After the era of Clint Eastwood as an action star, the Western genre had taken a turn for the worse. It’s no longer a popular theme in Hollywood now that there’s a more technology-savvy audience preferring movies on the science-fiction or fantasy side. After Eastwood’s Unforgiven, the Western seemed to have just faded out. What do movie makers do if the Western is no longer as marketable as before? Their answer is to make a movie that combines the classic Western and science fiction genres. The result is Cowboys and Aliens.

Cowboys and Aliens is a Western, but it’s no ordinary Western. It’s a Western where some pretty alien stuff goes on with spaceships, aliens, ray guns, and what-not all over the place. The movie is actually an adaptation of a 2006 graphic novel originally created by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg and written by Andrew Foley and Fred Van Lente. The story is all about residents of a small place in Arizona—cowboys and Native Americans alike—who do battle with aliens in spaceships intent on enslaving Earth and getting all the peyote and devil’s weed they can get (kidding).


The movie has the title of a B-movie but is really an all-star production both in front and behind the camera. It’s from Universal and Dreamworks, produced by Ron Howard (Cocoon), and stars Harrison Ford (Star Wars) and Daniel Craig (Quantum of Solace). Without a doubt, the personalities behind the film are a draw in themselves which is enough for people to line up to watch this film. We all know that alien-invasion films aren’t new, but since this particular movie is set in the 19th century, it has an appeal all its own. Yes, it seems we always like to see cowboys thrashing aliens, and vice versa, and with Native Americans taking the side of the cowboys, it’s definitely something different, coming from a different time when it’s the cowboys and the native “indians” that were pitted against each other. If you think of it, Cowboy’s and Aliens is really the perfect Thanksgiving movie for modern times!

If you haven’t seen the excerpts from Cowboys and Aliens yet, you may not recognize Harrison Ford the first time he appears. The actor known to many as Han Solo plays Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde, the brutal leader of a small town. Ford looks different with his cowboy hat and Western accent. He’s definitely no Indiana Jones here, but he also carries a gun and rides a horse just as well. Daniel Craig on the other hand looks pretty much like himself. It’s his character, Jake Lonergan, who wakes up wearing a metallic bracelet and with no memory. He wanders into Dolarhyde’s town and discovers he’s a wanted man. He gets into trouble with Dolarhyde but redeems himself—or at least get’s a reprieve from being harassed—when he uses the fancy bracelet he finds on his wrist to take down an alien spaceship. See, even in the 19th century Craig still gets the high-tech gadgets!


Many people will say that Cowboys and Aliens is basically a B-movie. That may be true, but even so, it’s a good B-movie with expensive actors and special effects. We have to admit that even a B-movie is a good movie if it has a heart and a soul. The makers of Cowboys and Aliens aren’t known for making flicks that audiences would walk away from. These guys, including Steven Spielberg of Dreamworks, know how to tickle your “movie bone” if you know what I mean. It wouldn’t hurt to have a good time with Cowboys and Aliens.

Cowboys and Aliens lighting blooper

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