- Based on the graphic novel by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, Cowboys & Aliens is set in 1800s Arizona, where the local cowboys, headed by gunslinger Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig), and the indigenous Apache tribe have been feuding fiercely for quite a while. Their skirmish is interrupted, however, by the appearance of a spaceship, commanded by an alien creature that's bent on enslaving the human race. It's time for a six-gun shoot-out between these cattle rustlers and space invaders, and there might even be a temporary peace between the cowboys and Indians as they both take aim at these extraterrestrial uninvited guests. Jon Favreau directs from a script by Star Trek scribes Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, with help from "Lost"'s Damon Lindelof. Olivia Wilde, Harrison Ford, and Sam Rockwell fill out the headlining cast. ~ Cammila Collar, Rovi
- Menu
Disc #1 -- Cowboys & Aliens
Play
Scenes
Bonus
Finding the Story
Outer-Space Icon
The Scope of the Spectacle
Feature Commentary With Director Jon Favreau: On
Feature Commentary With Director Jon Favreau: Off
Setup
Spoken Language: English 5.1
Spoken Language: Español 5.1
Spoken Language: Français 5.1
DVS (Descriptive Video Service)
Feature Commentary With Director Jon Favreau
Subtitles: English SDH
Subtitles: Español
Subtitles: Français
Subtitles: Off
- Chapters
Disc #1 -- Cowboys & Aliens
1. Chapter 1 [7:38]
2. Chapter 2 [6:57]
3. Chapter 3 [7:14]
4. Chapter 4 [5:23]
5. Chapter 5 [10:00]
6. Chapter 6 [5:45]
7. Chapter 7 [4:42]
8. Chapter 8 [4:52]
9. Chapter 9 [3:38]
10. Chapter 10 [2:57]
11. Chapter 11 [3:06]
12. Chapter 12 [4:35]
13. Chapter 13 [5:44]
14. Chapter 14 [5:42]
15. Chapter 15 [7:31]
16. Chapter 16 [4:08]
17. Chapter 17 [3:29]
18. Chapter 18 [6:08]
19. Chapter 19 [6:36]
20. Chapter 20 [7:39]
- Features
Conversations with Jon Favreau
Igniting the Sky:
The making of Cowboys & Aliens
-Finding the story
-A call to action
-Absolution
-Outer-space icon
-The scope of the spectacle
Feature commentary with director Jon Favreau
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Directors
Jon Favreau
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Producers
Brian Grazer
Ron Howard
Alex Kurtzman
Roberto Orci
Scott Mitchell Rosenberg
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Composers (Music Score)
Harry Gregson-Williams
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Co-Producers
K.C. Hodenfield
Ervin Rustemagic
Daniel Forcey
Chris Wade
Rich Marincic
Karen Gilchrist
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Editors
Jim May
Dan Lebental
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Screen Writers
Alex Kurtzman
Roberto Orci
Damon Lindelof
Mark Fergus
Hawk Ostby
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Set Designers
Kevin Cross
Suzan Wexler
John Chichester
Lorrie Campbell
Mark Hitchler
Amahl H. Lovato
Tetsuo "Tex" Kadonaga
Anne Porter
Others
Additional Music - Halli Cauthery
Animator - Industrial Light & Magic
Armorer - Brett Andrews
Art Director - Lauren Polizzi
Assistant Costume Designer - Jenny Eagan
Assistant Costume Designer - Marjorie McCown
Assistant Editor - Stacey Frederick
Assistant Editor - Michael Polier
Assistant Editor - Britni Ziegler Peters
Book Author - Scott Mitchell Rosenberg
Casting - Sarah Halley Finn
Cinematographer - Matthew J. Libatique
Composer (Music Score) - Harry Gregson-Williams
Costume Designer - Mary Zophres
Costumes Supervisor - Helen R. Monaghan
Department Head Hair - Gloria P. Casny
Department Head Makeup - Jane Galli
Executive Producer - Jon Favreau
Executive Producer - Steven Spielberg
Executive Producer - Denis L. Stewart
Executive Producer - Bobby Cohen
Executive Producer - Ryan Kavanaugh
Executive Producer - Randy Greenberg
First Assistant Director - K.C. Hodenfield
First Assistant Editor - Sandra Granovsky
First Assistant Editor - Dawn Michelle King
Hair Styles - Zoey Tahir
Hair Styles - Michael Moore
Hair Styles - Roxy Hodenfield
Hair Styles - Berlinda Cantu-Lewis
Key Costumer - Daniel Grant North
Key Grip - Tana Dubbe
Key Make-up - Karen McDonald
Leadman - Ernest Sanchez
Leadman - Scott Bobbitt
Leadman - Eric Ramirez
Location Manager - Michael Dellheim
Makeup - Bill Corso
Makeup - Michael Mosher
Makeup - Donald J. Mowat
Makeup - Corey Welk
Music Editor - Tanya Noel Hill
Post Production Coordinator - Helen Pai
Post Production Coordinator - Justin Thomas Ostensen
Post Production Supervisor - Erica Frauman
Production Coordinator - Annie Jablonski
Production Designer - Scott A. Chambliss
Production Sound Mixer - Mark Ulano
Production Supervisor - Noelle Green
Properties Master - Russell Bobbitt
Prosthetic Makeup Effects - Georgia Allen
Re-Recording Mixer - Christopher Boyes
Re-Recording Mixer - Lora Hirschberg
Screen Story - Steve Oedekerk
Screen Story - Mark Fergus
Screen Story - Hawk Ostby
Script Supervisor - Trudy G. Ramirez
Second Assistant Director - Chris Castaldi
Second Unit Director - Roger Guyett
Second Unit Director - Terry Leonard
Set Decorator - Karen Manthey
Sound Effects Editor - Scott Guitteau
Sound Effects Editor - J.R. Grubbs
Sound/Sound Designer - David Farmer
Sound/Sound Designer - Christopher Boyes
Special Effects Supervisor - Daniel Sudick
Stunts - Freddie Hice
Stunts Coordinator - Tom Harper
Supervising Animator - Marc Chu
