05 Jun COWBOYS & ALIENS RE-REVIEW

This is part of my ‘Re-Review’ series, where I revisit a movie that I haven’t seen in several years to evaluate if my opinion has changed with time.

Old Opinion: A completely wasted opportunity to do something awesome.

New Opinion: Better than I remember, and a great example of how to turn a weak script into a solid movie

Jon Favreau’s legacy is cemented because he created the MCU with Iron Man and resurrected Star Wars with The Mandalorian. But between his acting career and his career as a director/producer, he managed to make Cowboys & Aliens, the Daniel Craig/Harrison Ford flick that just didn’t resonate with many people in 2011.

To be honest, this is not Favreau’s fault; in fact, I think he probably salvaged a script that was substandard in a way that only the writing team of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman could achieve. Orci/Kurtzman were a red-hot writing team in Hollywood for a hot minute, cranking out half-baked scripts: The Island, Mission: Impossible III, Star Trek (2009), Transformers, Star Trek Into Darkness, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Notice a pattern? These are films made by Michael Bay and J.J. Abrams: directors who take mediocre-to-terrible scripts and turn them into box office hits by technical prowess and great casting. With the exception of Star Trek (2009), these movies contain the seeds of great ideas successful only because of the directors’ unique style.

And right in the mix is Cowboys & Aliens, which was marketed as a modern action movie take on the old ‘versus’ movies of the past (Godzilla vs. King Kong, Dracula vs. Frankenstein, etc.) The movie was ultimately unsuccessful for two reasons: first, it was more a dramatic thriller than an action movie, and it came out in the summer of 2011, competing against a ton of massively anticipated films, including Fast Five, The Hangover II, Bridesmaids, X-Men: First Class, Captain America: The First Avenger, and Harry Potter 8. Cowboys & Aliens didn’t really stand a chance…

“But Jim, what about the movie?!” Well, it’s actually pretty fun. First of all, Daniel Craig takes the material deadly serious, and that helps any genre film. Harrison Ford gives a relatively engaged performance. Olivia Wilde, Paul Dano, Clancy Brown, and Sam Rockwell are all excellent, giving solid performances in their roles. The special effects are great and have aged well. There really is a lot going for the movie, and I credit Jon Favreau’s skill as an actor, writer, and director for turning a weak script into a solid flick.

The biggest problems are two-fold: first, the script, which struggles on multiple levels. It can’t decide what tone to take, vacillating between fun sci-fi western and straight-up alien horror movie. It also fails to juggle multiple characters, as some major characters are given short shrift (Olivia Wilde’s Ella), while minor characters are given too much screen time given their lack of impact on the main plot (Paul Dano’s Percy). Luckily, Wilde and Dano (among others) give really great performances, milking everything there is out of their poorly written characters.
The second problem is the aliens themselves: their motivation is clear but dumb (they want…gold?). And although their character designs are great, they are overdesigned for this movie; they are terrifying but stuck in a PG-13 movie, completely undermining their potential. Imagine if Ridley Scott’s Alien, based on H.R. Giger’s design, was ultimately dropped into a PG-13 movie; it would undermine the entire lifecycle design of the monster by limiting what can be shown. That’s what happens here, and the number of cutaways to implied violence undermines the horror potential the alien design facilitates.

These problems are indicative of a movie that couldn’t really decide what it wanted to be: an action comedy, a sci-fi horror western, or a dramatic character piece…any one of these paths might have led to a stronger film, but the script just couldn’t decide which one to focus on. Favreau rescued it.

All that said, the movie will always be weak due to the unrefined script, but still holds up well, and has more than enough elements to entertain. And given how much I love the cast, and how well they all work together to make the material work, there is bound to be something to appreciate. The extended version of the movie adds worthwhile character details and some slightly more graphic violence—it’s the preferred version.

Pros:

• Terrific cast that gives 110% to a script that didn’t deserve them
• A little bit of everything for every genre fan: sci-fi, western, horror, drama—skillfully fused together by Favreau
• Holds up well from a technical standpoint
• The extended version is overly long, but adds some valuable character development that justifies it

Cons:

• Orci and Kurtzman’s half-baked, schizophrenic script
• The theatrical version feels too long but lacks depth, while the extended version definitely is too long…really, this is a critique of the script again
• Underutilized scary aliens

Rating: 2.5/5

Review by Jim Washburn