Cowboys and Aliens

[JasonEvans]

I am not seeing this flick until Tuesday night, but the review just posted by Variety has be extremely excited for it!

Director Jon Favreau and no fewer than six writers have risen to the challenge of crafting a full-bodied, roundly satisfying yarn..

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...

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.

--Jason "bring it on!" Evans

[moonpie23]

i'm in line right now...

[bjornolf]

So, Moonpie, how was it?

[JasonEvans]

Sigh...

Harrison Ford's decade long streak of making so-so to bad films continues!

Well, I saw C&A tonight. It is a decent film, but really just for sci-fi fans. It starts out as a nice Western but veers far, far, far into sci-fi territory around the mid-way point and never really gets back to something that fans of the Western will enjoy. As a result, this is not a film that will cross multiple genres or audiences and that will severely limit its boxoffice prospects. There just is not enough story there to bring in a large audience.

What really surprised me was that, with a writing team that included Hollywood hit-makers Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman as well as Lost's Damon Lindelhof, there was not more depth in the script. I mean, I really struggled to care very much about the characters. How did that writing team take actors like Daniel Craig, Sam Rockwell, and Clancy Brown and make me not really care about them (notice I did not include Harrison Ford, because he has been a wooden actor for 20 years)?

The movie does a nice job of keeping its secrets hidden and revealing key plot points over the course of time, but by the time we reach the conclusion, the reveals are weak and not satisfying. The reason the aliens are there and the reason they are grabbing people is lame and poorly constructed. There are a couple satisfying action sequences between humans, but when it is human versus alien, it is pretty blaah. It is almost like director John Favreau was trying too hard at times.

Look, this is not a terrible flick and I was really into the Western/Sci-fi mashup for a while, but I just cannot see anyone but Sci-fi fans really enjoying the back half of the picture. It is a pity, because I had high hopes.

--Jason "I would give it 2.5 stars out of 5" Evans

[mr. synellinden]

Don't ask me why, but my mother is making me Tweet. Says it will be good for my career. So, follow my ramblings, mostly on the film industry, @TVFilmTalk

Why would we have to ask why? - you've told us why right there.

[JasonEvans]

Wow, if you thought I was down on this movie, read what noted critic Todd Gilchrist writes in his review titled "Ground control to major bomb" --

It's easy to like the cast—thanks as much to their previous work as anything on screen here—but with such a convoluted, illogical and dull story, no one fares particularly well. As counterparts, Craig and Ford's chief difference is the proportion between good and bad in their souls, but the script's ham-fisted revelations makes them less—not more—complex as the film goes on.

Perusing Rotten Tomatoes, here are some of the comments from other critics --

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone - "The mash-up of cowboys and aliens doesn't do either camp any favors. How are we supposed to work up a rooting interest when both sides are shooting blanks?"

"'Cowboys & Aliens' is a bland, faceless, callow, moronic, poorly assembled action movie that felt more like playing with plastic cowboys and Indians than shooting an actual gun."

Boston Herald - "As its Z-grade movie title suggests, Cowboys & Aliens isn't Hamlet. It's more like Omelet, an eggy, cheesy mess with big chunks of chewy smoked ham."

"I don't care if you write Pirates and Dinosaurs or Unicorns vs. Robots, you can't go on lunch after coming up with the title."

"It has eight separate screenwriting credits split among six different people, who between them create one halfway decent joke. Brutal math, that."

There are some good reviews, though most come with qualifiers like these --

"As far as summer popcorn flicks go, Cowboys & Aliens offers a welcome jolt of originality in a season marked by sequels and brand names. It's just too bad it never quite realizes its full potential."

"Cowboys & Aliens is so preposterous that it could collapse into a steaming pile of Wild Wild West at any moment. Yet the actors are so good at appearing convinced that this malarkey is really happening."

"It's like a double feature but with all the boring bits taken out and all the fight scenes run together."

-Jason "I'll be interested in hearing what the rest of you think... I may have lowered expectations enough for you to like it more than I did" Evans

[OldPhiKap]

Wow, if you thought I was down on this movie, read what noted critic Todd Gilchrist writes in his review titled "Ground control to major bomb" --



Perusing Rotten Tomatoes, here are some of the comments from other critics --


There are some good reviews, though most come with qualifiers like these --



-Jason "I'll be interested in hearing what the rest of you think... I may have lowered expectations enough for you to like it more than I did" Evans

Sounds like this just slid down to Netflix territory for me.

[Tommac]

Just got back from seeing Cowboys & Aliens and enjoyed it tremendously. Thanks to you critics who lowered my expectations. I thought it really was good.

[allenmurray]

I enjoyed it. But on a slightly different note, how many movies are made each year that my wife and I (53 & 51 respectively), our 17 year old son, and our 12 year old son can all go to and enjoy, without it either being mind-numblingly stupid or inappropriate for the youngest. It was a real (and rare) pleasure for the four of us to go out to the movies as a family. I liked it almost as much for that as I did for the movie itself.

[JasonEvans]

I am glad some of the folks in this thread liked the film. I hope lowered expectations helped!

Early estimates have The Smurfs beating Cowboys and Aliens for the weekend boxoffice crown. Not a good sign. Even worse, there are real indications that Cowboys is getting bad word of mouth as exit polls are showing only 2/3rds of the people who have seen Cowboys are giving it s thumbs up. That is a very poor figure. Most films are closer to 80% and good films tend to get to 90+% approval numbers.

