#Cowboys and aliens 2011 movie#
The clear model for the rest of the movie is John Ford’s The Searchers, about a Comanche abduction of a white girl and her would-be rescuers led by John Wayne’s virulently racist uncle, to whom Indians were on the same level as reptilian space aliens.įaced with the demise of the planet, all the Western’s warring parties - the cowboys and Indians, cattle barons and downtrodden townsfolk, the stranger and the colonel - suddenly realize they all belong to the same species. Had the film given way to this sci-fi onslaught, the whole thing might have turned into the fiasco that was 1999’s Wild Wild West.īut no, Favreau and his legion of screenwriters wisely cling to the Western framework. The stranger, as strangers always do in Westerns, has demonstrated his usefulness.Ĭowboys & Aliens has now reached the crucial juncture that will either make or break this odd admixture of a movie. Equally surprising is how the stranger’s wrist ornament suddenly springs to life as the only successful weapon against these alien forces. Alien spacecrafts strafe the town and abduct a number of its citizens, including the colonel’s son. Just as a showdown of epic proportions seems imminent, an even greater showdown explodes in the town in a great WTF moment. But not before a few townsfolk get introduced into the drama - which would include the town’s preacher ( Clancy Brown) a stressed saloon-keeper ( Sam Rockwell) and his plucky wife ( Ana de la Reguera) the colonel’s unappreciated Indian cowhand ( Adam Beach) and the beleaguered sheriff ( Keith Carradine, evoking his late father’s considerable impact on the Western form) and his eager-to-grow-up grandson ( Noah Ringer).ĭrifting mysteriously on the periphery but making sure that the stranger stays in town when everyone else is keen to see him gone is a woman, Ella ( Olivia Wilde), who might understand his plight and amnesia. When the man with no name challenges the colonel’s cowardly son (an amusing Paul Dano), it looks like the colonel has found such a man.
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You get the impression he really wants someone to stand up to him. It is ruled by a tyrannical cattle baron, Colonel Dolarhyde, and that would be Ford who lets his face and body sag under the weight of his own ferocious and bitter sense of power. The town he rides into, on a horse belonging to one of those unfortunate men, is called Absolution, a name that would give anyone pause. When he encounters three men who would take advantage of his situation, he quickly learns - as does the audience - he is not a man to be messed with. Played by Craig, the man awakens in the middle of the desert with a strange shackle on his left wrist and no memory of what happened to him. But this stranger, in 1875 New Mexico territory, suffers from amnesia.
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True, the Western characters and story are awfully familiar to those who still treasure the genre, but the Western was always a conservative genre that stuck close to its traditions while allowing plenty of room for storytelling.Īll good Westerns begin when a stranger rides into town.
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A surprisingly good Western is taking place before those creatures drop down from another planet. But such is the overriding intelligence and singular vision in this picture that you have to assume Favreau deserves the credit for keeping things true to both genres. Take a look at the credit box for this film, and you’ll see an all-star team of Hollywood producers, exec producers and writers.
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Nor does it hurt the movie’s appeal to an older crowd that the film unhesitatingly pairs two mature stars, Daniel Craigand Harrison Ford, to go up against the aliens. But you suspect this is one monster movie that might even reach older audiences, who would love to slap on chaps and get rough and dirty with a good, old-fashioned Western. A big hit here at its Comic-Con world premiere, the Universal release looks primed to round up box-office gold with its target audience, all in ample supply this weekend in San Diego.