[Movie Review] Cowboys and Aliens
"I've seen good men do bad things and bad men do good things."
I look at Cowboys and Aliens and look at the John Carter from Mars and wonder: Are we going to do this same dance in March 2012?
I have never read the comic book that Cowboys and Aliens is based on so with that out of the way, I have to ask a few questions:
Why do all the last acts of recent alien movies have to take place in a dimly lit dark? I even watched Knowing recently and even that third act was in the dark, but it was well lit dark.
Why did they move Time Machine's Act II's alien attack and just pasted into Act III of Cowboys and Aliens?
Why oh why was Sam Rockwell not headlining this movie? Seriously. He could have been funner than his character was. I can say that about Olivia Wilde's character too.
Getting past all those questions, the movie on a whole was mindless fun and nothing to write home about.
The first act is great. Amnesiac Jake Lonergan played by Daniel Craig stumbles into dead mining town and trouble finds him in the way of Col. Dollarhyde played by Harrison Ford and before he can be dragged off to the authorities aliens come out and kidnap the towns folk! Oh noes!
And, unfortunately, you've seen it in the trailers.
Hell, it was the trailer and that's the problem because nothing else in the movie measures up to the rest of this first act.
See my question about Act II of Time Machine and Act III of C+A. Cowboys with six shooters vs Aliens with ray guns in broad daylight. After introducing the secondary or third level characters of Lonergan's gang, the big ole' battle with the Aliens lowers them down to extras except for 2 scenes and those were good scenes but the rest of the battle was just meh.
There's a moment in the movie when someone asks about calling in the Army and Ford's character who survived the Civil War scoffs at this but after the movie was over I had to ask: Why wasn't the Army called in for this? Maybe too much Wild Wild West? Personally, I would love to see a sequel with the Army guys tricking out the alien debris into Steampunk.
So, in the end, would I see this again in the theater? Nope, I'd go see Captain America, again.
Originally published at RKB Writes. You can comment here or there.