Cowboys & Aliens

So we went to see Cowboys and Aliens. Afterward, we never discussed whether we thought it was a good movie or not, which is telling. I didn't think it was horrible, but certainly not good. Not something I'll want to watch again.

Mostly we discussed little pieces of the film. My dad appreciated the diverse array of firearms, rather than everyone carrying the same thing, but felt the various leather gear (saddles, gunbelts) looked far too new. He thought Harrison Ford, Clancy Brown, and Olivia Wilde all knew how to ride horses properly (well, proper cowboy style), but some of the others didn't. He figures if Craig had done any riding prior to this, it was probably English style, so that might explain his tendency to bounce on the saddle. I thought Harrison Ford spent most of the movie walking funny, as though his boots didn't fit. My dad countered that Ford's pretty old, and riding a horse will make you look old. I haven't ridden horses, so I defer to his farmboy judgment.

Watching the film, I wondered why the aliens bothered to examine humans, if they consider us insects. I suppose we examine insects for more efficient means of killing them, but I think the aliens had it pretty well figured out. They just needed to be more careful with their stuff. I couldn't figure out why Ella (Wilde's character) didn't bring anything with her to help. Sje must have used some sort of advanced technology to make it here, she couldn't bring her own blasty weapons? Why did they dump the steamboat in the middle of the desert? They couldn't take what they wanted from it on the river, they had to drag it 500 miles first?

For a species Ella says don't like the light, there certainly had no compunctions about rushing out in the middle of the day to kill people during the climactic battle? Why do that? yes, the annoying humans damaged their flight deck/hanger, but wait until night to come out and kill them. Then they'd have the advantage, or force the humans to try and come in and fight on the aliens' turf.

Mostly while I was watching, I was thinking of how certain things reminded me of other movies. The opening shot going from a panning long shot to an abrupt closeup reminded me of the open of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. When one of the aliens got very close to the kid's face, I thought of Sigourney Weaver in Aliens 3, and the aliens having a chest cavity that opens so they can reach out with two other arms was reminiscent of Independence Day. When the spaceship lifts off, I thought of Apollo 13*. For some reason, Craig blasting away with that wrist cannon made me think of Mega Man. OK, that's not a movie, and Doom was probably a more apt comparison, but I liked Mega Man 4 more than Doom 2. It's my brain, I'll make the connections I want.

My dad thought there were two bits that referenced Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, when Craig meets his old gang, and when he and Wilde crawl out of the water after a crash landing.

I think that sums the movie up pretty well, really. It felt like it was pieced together from other, better films. Well, Independence Day isn't a better film, but the others are. Part of the films' failing is it takes too long to care about the characters. When the aliens abduct people, we haven't seen those characters enough to care they were taken. In the case of Harrison Ford's son, I was quite glad to see him gone. But we also haven't spent enough time with the characters who chose to pursue the aliens to care about them, or their loved ones. Some of that develops as we go along, but the movie would have been better served with more early character development, and fewer shots of Olivia Wilde staring intently at Daniel Craig.

Seriously, there were far too many of those shots in the first half-hour. And even that reminded me of another film, because it was like all those intense looks Chalize Theron gave Will Smith in Hancock, which were also irritating.

* I also thought of a cover to a DC comic I saw advertised in my dad's comics. A cowboy's on the ground, sprawled across his downed horse, watching a massive rocketship either take off or land amidst some skirmish. I'll have to poke through the comics I kept, see if it's advertised in them anywhere.