I guess I'm supposed to hammer out some kind of plot summary right about now, as if you need a whole lot more than 'cowboys and aliens!' The movie opens with some nameless man (Daniel Craig) waking up in the desert with no memory of who he is and a strange bracelet attached to his arm. Ron Meyer had it right Cowboys and Aliens isn't a bad movie, but despite all the right talent being attached, the end result is forgettable and mediocre. If it had continued playing as a straight Western, I'd probably be writing a fawning review right about now, seeing as how those early sequences are unrelentingly brilliant, but then it had to go and be a summer tentpole. That's the bizarre thing about the movie. Six credited writers - and who knows how many script doctors beyond that - and none of them could figure out a way to make it work. and then came the 'aliens' part of Cowboys and Aliens. Add in the likes of Paul Dano, Clancy Brown, Sam Rockwell, Keith Carradine, Adam Beach, and Harrison Ford, and I was completely enthralled. The production design and cinematography are world-class. The brawls early on are swift and brutal. With his weathered face and daunting presence, Daniel Craig is the best stoic, silent Man without a Name type this side of Leone. For a while there, I couldn't fathom the criticism at all. The buzz from back when Cowboys and Aliens was still making the rounds in theaters wasn't exactly glowing, but I tried to go in with an open mind. Shifting the setting to Earth at the tail-end of the 19th century - a time when even the concept of an alien was.y'know, alien - is kind of ingenious, pitting legions of towering, otherworldly creatures against an onslaught of pistols, bows, and arrows. Sure, sure, a sci-fi/western mashup isn't exactly blazing new ground, but most of those movies and TV series are set in deep space or on far-flung alien worlds. Universal high sheriff Ron Meyer speaking at the Savannah Film Festival about Cowboys and AliensĬowboys and Aliens, at least on the surface, has a hell of a lot going for it: the right look, the right cast, and the right premise. Certainly you couldn't have more talented people involved in Cowboys and Aliens, but it took, you know, ten smart and talented people to come up with a mediocre movie. I have to take first responsibility because I'm part of it, but we all did a mediocre job, and we paid the price for it. We did it badly, and I think we're all guilty of it. Cowboys and Aliens didn't deserve better. I think it was a mediocre movie, and we all did a mediocre job with it. All those little creatures bouncing around were crappy. Forget all the smart people involved in it it wasn't good enough.

Cowboys and aliens theme party