Cowboys and Aliens is a cocktail of fun, silliness, and attempts at transparent meta-commentary. The film begins with a mystery as Jake Lannergan (Daniel Craig) awakes in 1873 in the Arizona dessert, and we, by default, are introduced to our first alien: a man unaware of his surroundings and completely foreign to the rest of the characters and us. This is intriguing inasmuch as identity in a lawless, embryonic town is as important as the ability to shoot straight – or get lucky from time to time – but there’s little intrigue about why he has no memory. The cuff on his left hand bespeaks a visit from a technologically advanced species, and the first alien attack occurs within the next fifteen minutes, so the mystery is quashed.
Prior to the alien attack, we meet Percy (Paul Dano), a well-acted character, but a callow, whiny brat whose living through his father’s reputation. His father is Colonol Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), and his prominence is from the wealth of cattle that he brings through Absolution, the aptly named town, I suppose. Because of this, Percy shoots random things: signs, windows, a deputy, and little if any punitive actions are taken.
Harrison Ford is a neat edition to this film in that he strays from the action hero and becomes the curmudgeon, something done rather well here, though no match for Eastwood who has perfected the role, but I digress. That said, Favreau films Ford well and doesn’t expose his age – something that Spielberg failed to do in Kingdom of the I Crystal Skull. In that film, Indie looked like he was ten years beyond retirement and badly in need of a Rascal – as opposed to a motorcycle.
The most interesting part of this film – and really any film released in the last few years that features villainous aliens (including the recently released The Avengers) – is the potential commentary on ethnocentrism, but I’m not necessarily sure that this film or its ilk are preaching for acceptance and camaraderie. Sure the Cowboys and the Native Americans get along momentarily, but it’s rather ironic. Both are fighting to keep their property and rights to the gold that lies within the mountains and the dessert. And what makes it doubly ironic is that the Native Americans – and the criminals — become a de facto human shield supporting the cowboys, without any notable upside. Aside from taking the gold, the aliens don’t seem to want to dominate the world; they just want to pilfer it, so the Native American interest is a bit nebulous and leads me to wonder whether or not this movie is a warning about immigration.
The premise here is that these aliens are taking the money, the people, and the property that belongs to the people of Absolution. Aren’t concerns about unemployment, property, and deluding a race topics of conversation that usually infiltrate a discussion about immigration, in particular the issue of illegal immigration. For those who feel that the deluding of a race is an anachronistic issue and more fit for the likes of Lothrop Stoddard, you might want to revisit the rather tenuous Democratic primary between President Obama and Hillary Clinton in 2008. On the campaign trail, both candidates offered opinions about the depletion of the race and the rise of minority races because of untracked or blatantly illegal immigration. This is not a defense or a castigation of any of those opinions, but the alien-invasion genre seems to warn against the loss of that which we have. Sure, there’s an undercurrent theme that promotes team work, but the work itself is pragmatic: unity for sustained commerce.
Something else of note in Cowboys and Aliens is the extraterrestrial spaceship, which burrows into the earth, siphons out the molten ore in drips and drabs, and looks an awful lot like the base of an oil derrick. Certainly, it’s not anything out of There Will Be Blood, but there’s an uncanny echo here.
It’s strange that the alien-movie genre has taken two forms: one in which the alien crash lands and the Earthlings become ravenous experimenters or oppressors (Paul, District 9, Cacoon), and one where the aliens invade and the globe needs to unite to form an ephemeral union (Independence Day, Cowboys and Aliens, Battle: LA, The Avengers). In the former, we learn about tolerance. In the latter, we are preached intolerance under the threat of oppression. The optimist might say that an extraterrestrial threat would impel a ubiquitous epiphany of equality across the globe, but the optimist would be incorrect. African Americans helped the United States in both World Wars, yet they were segregated upon returning to American soil. Unity might prevent annihilation, but memory is fleeting where progress must progress.
The cynic would see the ending of Cowboys and Aliens and agree. As Dolarhyde and Sherriff Taggert (Keith Carradine) try to convince Lonergan to stay on as a deputy because of the town’s imminent population boom, there are many white folks circulating through the streets. The assimilated Native American or two are packing the horses, but the racial diversity is non-existent. Those in the human shield have retired to their teepees and prepared for the next migration.