Supervising Art Director - Christopher Burian-Mohr
Supervising Sound Editor - Frank Eulner
Unit Production Manager - Denis L. Stewart
Unit Production Manager - Basil Bryant Grillo
Visual Effects - Industrial Light & Magic
Visual Effects - Shade VFX
Visual Effects Editor - Paul M. Wagner
Visual Effects Producer - Kimberly Nelson Locascio
Visual Effects Producer - Stephanie Hornish
Visual Effects Producer - Peter Nicolai
Visual Effects Producer - David Van Dyke
Visual Effects Supervisor - Roger Guyett
Visual Effects Supervisor - Bryan Godwin
Visual Effects Supervisor - Eddie Pasquarello
At first glance, the concept of combining a traditional Western with an alien invasion film may seem far too silly to ever work, yet director
Jon Favreau and his small army of screenwriters make
Cowboys & Aliens feel as natural as a whiskey-fueled bar brawl. Although the sci-fi element is evident from its opening scene, this satisfying hybrid stays true to Western conventions with a fidelity that might surprise audiences, thanks to the fact that the filmmakers find the perfect connective material to seamlessly fuse the archetypes of both science fiction and the Old West.
Awakening in the unforgiving Arizona desert with no memory of who he is or where he's from, a bewildered cowboy (
Daniel Craig) realizes he's badly wounded, and discovers a mysterious high-tech bracelet affixed to his left wrist. Subsequently wandering into a once-prosperous mining town, the stranger is patched up by sympathetic priest Meacham (
Clancy Brown) before incurring the wrath of entitled, impetuous rancher's son Percy Dollarhyde (
Paul Dano), whose powerful father, Woodrow (
Harrison Ford), practically owns the depressed outpost. Almost as soon as the mysterious newcomer earns the respect of the locals for standing up to Percy, who wounds a deputy while intimidating the townspeople, he's identified as wanted bandit Jake Lonergan by Sheriff John Taggart (
Keith Carradine) and thrown in jail. That night, just as Sheriff Taggart prepares to ship Percy and Jake off to court, Woodrow rides into town determined to free his son. Before he can do so, however, alien spaceships set the settlement ablaze while snatching locals -- including Percy -- up into the sky. In the process, Jake uses his bracelet to take down one of the alien spacecrafts. Momentarily putting their differences aside to rescue their kin from the extraterrestrial invaders, Jake, Woodrow, his ranch hand Nat (
Adam Beach), bartender Doc (
Sam Rockwell), enigmatic beauty Ella (
Olivia Wilde), and a fistful of other locals begin tracking the creature that escaped the downed craft, and quickly find that hostile Native American tribes are the least of their worries.
For a film like
Cowboys & Aliens to work, each leg of its title must be strong enough to support the weight of the outlandish concept. Anyone familiar with the
Iron Man films already knows that director
Jon Favreau has a natural knack for sci-fi, and thanks to a tense, expertly shot three-on-one fight that opens
Cowboys & Aliens, we can confidently surmise that his talents extend to the Western genre as well. With the mysterious drifter, the hard-drinking priest, the hair-trigger bully, the brutish rancher, and the barroom beauty all making appearances early in the film, some might accuse
Favreau of kowtowing to Western stereotypes. The more the plot begins to play out, however, the clearer it becomes that these aren't stereotypes but archetypes, and the writers are smartly using their moral ambiguity to keep the audience off balance as the mystery of the main plot builds. This approach is especially effective in the case of
Ford's character, Woodrow Dolarhyde -- a feared local figure whose complex true nature gradually comes into focus along with the true intentions of the malevolent aliens. And while it would have been simple to merely replace the hostile aliens of the traditional Western with a foreign threat from beyond the stars, the writers of
Cowboys & Aliens make it clear that they're not simply painting by numbers when our posse crosses paths with a decimated tribe and the two groups unite in order to conquer a common threat -- which is made genuinely frightening thanks to both an unsettling creature design and a tense scene that echoes films like
Communion and
"Fire in the Sky" as it plays on our darkest fears of alien abduction. The fact that the aliens are not only hideous to behold but ferocious and lightning fast as well makes the struggle against them all the more intense.
But while the direction and screenwriting combine to make
Cowboys & Aliens wildly entertaining, it's the talented cast that might help to draw in more skeptical viewers -- and thankfully they're all shooting straight here.
Craig is appropriately stoic as the amnesiac stranger who drifts into the small town;
Ford is captivatingly complex as the wealthy rancher who isn't the sadist he initially appears to be; and
Rockwell lends the poker-faced proceedings a subtle dose of comic relief as the bespectacled barkeep who just wants a little respect in his rough-and-tumble town.
So, to moviegoers who appreciate a good genre mash-up and a good time at the flicks: saddle up, because
Cowboys & Aliens is just the kind of wild ride that makes the summer movie season the most fun time of the year. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi