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shadowkatJust finished watching Cowboys and Aliens. It's unintentionally hilarious in places. Or laughably dumb. Felt a bit sorry for all the talent involved, hope they got paid well.
Plot?
Daniel Craig plays a gunslinger/outlaw who wakes up in the desert with no memory and a weird bracelet that he can't remove on his wrist. He runs across some nasty men, single-handed beats them off with a proverbial stick, then takes their clothes, weapon and horse and rides into a dusty old town. Which is a bit down on its luck. While there he runs across the preacher (Clancy Brown) who patches him up, he appears to have been shot - although its an odd wound with no bullet. Then runs afoul of the local bad boy, who is the son of the big nasty rancher - or the Colonel. Bad Boy Percy tries to pick a fight with him and gets thrown in jail. Then the sheriff, played by Keith Carradine, throws Daniel Craig, aka Jake Lonegan - a notorious outlaw in jail. Or tries to, they fight, and Olivia Wilde (Ellie) knocks him out with a bottle. She spends most of the movie looking really stoned. Before Jake and Percy can be carted off to the marshal, or for that matter, Percy's Rancher Dad (played by Harrison Ford) can get Jake hung for stealing his gold bullion (which Jake doesn't remember stealing), flying saucers attack the town and sling harnesses around people carting them off. It's quite horrifying. We've basically jumped from a really cliche Western to well, Space Invaders.
You can pretty much guess what happens after that. Jake shoots one of the ships down with his odd bracelet which turns out to be a weapon. The creature inside takes off. Everyone in town decides if they track down this dangerous alien creature - it will lead them to their kidnapped family members. So off they go. The Preacher, Ellie, Doc (who can't shoot a gun because apparently he's never learned how, but not to worry the Preacher teaches him), the Rancher (Harrison Ford), his Indian Tracker/Ranch Hand (Ned - who he took in but treats horribly and calls an Injun, yet of course Ned worships him), The boy and his dog (no I'm not kidding - and the dog looks like the same dog that was in Rooster Cogburn and several Clint Eastwood movies...also the dog is actually Jake's, Jake wakes up to the dog in the desert and it follows him into town where the little boy, Emmet adopts him), oh and a bunch of cannon fodder characters whose names we never learn and are basically just there to die horribly. Considering the genre, it should come as no shock that only female character in the group is beautiful and a mystical alien who sacrifices herself for the good of the group and the planet.
Along the way...we run into Jake's old gang- which is only notable if you are a fan of Justified and thought, oh, there's Boyd or Walter Goggins. Cool. But he has no real role. Damn. Gets to say five lines and get his teeth knocked out by Jake. They have a Mexican stand-off that results in
Jake's bracelet suddenly firing up and taking out the outlaws new leader, who is pissed with Jake for taking his gold. It's around this point, or shortly thereafter that the aliens make another appearance, and try to cart off Ellie...but Jake fights them off, and both Ellie and Jake take the alien spaceship into the River, they re-surface as does an incredibly pissed alien - who takes a swipe at Ellie and appears to kill her. (Of course you know she's not dead...she's been all mysterious and is the only female cast member, outside of the Doc's wife and Jake's dead wife who don't count. Seriously...I wonder about this genre, I know there were women in the West, along with minorities...it wasn't all white men.) As they are considering burying her...the run across an Apache Tribe, which is none too pleased to see them. The Apache's take them prisoner - convinced they brought the evil sky demons. (No that would be the gold, apparently it attracts demons of the alien and human variety). Then when the Apache's attempt to burn Ellie, she comes out of the flames, healed, and naked, and beautiful like a goddess...Jake decides to give her a poncho to cover herself. While everyone else looks on sort of gobsmacked. (At least now we know why she acts so stone, she's an alien...hmmm, maybe this explains Kristen Stewart as well?)
Apparently she's of an alien species that can take on human form and heal itself. Fire doesn't appear to kill it.
At any rate, the Apache decide to listen to the woman who wandered out of the flames, and basically ignore the men they captured. Smart Apache. She tells them that she's of an alien race whose planet was pilfered and ransacked by these horrible aliens, who are as greedy for gold as human beings are. She came here to stop the aliens from doing the same thing to the humans and earth. They have to kill this scouting party, if they run them off - they just go back to home base and bring more nasty aliens. No, we have to kill this group, before they do that. She makes Jake remember what they did to him - because he knows where to find them and how to get the people who were taken free - since he escaped from their strong-hold. Jake remembers...along with how they tortured and killed his wife before his very eyes.
