Cowboys & Alien

[seriousfic]

So... this is a movie. It's not a great movie, and it doesn't really suck--you don't say "oh bru-ther" much, but you also don't say "this is awesome" much. It's as if they were so set on making this a real movie and not some cheesy fanboy thing, like this were the movie John Ford would make if he got a hard-on for aliens, that they forgot that John Ford would've gone "okay, cowboys and aliens... so what? How is this a good story?"

It's just that the conceit is that aliens show up in the middle of a cowboy movie, so what they should've done is made sure that they had a cowboy movie that would've been good even if aliens never showed up, and then aliens that would've been good even if they arrived in downtown L.A. or a bucolic small town. Instead, they kinda counted on the mix of cowboys and aliens being enough. What I'm saying is, sometimes you need to go the extra mile.

I'm going to have to get into spoiler territory to discuss this, since the first half of the movie is pretty solid. But one thing I think I can discuss is how really out of place Olivia Wilde's character of Ella is. She's kinda Daniel Craig's love interest and kinda not, which is fine, I'm always for female characters existing for a reason other than some lame love story. But... she really doesn't have anything to do. She just kinda hangs out and acts brooding and mysterious, and since Craig is doing that too, our two leads are the least relatable people in the movie. Everyone else is fun or witty or grouchy or something, but they're just kinda glowering and being pretty. That's fine for a GQ photo shoot, but for a movie, you should probably write them some lines.

There's also Harrison Ford, but he's a bit of an antagonist. Still, it's weird that the ruthless cattle baron is the guy with the most personality by a long shot.

And given what's revealed about her character, you'd think Ella would have a lot of juice to her and be really vindictive, or weird, or something. Nope, she just kinda hangs out and gives out exposition. Exposition which isn't really needed, since I thought it would've worked to have the aliens be here to do some incomprehensibly nasty thing a bunch of Wild West cowboys couldn't hope to understand.



But nope, they're here for gold. Okay, I lied, for me that's an "oh, bru-ther" moment. So, if they want gold, why are they kidnapping people? I mean, that's in all the trailers. Well, they want to find out humans' weaknesses. That must be a short test. "Looks like our ray-guns and giant razor-sharp claws kill humans quite well. We didn't really need to kidnap five hundred people to figure that out."

I know there's supposed to be a parallel between white men attacking the Indians for gold, then the aliens attacking white men for gold, but it's kinda weird for the parallel to be aliens attacking people for no reason, not even vindictiveness or racism. I mean, they're aliens. What do they care? They can just fly over us, land wherever they like, and start mining. In fact, that's what they do. Humanity doesn't even notice they're there until they start people-jacking. So really, we're more like animals to the aliens. So it's like us going "Okay, we're going to mine all this oil, but while we're doing that, let's spend time and money on eradicating the local rabbit population."

Stopper on that, let's go to the characters. They actually did an okay job introducing all the characters and giving them arcs and stuff. I can appreciate that. The thing is, I think when it came time to do Daniel Craig, they went home early. If you're going to do an amnesia character, there has to be some mindblowing revelation about what he forgot. The problem is, Craig is the lead character, so the Venn diagram of his characterization looks like this: He can't just be some guy who lost his memory, because that's boring, but he can't be too mean, because then he'd be unsympathetic. So it turns out that he's an outlaw (that's bad!) who fell in love with a hooker (that's good!) and so he pulled one last job (that's bad!) to get the money to retire with her (that's good!) but then aliens were attracted by the gold and kidnapped them both and melted his chick (that's bad!). No idea why the aliens would be attracted by a bag of gold coins up Daniel Craig's ass and not, say, Fort Knox, but maybe they just liked Pierce Brosnan better as Bond.


Unstable hydrogen cells in a hotel in the middle of the desert? Fuck you!

So the only big reveal (unless you count the girl not being his sister or something so he's free to get it on with Olivia Wilde) is that girlfriend has been dead all along. So let me break this down for you. He remembers he was the one who inadvertently got his girlfriend killed, Olivia Wilde tells him it isn't his fault... cut to the next scene, where he shows no feeling whatsoever about the woman he loves being dead or his own culpability in the matter. This is the only movie I've ever seen where someone gets told "It wasn't your fault" and apparently responds "Hey, good point!"