Ouch!

-Jason "looks like Cowboys is going to make about $35 mil its opening weekend" Evans

[bjornolf]

I saw that they are making a "Battleship" movie based on the board game and that Rihanna's gonna be in it. The twist? The "enemy" is going to be a bunch of aliens. I have a feeling that it's going to be hurt the same way as C&A was by the mixing of the genres. What do y'all think?

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http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi1053203481/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1440129/

[Wander]

Also really enjoyed it. Really formulaic with regards to battle scenes, who lives and dies, etc, but I think we've kind of forgotten that not every movie needs to have the gritty or "realistic" flavor of a Dark Knight, Iron Man, or X-men First Class. There's a place for the silly Cowboys and Aliens or Green Lantern too. Though I will say, without giving too much away, that the scene around the campfire was a bit much.

[Duke4Ever32]

I really WANTED to like C&A, and was excited to see it, but I honestly thought it was terrible, especially given the caliber of people involved in it.

It started off okay, but then quickly became too silly and contrived. The explanations for why the aliens were doing what they were doing and why they were capturing people were really lame. And I didn't really care about the characters and what was happening to them. It was all just very laughable, and not in a good way.

Side note - in several of the previews there was a scene where Daniel Craig is battling an alien and someone suggests to Harrison Ford that they help him, and Ford responds by saying something like "looks like he's doing fine on his own". However, this scene wasn't in the actual movie - at least not that I saw.

[JasonEvans]

Side note - in several of the previews there was a scene where Daniel Craig is battling an alien and someone suggests to Harrison Ford that they help him, and Ford responds by saying something like "looks like he's doing fine on his own". However, this scene wasn't in the actual movie - at least not that I saw.

There has been a bunch of this in movies lately. In the trailer for Crazy Stupid Love, there is a scene where Steve Carrell is in the bathroom and asks Ryan Gossling how he is so successful with women. The scene appears to be a setup for the film's premise of Gossling helping Carrell to remake his life. But, in the movie, no such scene happens. In fact, it is Gossling who approaches Carrell and volunteers to help him get women. We later learn, in a bit of a throwaway moment, that Gossling may have done this because his father was a loser and he maybe saw a bit of his father in Carrell. But, the character's motivation would be totally different if the movie had included the scene in the trailer.

This happens all the time because trailers are quite often cut before the film is even finished being edited. They are generally cut by people who have next to nothing to do with the movie, aside from being tasked with promoting it. Depending on the director, it is often possible that a trailer would be released without the director even watching it or knowing what is in it.

One final note -- I am betting that "looks like he's doing fine on his own" scene was from a scene where Craig is beating up on some humans. The nature of the human interaction with the aliens makes it nearly impossible to imagine Ford standing around watching Craig's character battle some aliens. It just could not happen. Again, it is not at all uncommon for a trailer to include two totally unrelated scenes (Craig batting aliens and Ford reacting to Craig fighting with some humans) and mash them together to give the appearance of something very different. That is just how trailers work.

Frankly, though they are a fabulous tool for building hype and excitement for a film, I find trailers to be just horrible much of the time. They generally give away too much of the plot and are often misleading about the tone and theme of a film. The job of the trailer is to get people to come to the movie -- if that is accomplished by giving away the ending or even tricking people into thinking a film is about one thing when it is actually about something else, the trailer-makers don't care.

-Jason "a good trailer producer can make a mint, I think" Evans

[BD80]

There has been a bunch of this in movies lately. ...

This happens all the time because trailers are quite often cut before the film is even finished being edited. They are generally cut by people who have next to nothing to do with the movie, aside from being tasked with promoting it. Depending on the director, it is often possible that a trailer would be released without the director even watching it or knowing what is in it.

...

Frankly, though they are a fabulous tool for building hype and excitement for a film, I find trailers to be just horrible much of the time. They generally give away too much of the plot and are often misleading about the tone and theme of a film. The job of the trailer is to get people to come to the movie -- if that is accomplished by giving away the ending or even tricking people into thinking a film is about one thing when it is actually about something else, the trailer-makers don't care.

-Jason "a good trailer producer can make a mint, I think" Evans

Amen. Trailers have gotten just awful. I often leave a film thinking that I had already seen the best parts in the trailers, or I was completely mislead into thinking a film was a comedy (Vince Vaughn is particularly bad wrt this: eg "The Break-up" or "The Dilema")

[SuperTurkey]

Amen. Trailers have gotten just awful. I often leave a film thinking that I had already seen the best parts in the trailers, or I was completely mislead into thinking a film was a comedy (Vince Vaughn is particularly bad wrt this: eg "The Break-up" or "The Dilema")

Well, spare some pity for the poor trailer editor charged with making Vince Vaughn seem likable and watchable.

[Wheat/"/"/"]

Saw it last night and left the theater wondering why it wasn't called Cowboys, Indians and Aliens?
The Indians will have to continue to seek respect from Hollywood it seems...

It's light entertainment that moves along at a nice pace. It didn't make me wish I could get my money back like most of the movies I go see these days.

Don't expect any Oscar nominations, just something to give you a valid excuse to go out and eat popcorn and chocolate.