Trailer Tuesday: Cowboys & Aliens

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2011 is going to be a bumper year for alien invasion and extra-terrestrial action at the cinemas. To start with there's Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon, Battle: Los Angeles, Green Lantern, Paul AND, now, Cowboys & Aliens - based on the 2006 graphic novel created by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg and written by Fred Van Lente and Andrew Foley.


Cowboys & Aliens comes with some seriously big names in front of, and behind, the camera. The film is the latest from Iron Man director Jon Favreau, and it is executive produced by blockbuster king Steven (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) Spielberg, and produced by the Oscar-winning duo of Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. Plus, the comic has been adapted for the screen by acclaimed Lost co-creator and writer Damon Lindelof.

The cast of Cowboy and Aliens includes Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, House's gorgeous Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell, Noah Ringer, Keith Carradine and Clancy Brown.


Cowboys & Aliens is an intriguing, if obviously fanboy-ish fantasy blend of genres - mixing Western conventions with Science Fiction, and apparently a touch of Horror as well. The basic plot of the movie sees 19th Century cowboys and Apache Indians in Arizona joining forces to fight back against unfriendly, gold-obsessed aliens with vastly superior technology. It falls to amnesiac stranger Jake Lonergan (Craig), with a mysterious shackle on his wrist, to save the isolated town of Absolution, which is ruled by decidedly non nice-guy Colonel Dolarhyde (Ford).

I'm struggling to moderate my expectations regarding Cowboys & Aliens, mostly because it's just so damn exciting to see Craig and Ford together onscreen, and both back on genre blockbuster turf. This said, star wattage aside, one of the most appealing things about the film for me is its refreshingly serious tone. It's fantastic to see aliens made frightening again. I'm going to try and avoid over-hyping Cowboys & Aliens in the coming months though, seeing as this kind of cinematic genre mash-up can easily end up being stronger in concept than execution.

Cowboys & Aliens opens in the United States on 29 July 2011. No release date has been set for South Africa yet, but expect it to be sometime between the end of July and October next year.

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Pfangirl said…
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