Now you'd think, given that Ella plans to blow herself up to kill the aliens, and that Daniel Craig is torn between being the (theoretically) bad man he used to be and a hero or something now, that the ending would be him saying "I'm not losing you too" and sacrificing himself in Ella's place. That would totally fit the little arc they have going and be thematically appropriate. But nope, Ella kills herself and Daniel Craig just stands there like "Damn... both the ladies I kinda liked are dead. Guess I'd better ride off into the sunset."

Like I said, it's nice that they don't go into a romance direction with this, since Daniel Craig's chick just died and everything, but they don't go in any direction with it. Craig starts off being irritated by her (as any man would be at Olivia Wilde following him around, saying she needs him, and just generally wanting to spend time with him).


Damnit, stop thrusting your perfect breasts at me! I'm busy being a fangirl's interpretation of Tim Drake!

Then she gets hurt and he's like "oh no, we were really bonding in that five seconds between me not giving you the time of day and then other stuff happening!" Then she gets better and he's like "Oh, okay. Cool." Then she kisses him and he's like "What, I thought we were committing to us not having romantic feelings for each other, since we already did 98% of the movie that way." Then she dies and he's like "Well, shit. Sunset, I'm off."

See, there's a line between a really interesting side character and a really flat lead character. Making Jake the hero is like making Quint the lead character of Jaws. Sure, he's the most "badass" character, but he also has no stakes in the conflict, he isn't really very likable, there's no internal conflict. It might be fun to see more of his character, but pretty soon, you'd be bored of him. Some characters are best in small doses; they can't carry a movie.


Or sometimes even a subplot.

Jake is like that. He should've been like Riddick in Pitch Black--this potential sociopath who everyone has to put up with because he's their only weapon against the aliens. With him not being in the lead role, the audience and the characters wouldn't know if he can be trusted or not. He might be a jerk, or working with the aliens, who knows? His big secret could be that he has a little girl locked under his staircase, not that aliens killed his chick.

But instead, he's in a long line of amnesiac killing machines who turn out to be quite nice once you get to know them. Just like how with Jason Bourne and Wolverine, they spend three movies going "oh, how did he get to be this way, is he some kind of monster, what's his deal?" then it just turns out "Yeah, they conned him into becoming a forgetful super-soldier. He got punk'd. Feel free to like his character without reservations, audience!"

Of course, since Jake can't remember anything, it falls to Harrison Ford's character to be that quintessential Western character--the white guy who's totally emo about killing Indians. I know Native Americans got a raw deal, but does this backstory need to pop up every time there's a Western? You only make, like, one a year, Hollywood. This, Hidalgo, The Last Samurai--I'm convinced that if it weren't for well-meaning white guys on a Campbellian journey, the Native Americans would've been just fine.


Damnit, Sam Worthington, stop blaming yourself for that Indian massacre! You can make up for it now by protecting that sexy young widow and her precocious child from a slumming British actor!

The weird thing is, Jake is surrounded by characters who would be more interesting in the lead. Sam Rockwell plays a saloon keeper (named Doc... I don't really get that) whose wife is kidnapped, and Clancy Brown's rugged preacher character teaches him to gunfight so he can get her back. Holy shit, how is that not the entire movie? We've got a likable character with a clear goal (getting his wife back), a difficult obstacle (he's a nerdy bartender, not a fighter), and a character arc you'd be interested to see (can he go from zero to hero?). Give him a nice backstory and some more lines, boom, you're all set. You can still have Daniel Craig showing his glistening chest in the background, just maybe have him turn out to be evil in the end. This movie could use a real boo-hiss villain anyway. ("Oh, this one random alien peon killed Daniel Craig's chick, and it has a scar! It was also so incompetent it let a puny human beat it up and bust out, but still! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!")

And Clancy Brown as a badass gunslinging priest? That's cool too! Did he used to be a gunslinger and then give it up? Maybe he'll try to instill a sort of compassion in Sam Rockwell, and that will end up saving the day instead of being a badass gunfighter--that'd be a little ironic. Where you are taking me, movie, on this wondrous journey of good character actors?


Destination: Al Swearengen Vs. Alien Cunts.

Then five minutes later the movie says "nope!" and goes back to pretending you care about Jake Lonergan. He's badass! But not too badass for kids. But still, he's done some shit! Like arson! And accessory to murder!

Yeah, that doesn't strike me when I think of frontier justice. The sheriff throws a noose around someone's neck and declares "This is the last time you'll accessorize someone's murder, Black Bart!" What's next, are they going to get him on a three strikes law?