Jim Reviews Cowboys and Aliens

Cowboys and Aliens

High concept is a hard term to pin down. At one point it was basically just one movie mixed with another movie, or a concept from one film placed in a different location. The beginning of Robert Altman’s “The Player” is full of high concept pitches. “It’s like ‘Ghost’ meets “The Manchurian Candidate,’ but funny, and with a heart in the right place.” “Well, ‘funny political,’ doesn’t scare me ‘political political’ scares me.”

For years “Die Hard” was the benchmark of the high concept.

It’s “Die Hard” on a cruise ship!!! Or…

“Die Hard” in a high school!!! Or…

“Die Hard” on a mountain!!!

Then it morphed into an idea that could be communicated in one or two sentences… that blows your mind!!!

Imagine a world where everyone tells the truth all the time, and nobody is capable of lying. Then, one day, a man tells the first lie.

A by the book cop gets a rouge partner who plays by his own rules.

There are a bunch of snakes on a plane.

A seemingly harmless thing becomes a murderer.

High concept doesn’t mean bad, far from it. High concept is just a BS marketing idea that is pushed as if it has some sort of substance. It is, essentially, distilling a movie down to its most basic elements. I’m not even talking plot, I’m talking situation.

Yeah, “Die Hard,” can be described as ‘tough cop on the loose in a building full of terrorists,” but that doesn’t really describe it. It’s more ‘tough cop who is on the outs with his wife is running free in a building where a group of terrorists are holding a group of people, including his wife, hostage in an attempt to pull off a massive heist, and said cop is the only person who realizes what is going on and has to stop them in order to save the lives of all the hostages and hopefully his marriage as well.” There is a lot going on there.

Bad high concept is when there is little more than the situation. What does this have to do with “Cowboys and Aliens,” you ask…

I am going to approach this review differently. About a year ago Brad Brevet wrote this fantastic article “Top Ten List of Worst Excuses Made for 'Bad' Movies,” that I will be referencing during this review, as I can already hear people gearing up to discredit my opinion with almost all of these.

1) "YOU JUST DON'T GET IT."

That might be the case, but what was there to get here? The plot didn’t make a whole lot of sense. So, there are aliens who came here to steal our gold and kidnap people for some reason that has something to do with experimentation. A guy gets away with one of their steam punk laser bracelets and all hell breaks loose.

You’re right. I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand why they were taking people in the first place. I didn’t get why Daniel Craig was wanted for the murder of a woman when, as the movie clearly shows, there is no evidence of her being murdered. I didn’t get it because it made no sense. What was the point of Harrison Ford’s son other than to force attention to Daniel Craig and kick the plot off?

Your right, I didn’t get it.

2) "IT'S NOT AS BAD AS PEOPLE SAID."

It kind of was.

3) "YOU HAVEN'T READ THE SOURCE MATERIAL! YOU'RE NOT JUDGING IT PROPERLY!"

OR… YOU CAN'T JUDGE IT BASED ON THE SOURCE MATERIAL. THE BOOK IS ALWAYS BETTER!

OK. My bad. I thought it was a movie, but I am apparently wrong. Precisely what part do I need to get a clearer understanding of? The cowboys or the the aliens, because neither one made much sense.

4) "YOU WENT IN WANTING TO HATE IT!"

Actually, I did not. You see, when looking at a movie called “Cowboys and Aliens,” I thought, “Wow!!! This is going to be so much fun!” I LOVE cowboy pictures and enjoy sci-fi movies. This seemed like a really good idea that I could easily love.

The problem is, it wasn’t good. I was bored out of my mind. All I wanted was a fun movie with cowboys and aliens in it. What I got was a boring movie with cowboys and aliens in it.

5) "YOUR EXPECTATIONS WERE TOO HIGH."

They really were not. It’s called “Cowboys and Aliens” the only expectation I could have had going into this was “Man, this is gonna be a hell of a lot of fun!!!” Not to repeat my point too much, it wasn’t fun.

So, at this point I think my chief complain should be clear. This movie was a boring, confusing mess. It starts out with a bit of promise, but then a majority of the potential is just dropped and it becomes a run of the mill “men on a mission” film. Except that it isn’t. It becomes a collection of slow, unnecessary expository scenes that culminate in one of the oddest final battles I’ve ever seen.

Question:

Why do aliens that have mastered interstellar travel, laser based weapons, electromagnetic mining (?), and countless other high tech devices, why do they run into battle naked? These are incredibly technologically advanced beings that are inexplicably primitive naked dog men. They have flying ships that shoot lasers, why are they running naked and unarmed into a group of people firing guns at them. I don’t care how many lasers or space ships you have, if you are naked… odds are you will feel the impact of the bullets.

This move was an absolute tee ball home run gone wrong. You are combining two of the most storied and beloved genres in history. This should be a no-brainer. But somehow we get this. How?

Well, let’s take a look at a part of the IMDB page to shed some light on this.

Writing credits

(WGA)

Roberto Orci (screenplay) &

Alex Kurtzman (screenplay) &

Damon Lindelof (screenplay) and

Mark Fergus (screenplay) &

Hawk Ostby (screenplay)

Mark Fergus (screen story) &

Hawk Ostby (screen story) and

Steve Oedekerk (screen story)

8 writers. EIGHT!!! And that is just the credited rewrites. You have to show a 50% contribution to a screenplay to get credit, so that means even if everyone was working in pairs you have 4 groups of people rewriting at least half of this script. How can you expect a well paced, coherent narrative when you have the creative equivalent of the game “Telephone,” being played.

Sadly, this is the problem with a lot of the big budget movies coming out these days. Instead of focusing on one solid story you get a bunch of writers fighting to get their name on the project so they can make some more money on it. Not that I can fault them, I mean it’s a job. So you get one guy who thinks that having a lot of Harrison Ford’s son seems cool, and another who thinks that adding more with Adam Bench would underscore things better. Then another person thinks that it would be great to include the Sheriff’s grandson… and not really spend any time discussing why his parents aren’t there. This movie is rife with subplots that don’t go anywhere, characters who don’t really need to be there, and scenes that take WAY too long, and suddenly what started as a really cool concept with potential to be a really fun movies, instead becomes a rudderless, incoherent, and worst of all booring mess.