Dec 20 Cowboys & Aliens - Blu-ray Review #12
It’s 1873 when gunslinger Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) awakens in the Arizona desert with no memory of his past and a mysterious metal shackle encircling his wrist. Stumbling into the nearby town of Absolution, Lonergan discovers a tightly closed community that takes its orders from the iron-fisted Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) — and Dolarhyde has a bone to pick with Lonergan. But the colonel’s influence wanes when the desolate city is attacked by monsters that drop from the sky with blinding force and abduct the helpless townsfolk one by one. As Lonergan’s memory slowly returns, he realizes he holds a secret that could give the town a fighting chance against the alien force. With the help of mysterious beauty Ella (Olivia Wilde), he assembles a posse comprised of former opponents: townsfolk, Dolarhyde and his boys, outlaws and Apache warriors. United against a common enemy, they prepare for an epic showdown for survival. Buy Now $24.99
Reader Comments (6)
Man, I had to write in to support Rod on this one.
Now, disclaimer, I have not seen the movie so, there you go. However, when Rod was talking about the mismatch between the history of the time and their (lack of) reaction to flying aliens with laser weapons and stuff, that's EXACTLY the reaction I'd have to something like that!
So, I haven't seen it - so take my comments for what they're (not) worth but, Rod, you aren't being too picky!
Keep up the good work with the show guys. I like it when you don't agree. :-)
Much like Super 8, I would have happily watched this movie as a straight Western without the alien element! The opening with Daniel Craig's character waking up and fighting off those men? Totally on board. Riding into town and immediately getting mixed up in the town's trouble? Classic setup that works every time!
Then some stupid aliens show up and it all gets boring.
Olivia Wilde - as gorgeous to look at as she is - is just completely out of place. She doesn't look like any woman who would have been alive in that era. At least the story includes a sort of explanation for that :p But still, when she shows up, she just looks ridiculous. Smoking hot. But ridiculous.
With Super 8, I would have gladly watched a straight up 80's throwback about that group of kids trying to make a movie! The stupid alien shows up and it all gets boring. And that giant, meant-to-be-emotional music swell at the end where the kid lets go of his mother's necklace? Sorry, J.J., but you just didn't earn that kind of emotion, which made the whole scene into melodrama rather than a touching moment.
Maybe it's the "summer blockbuster" thing. Maybe they feel there has to be a "hook". Maybe aliens are the only way they can come up with to add explosions to movies that don't need it, but the trailer does, so that's what we get.
I do quite like just the basic idea of, "what would it be like if aliens came to Earth, but instead of modern times with modern weapons, it was during the time of the Wild West?" That's a pretty cool premise, but also unmanageable because the humans would stand ZERO chance and we all know it! It never works when the aliens have to be INCREDIBLY stupid just to give the humans a chance. And that's pretty much the solution to every alien invasion movie or show. They're smart enough to build a space craft that can bring them all the way from another planet to this one, but they forget to bring space suits, or they forget to make a door that locks, or they're easily hurt by something extremely common on this planet that they somehow didn't notice was here,or they just sit around and wait and wait and wait for no reason, or they set up their entire computer system as a single server that has a USB port and no firewall. Sorry, but aliens ALWAYS suck as a threat because it would either be no contest, or they would have to be here for some reason other than to invade.
Anywho, the reaction that the Cowboys & Aliens trailer got when I saw it in the theater said it all: Daniel Craig wakes up with a start in the Western desert and I hear a bunch of people (mostly women) go "ooh". We see him in shackles and then Harrison Ford shows up and you can feel the anticipation of something great in the theater. Then an alien ship shows up, Craig's stupid-CGI-looking braclet does a Transformers act and you can feel the air go out of the room. Then the title comes up and everyone laughs. Gee. I wonder why it didn't do better at the box office...
Considering that most people reading reviews have not seen the film I thought the first rule of reviewers was to not reveal plot twists. Now I haven't seen the film but I'm willing to bet that Olivia Wilde being an alien would be a major plot twist. Come on you guys are better than that.
Dave,
We cover this on the current podcast. But in case you haven't heard it yet this is what we said. We have said in the past that we will reveal plot elements as part of our discussion. The movie discussion portion of the show is not a review, its just two guys talking about the movie. Its intended for others that have seen the movie. We do this after the technical points have been covered without providing any spoilers. On previous reviews we gave the listeners a warning so that they can stop listening. We forgot to mention that on this episode. We will be sure to do that on future reviews. We apologize if we ruined Cowboys and Aliens for any of our listeners.
Ara (and Rodney)
I see the correct close was found this week so Rodney didn't have to be Ray Coronado. I'll bet that's a relief for him! :)
It's funny, when Ara mentioned that one hated and one enjoyed this movie I was mentally preparing to defend it on a whole different level. A friend disliked it because she couldn't understand the "motivation" of this or that in the movie. A very recent and smart trend in movies, like Battle L.A., is to NOT make the mistake of trying to explain too much. All that does is open up the guys on Big Bang Theory to criticize this or that scientific blunder. The Big Bang example sticks with me because it's so true, scifi geeks have been doing this forever and it has just become worse since the era of the internets. Star Trek movies were ripped endlessly for this mistake.
It's SCIFI!! Just go with it!
I agree with the split decision:
I listened to your review just the other day (school holidays at the moment and I've pulled the job as family crowd controller). I agree that it is a cowboy themed alien movie with not enough of Ridley's "Alien" aliens. I also agree that it had a good team that had an off game on this movie. It was an enjoyable watch (my wife liked it more than me the Daniel Craig really stirs her gravy). Sadly we weren't able to watch it with the sound suitably ramped up as the kids were in bed.
Sequel/Prequel the Hummingbird:
I reckon that they left the door open for a sequel or segue to a TV series with the re-appearance of the hummingbird at the end and Daniel's character just doing the traditional western thing at the end.
CGI is coming along nicely:
It was good to watch some of the moking off extras for how they did the snatches and the CGI of the aliens, I watched a similar piece on how they did the CGI in Avatar and that was really interesting too coz in Cowboys the pre-configuring was done out in the open. It just seems that as this technology advances they wont soon need the real Actors altogether on one location as they can be digitally inserted later. I guess then it will be a little bit longer than that and no need for the actors!
The Director:
Finally is it just me but wasnt the director a comedian or sitcom actor in a previous life?