Movie Review: Cowboys & Aliens

"Cowboys vs Aliens" is the latest graphic novel to get adapted into a movie. But it wasn't always supposed to be a graphic novel. This article talks about how they had to make the story into a successful graphic novel in order to sell it as a movie script. [link]

It was a good movie. I don't really feel that it stands up against Captain America or Thor, but against the usual movie fare it stands up pretty damn well.

We hear stories about aliens visiting today all the time. Occasionally you hear conspiracy nuts go on about how they also helped build the pyramids or that the Lost City of Gold that early explorers of the Americas were searching for were really landed UFOs and that's why they were seen from afar but never up close. This movie makes the claim that they were in the American southwest after the American Civil War (era assumed from hats worn in the movie).

The usual issues you might expect in tales of the old west are still going on. Powerful cattle barons trying to keep their people and the local community in line, roving gangs of bandits stealing anything that's not nailed down, uppity kids terrorizing the populace, and on like that. In the middle of a big showdown in downtown nowhere there are strange lights in the sky. Lights that start snatching people up and flying off with them. What else do you do in a situation like that? Whether aliens, indians, or bandits, when someone runs off with your kin you have to hunt them down and kill them.

Daniel Craig somehow has a piece of advanced technology on his arm that can kill aliens and their ships, but he's still fairly Daniel Craigish. Harrison Ford starts off playing someone rather unHarrison Fordish. He's very angry and tough as nails in order to keep people from destroying what he's tried to build. Possibly what Han Solo would have been in his old age if not for those meddling Skywalker kids.

The aliens interested me. While watching the movie I find myself wondering how a creature like that would evolve. They're very strong, very fast, have thick armored skin, and don't wear any clothes or have any language outside animal-like grunts and howls. How the fuck did someone with all those evolutionary advantages evolve the intelligence to build interstellar space ships. Sure, you might meet these people if you land on their planet, but could they come to ours?

Then I saw that their chest opens up and there's more arms and whatnot coming out of there. That's when I realized that the armored aliens ARE the clothing. The intelligent species is a parasitic (or possibly symbiotic) creature that lives inside the armored creature and has been living like that for hundreds of thousands of years. They're soft, virtually immobile, and would evolve brains and ways to use others for their own ends.

Sorry, but it's a point that was bothering me.

I enjoyed the movie and encourage others to see it. I'll probably get it on DVD.