It is very rare that I will encourage a person to avoid a film. Most movies offer the viewer something of worth. Sometimes a movie with a bare-bones plot will advance technology, as Avatar did. Sometimes a bad movie can be good, like Piranha 3D. Movies make a promise to us with trailers and sound-bites and promotional images that they just cannot deliver. We understand this and often find some good anyway. Unfortunately, Cowboys & Aliens falls flat from every conceivable angle. Even I, who loves Jason X (better known to me as Jason in Space), couldn't find anything to really make Cowboys & Aliens worth my time. It's not a bad movie, but it's not a good movie. It's like eating McDonalds. Yeah, those fries are technically food, but they're just not that good.
Cowboys & Aliens put the correct pieces in place to be a success. They started with a great cast. Maybe some of the actors weren't Oscar caliber, but they had charisma. At least they did until they were given no real motivation for their characters. The one character I actually enjoyed watching decided to die pretty early on. Jerk. The acting wasn't bad, but it is tough to craft a great movie without a great script.
I'm not trained to talk about movies, which is pretty obvious. On the other hand, I love to talk about movies. It is one of my favorite hobbies, but I do not have anyone who feels as excited about movies as I do. I read what other people online have to say, what some critics have to say. In the end, I form my own opinions about what I watch. Because of that, I could be way off the mark, but Cowboys & Aliens fails due to its script. Jon Favreau is a good director. Daniel Craig is a good actor. Harrison Ford has enough charisma that I don't care if he's acting as long as he's on screen. A professional could probably tell me why the movie fails, but the script seems the winning candidate.
Big budget summer films don't need to touch us on a deep level, as evidenced by the success of the Transformer films, but they do need to give us something to relate to. You either need to create a character that we can connect with, that somehow reminds us of ourselves or something we've gone through or you need to spend time creating deep characters that we care about. Cowboys & Aliens completely by-passes this critical idea. Do you know what I felt while watching that movie? Bored. That's it. I didn't feel fear at what would happen to the characters, nor sadness when things were at their worst. I was just bored. They didn't give me a reason to care. Without that, what's the point?
I could nitpick other problems in the film. For example, near the end of the film, a weakness is announced regarding the aliens. If Sara Sidle (Yes, that's a CSI reference) hadn't told us all about it, I wouldn't have known. Do you know why? It's because it never comes into play or has any bearing on the film. There was no reason to bring it up, as the script didn't act upon it.
I could even make a few comments about the special effects. While they are by no means atrocious, there is a scene near the end of the film that looks like a scene out of Priest, or any number of sci-fi type shows. If you watch the movie and don't recognize the scene I'm talking about, I am happy for you. It took me right out of the film and just destroyed any respect I had left for the aliens, which wasn't much at that point.
In closing, you can see Cowboys & Aliens if you need the experience points. It's not a terrible movie, but it's really not worth your time. The script, which had the opportunity to be something different, pulled generic plot ideas from movies and threw them all together. It makes for a typical and unengaging two hours of cinema. Why can't someone just make a Deadlands movie?
(Moved from FB - January 17, 2012)
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