Cowboys versus Aliens

The first thirty minutes or so of this movie are fairly amazing. Whomever wrote the screenplay is something of a genius, in my opinion. There's a lot of modern critical analysis out there these days which says that the modern story should set up conflict immediately and push to onward from there. This screenplay kind of mocks that notion, and the Western genre as whole, all the while living up to it's simple and beautiful title. It goes to painstaking lengths to set up the very definition of cliché Western. And then, right at the climax of the idiomatic Western climax, all of sudden, aliens show up out of nowhere and derail the whole plot.

From there on in, the movie kind of falls apart, unfortunately. The pacing is off in places, there are long expositive conversation, where I'd prefer to be seeing action. Some of the science fictional elements don't make sense if you think about them for more than a couple of seconds -- like the alien which has to expose it's heart in order to use its arms. Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford are not at their best. At least, I hope it's not their best. I think my wife might disagree.

Overall, this is a well conceived, but poorly executed film. It's probably worthwhile for geeks like me who are interested in the structure of movie stories. But, other than that, I didn't find it super entertaining.