The Apache, Jake's band of outlaws, the Rancher and that group...all band together to take down the aliens. Jake and Ellie go into the fortress - they free the people who were taken, she tells Jake not to look into the light (which of course he does) and is momentarily frozen by it along with all the people that the aliens took hostage, but Ellie destroys the light - so it's not an issue. Then Jake shoots aliens, while Ellie jumps into the Alien rocket ship with Jake's bracelet which also functions as a makeshift bomb, which she detonates at the core of the ship after it takes off ---goodbye Ellie and nasty aliens. Meanwhile, the old Rancher rescues Jake from the evil aliens, and they escape prior to the rocket-ship's departure. Everyone but Jake and Ellie are reunited. The Rancher offers his bad-boy son co-ownership of his business, and Jake a job. Jake turns him down and rides out of town - after the Rancher and the Sheriff both agree to forgive Jake his crimes.
I felt like I've seen this before elsewhere...wait, I have, I think James Marsters did the same movie with low-budget special effects and less old Western cliches on the SyFY Channel several years back. Oddly? I think that movie was actually better than this one. Marsters character was certainly more interesting and developed than Craig's. Did prefer the aliens in this flick though, the aliens in the Marsters film, looked like giant spiders, which I can do without. Was pleasantly surprised that we were not dealing with Giant Spiders in this film. It gets old.
Felt at times more like a video game than a movie. Or a hodge-podge of various 1950s and 1960s sci-fi/Western film cliches. I don't know, it may just be me, but these film-makers appear to be getting embarrassingly nostalgic in their old-age. They did better action films in their youth.
Spielberg? Remember Close Encounters of the Third Kind? That was interesting and different. Stop redoing War of the Worlds...already. It is starting to resemble a video game.
The people behind this...laughably bad film included Ron Howard (Cocoon - which explains the whole light bit), Brian Grazer, Jon Faverau (IRon Man and Revolution), Steven Spielberg (Close Encounters/ET and sigh War of the Worlds and Falling Skies (trust me on this - skip late Spielberg and go with early Spielberg on the sci-fi/fantasy stuff, although War of the Worlds is a lot better movie than expected, there's some excellent bits in that film), and a bunch of writers that I've never heard of - but most likely explains why this thing bombed. The story doesn't work and is a bit on the silly side.
I'm not sure you can effectively blend the Western genre with the Sci-Fi genre? People keep trying, because it admittedly sounds like a good idea in theory, but to date the only one who has accomplished it with any measure of success is George Lucas with Star Wars. The first three films, or the middle of the Star Wars trilogy, were the perfect blend of sci-fi, old WWII flick, and Western genre. No one else has quite made it work. Whedon tried - but erred by going to extremes or referencing the wrong Westerns. (Granted "Firefly" is a cult hit but it is still just a "cult" hit...with a very narrow nitch following. 60% of the people on my flist don't like it or have never watched it, of that percentage there are quite a few who find it to be offensive hogstwaddle and don't get the appeal at all. .actually I think there's an equal number of people who may feel that way about Vamp Diaries. Taste is a funny thing. Not worth worrying over. Life, she's too short.) At any rate Firefly was far from successful and ripped apart by critics and fans alike when it first aired, there's a reason it got cancelled, no it wasn't just the evil Fox network - but the evil ratings and lack of positive buzz at the time. The show was expensive. It's actually cheaper to air another studio's work than your own. And Fox wasn't getting the ad dollars, Advertisers didn't like it. And American TV is all about selling things...many many things to people. It's all about the ads. TV exists for advertising. Evil marketing people rule the world and what we get to enjoy apparently. How else do you explain the success of the Twilight films and the early cancellation of Firefly?
But Whedon isn't alone in his unsuccessful attempt to blend the two genres (although he admittedly did a better job than the creators of Cowboys and Aliens did). Other's try it too. Farscape actually did a better job blending the two tropes, as did Battle Star Galatica for that matter. But both pushed sci-fi over Western, the Western trope was subtle and barely noticeable. You'd have to have been a Western junkie or raised by Western junkies to pick up on it.
Part of the problem with doing Westerns nowadays is they have been done to death. !920s-1980s had Westerns. At one time, almost every tv show on was a Western. The market got saturated. So too, for that matter, have alien invasion films, WWII films (and books...if I never read another WWII book, it will be too soon. Seriously how many stories about this time period can there be? It appears to be infinite and repetitive), and vampire movies and books. It's funny, a woman who wrote about the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, couldn't get her book published back then because Steinbeck already published the Grapes of Wrath, and they didn't think two books on the same topic could sell. Today? Eh, it may still depend on the genre and subject matter.
Plot?
