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

Ending the World (Guest-Written by a Supervillain)

Oh my, just writing the title down makes me excited.

There are many, many different ways the world could end. Because we're more creative than the average person, we supervillains also happen to be a great deal more deranged. This means that we're quite good when it's time to come up with creative and exciting ways to make the world go kablooey. To list only a few, the world could end via:

Explosion

Magic

Black hole

Magic explosion

Aliens

Karma

Pollution

War

Planetary collision

Any number of problems relating to the Sun

Not enough pollution

Anarchy

Disease

Weather

Zombies

Vampires

Curses

Ancient artifacts (see above)

Bad luck

Underground creatures

Aboveground creatures

Gods (angry, happy, lazy, etc.)

Angels

Demons

Superheroes

...I hate that last one.

As you can see, there is no shortage of ways to dispose of a planet and all of its annoying inhabitants. It doesn't even have to be hard. During the creative process, writers and supervillains alike can plan on either starting or finishing the story with such an event. It could be like that movie 2012 where things blow up all throughout the movie, or like The Day After Tomorrow where everything happens toward the beginning and just kind of ramps up. It could also be like Ladder 49 where the firefighter dies at the end. Oh no, did I spoil that for you?

I'm so painfully wicked.

Technically I don't think that killing off a firefighter (portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix no less) counts as an evil plan. It doesn't take a mastermind to see that killing off one character is small beans compared to the main course of the evening, and that is cracking a planet in half, or in thirds, or other wonderfully evil fractions.

Sometimes it's not even the “event” that you're trying to write about. Some movies and books actually take place a long time after the world has ended. As you might imagine, it's referred to as post-apocalyptic, which is kind of a misnomer because the actual apocalypse from the Bible is kind of a one-off. Nobody walks away from that one.

Delicious.

I guess it's not really a (capital) Apocalypse you want; it's more like an unpocalypse. Or an apocalypse lite. Like the beer. I mean, what's the point of killing everyone if there's nobody around to notice? Sure, the reveling by the person who pulled it off would be wonderful for a while, but without civilians to look sadly toward the burned-out husks of buildings, what's the point?

That's not to say I wouldn't mind a good reveling.

The real trick is leaving enough main characters alive long enough to give the audience a (false) hope that he'll give this miserable story a redeeming ending. You would think that after the freaking apocalypse the guy's story would end, but it never seems to. If you're too cowardly to actually blow up your universe, I suppose you could just threaten to do it a bunch of times throughout the main character's journey. He'll probably try to stop it, and he'll probably win, but at least you kept the tension on him.

Still, when it's time to make like The Matrix and make the world an awful place to live, you might as well do it right. That's actually a good example of what a story can look like when the bad guys kind of win. As long as you ignore the second and third movies and all of that strange Matrix Online story stuff they threw (up) into the lore.

Gross.

Someone should really try writing more stories from the perspective of the quote unquote bad guys. That's right, even though I'm writing, I still used air quotes as if I were actually talking. Into your brain.

Muahahaaaaa.

Signed,

The Supervillain