aliens. Why would they do this?

To make sure it's safe for the rest of them.

I was gonna have a clip from Signs up there where that army general says that line ominously, but it seems nobody has put it on YouTube. But imagine how cool it would have been if I had had it!

Anyway, the point it that my interest in The Host didn't result in me stealing any characters, events or plot hooks and writing them into my own story. My English teachers, and probably yours too, were very adamant that we do not plagiarize!

From an academic perspective, they're more concerned that you give credit where credit is due; listing sources and whatnot. As a creative writer, it might be a little harder for some people to notice that you've stolen something, but eventually somebody is gonna figure it out, and you're gonna look like an ass.

“You obviously just took sections out of the Harry Potters and one of the Artemis Fowl books, changed the names and added steampunk laser guns!” These are the last words you hear before Scholastic Books sues you. Probably.

Of course, some people can't help plagiarizing things. Like faces.

“But William! I'm a casual writer! I'm never going to get my work published! My stories are going to live on the internet forever!”

You have to remember that plagiarizing is wrong, regardless of whether or not you get paid for it. Why is it wrong? Some people don't understand why they can't make a book mashup like they do for those Nirvana songs. Yes, you have to watch at least a minute of the following video.

To answer your question, it shows you're lazy. Why would you bother writing something that you're not going to bother to write? You're wasting your time if you do this, plus it leaves you open to pot-shots from the internet community. Maybe your mom has never read Fahrenheit 451 and so misses your clear plagiarism of seashell earbuds, but you can bet your right hand that some guy online has, and he's gonna call you on it.

I knew a girl who would take any idea that “looked cool” and Blend-Tec-blended it into her own stories. It could be anything. Books, movies, comics, television, conversations. After a while you just kind of hesitate to tell her anything because you know it's gonna wind up in her story, and she's probably gonna get paid for it.

There's another kind of plagiarism that affects many people, perhaps even more than the deliberate plagiarizers: Accidental plagiarism!

Lets say you come up with a brilliant idea. You don't know where it came from, but you know it's all you. You've decided to write it down, or draw it, and somebody walks by your desk and says, “hey that looks exactly like Jack Skellington!” Or somebody reads your story and says, “This is just Speed on an airplane instead of a bus!”

I'm not sure why humans tend to do this. Other creatures might do this too, but every time I ask the dog, she just looks at me. We'll probably never know.

Anyway, I think this usually happens because we're tired, or we were half asleep in front of the TV when Twilight Zone was on. It probably comes from bad memory recall. After three years in digital art class critiques, you realize how quickly people compare things to other things. You also realize how hard it is to be original.

It gets even more annoying when your story actually is quite original, but people read it and still make comparisons that you never intended!

Humph!

So I guess my point is that you should always strive for originality. Don't settle for making something “like” something else. Be creative in your creative writing.

Also, you get bonus points if you can guess the name of my favorite photo blog.