Daniel Craig plays a gunslinger/outlaw who wakes up in the desert with no memory and a weird bracelet that he can't remove on his wrist. He runs across some nasty men, single-handed beats them off with a proverbial stick, then takes their clothes, weapon and horse and rides into a dusty old town. Which is a bit down on its luck. While there he runs across the preacher (Clancy Brown) who patches him up, he appears to have been shot - although its an odd wound with no bullet. Then runs afoul of the local bad boy, who is the son of the big nasty rancher - or the Colonel. Bad Boy Percy tries to pick a fight with him and gets thrown in jail. Then the sheriff, played by Keith Carradine, throws Daniel Craig, aka Jake Lonegan - a notorious outlaw in jail. Or tries to, they fight, and Olivia Wilde (Ellie) knocks him out with a bottle. She spends most of the movie looking really stoned. Before Jake and Percy can be carted off to the marshal, or for that matter, Percy's Rancher Dad (played by Harrison Ford) can get Jake hung for stealing his gold bullion (which Jake doesn't remember stealing), flying saucers attack the town and sling harnesses around people carting them off. It's quite horrifying. We've basically jumped from a really cliche Western to well, Space Invaders.
You can pretty much guess what happens after that. Jake shoots one of the ships down with his odd bracelet which turns out to be a weapon. The creature inside takes off. Everyone in town decides if they track down this dangerous alien creature - it will lead them to their kidnapped family members. So off they go. The Preacher, Ellie, Doc (who can't shoot a gun because apparently he's never learned how, but not to worry the Preacher teaches him), the Rancher (Harrison Ford), his Indian Tracker/Ranch Hand (Ned - who he took in but treats horribly and calls an Injun, yet of course Ned worships him), The boy and his dog (no I'm not kidding - and the dog looks like the same dog that was in Rooster Cogburn and several Clint Eastwood movies...also the dog is actually Jake's, Jake wakes up to the dog in the desert and it follows him into town where the little boy, Emmet adopts him), oh and a bunch of cannon fodder characters whose names we never learn and are basically just there to die horribly. Considering the genre, it should come as no shock that only female character in the group is beautiful and a mystical alien who sacrifices herself for the good of the group and the planet.
Along the way...we run into Jake's old gang- which is only notable if you are a fan of Justified and thought, oh, there's Boyd or Walter Goggins. Cool. But he has no real role. Damn. Gets to say five lines and get his teeth knocked out by Jake. They have a Mexican stand-off that results in
Jake's bracelet suddenly firing up and taking out the outlaws new leader, who is pissed with Jake for taking his gold. It's around this point, or shortly thereafter that the aliens make another appearance, and try to cart off Ellie...but Jake fights them off, and both Ellie and Jake take the alien spaceship into the River, they re-surface as does an incredibly pissed alien - who takes a swipe at Ellie and appears to kill her. (Of course you know she's not dead...she's been all mysterious and is the only female cast member, outside of the Doc's wife and Jake's dead wife who don't count. Seriously...I wonder about this genre, I know there were women in the West, along with minorities...it wasn't all white men.) As they are considering burying her...the run across an Apache Tribe, which is none too pleased to see them. The Apache's take them prisoner - convinced they brought the evil sky demons. (No that would be the gold, apparently it attracts demons of the alien and human variety). Then when the Apache's attempt to burn Ellie, she comes out of the flames, healed, and naked, and beautiful like a goddess...Jake decides to give her a poncho to cover herself. While everyone else looks on sort of gobsmacked. (At least now we know why she acts so stone, she's an alien...hmmm, maybe this explains Kristen Stewart as well?)
Apparently she's of an alien species that can take on human form and heal itself. Fire doesn't appear to kill it.
At any rate, the Apache decide to listen to the woman who wandered out of the flames, and basically ignore the men they captured. Smart Apache. She tells them that she's of an alien race whose planet was pilfered and ransacked by these horrible aliens, who are as greedy for gold as human beings are. She came here to stop the aliens from doing the same thing to the humans and earth. They have to kill this scouting party, if they run them off - they just go back to home base and bring more nasty aliens. No, we have to kill this group, before they do that. She makes Jake remember what they did to him - because he knows where to find them and how to get the people who were taken free - since he escaped from their strong-hold. Jake remembers...along with how they tortured and killed his wife before his very eyes.
The Apache, Jake's band of outlaws, the Rancher and that group...all band together to take down the aliens. Jake and Ellie go into the fortress - they free the people who were taken, she tells Jake not to look into the light (which of course he does) and is momentarily frozen by it along with all the people that the aliens took hostage, but Ellie destroys the light - so it's not an issue. Then Jake shoots aliens, while Ellie jumps into the Alien rocket ship with Jake's bracelet which also functions as a makeshift bomb, which she detonates at the core of the ship after it takes off ---goodbye Ellie and nasty aliens. Meanwhile, the old Rancher rescues Jake from the evil aliens, and they escape prior to the rocket-ship's departure. Everyone but Jake and Ellie are reunited. The Rancher offers his bad-boy son co-ownership of his business, and Jake a job. Jake turns him down and rides out of town - after the Rancher and the Sheriff both agree to forgive Jake his crimes.
I felt like I've seen this before elsewhere...wait, I have, I think James Marsters did the same movie with low-budget special effects and less old Western cliches on the SyFY Channel several years back. Oddly? I think that movie was actually better than this one. Marsters character was certainly more interesting and developed than Craig's. Did prefer the aliens in this flick though, the aliens in the Marsters film, looked like giant spiders, which I can do without. Was pleasantly surprised that we were not dealing with Giant Spiders in this film. It gets old.
Felt at times more like a video game than a movie. Or a hodge-podge of various 1950s and 1960s sci-fi/Western film cliches. I don't know, it may just be me, but these film-makers appear to be getting embarrassingly nostalgic in their old-age. They did better action films in their youth.
Spielberg? Remember Close Encounters of the Third Kind? That was interesting and different. Stop redoing War of the Worlds...already. It is starting to resemble a video game.
The people behind this...laughably bad film included Ron Howard (Cocoon - which explains the whole light bit), Brian Grazer, Jon Faverau (IRon Man and Revolution), Steven Spielberg (Close Encounters/ET and sigh War of the Worlds and Falling Skies (trust me on this - skip late Spielberg and go with early Spielberg on the sci-fi/fantasy stuff, although War of the Worlds is a lot better movie than expected, there's some excellent bits in that film), and a bunch of writers that I've never heard of - but most likely explains why this thing bombed. The story doesn't work and is a bit on the silly side.
I'm not sure you can effectively blend the Western genre with the Sci-Fi genre? People keep trying, because it admittedly sounds like a good idea in theory, but to date the only one who has accomplished it with any measure of success is George Lucas with Star Wars. The first three films, or the middle of the Star Wars trilogy, were the perfect blend of sci-fi, old WWII flick, and Western genre. No one else has quite made it work. Whedon tried - but erred by going to extremes or referencing the wrong Westerns. (Granted "Firefly" is a cult hit but it is still just a "cult" hit...with a very narrow nitch following. 60% of the people on my flist don't like it or have never watched it, of that percentage there are quite a few who find it to be offensive hogstwaddle and don't get the appeal at all. .actually I think there's an equal number of people who may feel that way about Vamp Diaries. Taste is a funny thing. Not worth worrying over. Life, she's too short.) At any rate Firefly was far from successful and ripped apart by critics and fans alike when it first aired, there's a reason it got cancelled, no it wasn't just the evil Fox network - but the evil ratings and lack of positive buzz at the time. The show was expensive. It's actually cheaper to air another studio's work than your own. And Fox wasn't getting the ad dollars, Advertisers didn't like it. And American TV is all about selling things...many many things to people. It's all about the ads. TV exists for advertising. Evil marketing people rule the world and what we get to enjoy apparently. How else do you explain the success of the Twilight films and the early cancellation of Firefly?
But Whedon isn't alone in his unsuccessful attempt to blend the two genres (although he admittedly did a better job than the creators of Cowboys and Aliens did). Other's try it too. Farscape actually did a better job blending the two tropes, as did Battle Star Galatica for that matter. But both pushed sci-fi over Western, the Western trope was subtle and barely noticeable. You'd have to have been a Western junkie or raised by Western junkies to pick up on it.
Part of the problem with doing Westerns nowadays is they have been done to death. !920s-1980s had Westerns. At one time, almost every tv show on was a Western. The market got saturated. So too, for that matter, have alien invasion films, WWII films (and books...if I never read another WWII book, it will be too soon. Seriously how many stories about this time period can there be? It appears to be infinite and repetitive), and vampire movies and books. It's funny, a woman who wrote about the Dust Bowl in the 1930s, couldn't get her book published back then because Steinbeck already published the Grapes of Wrath, and they didn't think two books on the same topic could sell. Today? Eh, it may still depend on the genre and subject matter.
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no subject
Date: 2012-11-24 01:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-24 03:00 pm (UTC)Was expecting much the same thing myself. Instead the filmmakers chose to take the material seriously? I started making fun of it half-way through. It was just so dumb. I was laughing during Ned's death scene...where he dies in Harrison Ford's arms, after Ford more or less ignored him for 90% of the movie or told him to bug off.
So many Western cliches...makes one want to watch Blazing Saddles immediately afterward and Tremors.
It's sad when you can say that you've seen better fare from the Syfy channel...isn't it?
no subject
Date: 2012-11-24 03:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-24 06:37 pm (UTC)Craig - Bond, and Ford the potential revival of the Star Wars genre by Disney.
Although I think Craig's franchise may be more rewarding for him than Ford's.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-24 03:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-24 06:35 pm (UTC)Forgot to add both Cowboy Bebop and from what I've seen of Trigun..have borrowed heavily from Lucas' example and Farscapes - and pushed the sci-fi over the Western. It works better when you push the science-fiction over the Western, and just use subtle touches or aspects of the Western. ie. 60% sci-fi, 40% Western, not 60% Western/ 40% Sci-Fi.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-24 07:13 pm (UTC)