What Went Wrong: Cowboys & Aliens
By Shalimar Sahota
February 12, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Back in May 1997, having already sold the rights to Men in Black to Sony Columbia, Platinum Studios’ Scott Mitchell Rosenberg was at the William Morris Agency pitching ideas for unpublished comic books that could potentially be made into films. One such idea included concept art, with Rosenberg showing off a poster of a cowboy on horseback pointing his gun at a huge looming spaceship. The title was Cowboys & Aliens. William Morris agents Alan Gasmer and Rob Carlson quickly managed to sell this “concept” to Universal and DreamWorks, with Steve Oedekerk attached to write and direct the film. Not long after, writers Jeffrey Boam and Chris Hauty came to work on the script, taking it in a very dark direction. Then in 1999 Wild Wild West happened and production slowed to a crawl. In 2002, David Hayter delivered a draft of the script that was considered so dark and serious that it would be unfilmable.
During the summer of 2004, production shifted to Sony Columbia. In an interview with Comic Book Resources, Rosenberg said, “We have a great relationship with [DreamWorks], but on Cowboys & Aliens it turned out that the kind of take we wanted and the take they wanted were different. So, we asked them and contractually they didn't have to, but because of the relationship, they said okay and we were able to move to Sony.” Rosenberg and Sony Columbia wanted to make it more comedic and so this time the script went through Thomas Dean Donnelly, Joshua Oppenheimer and Thompson Evans. The lack of momentum meant that the project was soon dropped. However, Rosenberg’s Cowboys & Aliens was eventually published as a graphic novel in 2006.
In 2007, Imagine Entertainment’s Ron Howard came across the graphic novel and was sold on the cover image. “The cover sort of said it all,” said Howard. “I thought it was great. I’d heard that Steven [Spielberg] had developed it for a while…I got one of the scripts, and I looked at it, and I had a point of view about how you could recalibrate the tone of it and the balance. We got together and had a talk about it.” Universal and DreamWorks were suddenly back in the game, with Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer on board as producers.
“I had given up on the project until Ron rekindled the idea,” said Spielberg. “He brought a whole bunch of new elements that we had not considered the first time we developed the screenplay…the script that we developed was much more tongue-in-cheek…it didn’t have much of the traditional western about it.” Iron Man writers Hawk Ostby and Mark Fergus were hired to go over the script. This time the writers had an actual graphic novel to work from rather than just a title and an image.
During 2008, Transformers writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci took over the script, along with Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof. In August 2009 the script was turned in. Kurtzman mentioned during a Screenwriting Expo that their screenplay deviates from the graphic novel immensely. “We went away from it,” he said. “We took the elements we all loved about it and took our own story.” Jon Favreau was one of the directors that gave it a read and in September 2009 it was announced that he had officially signed on to direct the film.
The story begins with a stranger (Daniel Craig) waking up in the middle of nowhere. He has no idea who he is, why he’s wounded and why he has a weird mystical bracelet on his arm. Making his way to the town of Absolution, a wanted poster confirms his identity as Jake Lonergan. Questioned by the equally mysterious Ella (Olivia Wilde) about his memory and his bracelet, Lonergan is eventually arrested by sheriff John Taggart (Keith Carradine) and is soon ready to be transported to Santa Fe for trial. Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) suddenly appears, wanting to question Lonergan about his stolen gold. However, before being taken to court, Absolution is attacked by strange shiny objects from the sky that kidnap some of the townsfolk, including Woodrow’s son Percy (Paul Dano). Now Woodrow and Lonergan must band together to save the people of Absolution.
Shooting began in June 2010. Favreau immediately set about working on a ten minute sequence to show-off at the San Diego Comic Con, which was taking place the following month. Speaking to Empire magazine, he said, “From the minute I was hired, the first meeting I had with the studios, the first thing I said was, ‘I have to have this sequence ready to show.’ It was very very tough on the crew – we shot six day weeks and began with a very ambitious action sequence that usually you would work your way up to.” Showcasing a sequence from the opening of the film, it included the attack on Absolution and received an incredibly positive reaction. “I felt it was important to plant our flag early, to show this isn’t a comedy or a tongue-in-cheek pastiche of the western genre,” said Favreau. “The title might lead people to believe that it’s a bit lighter than what we’re actually doing. And by showing them ten minutes of the film in a finished state, now people know what to expect.”
The first poster and trailer appeared in November 2010. The poster featured Daniel Craig as Jake Lonergan with his back turned and his face mostly obscured in shadow. His left arm featured an alien bracelet weapon on his wrist. His right hand held a shotgun. It was a very gutsy poster that appeared to be going down the Unforgiven route (that film launched with a powerful teaser poster of Clint Eastwood with his back to the camera while holding a gun). While it did raise an air of mystery (what’s the sparkly thing on his wrist?) the main difference was that Daniel Craig is no Clint Eastwood.
The response to the first trailer had the New York Times reporting how the film “may be caught in a web of false expectation.” This was after the trailer played before a screening of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 and despite the serious tone, audiences were laughing. It prompted distributors Universal to start a campaign to change expectations people had about the film.
A week before it was released, the film had its world premiere at the San Diego Comic Con in July 2011. During the days leading up to the film’s release, mixed reviews came in. It was interesting to note that even some of the positive reviews mentioned how the film failed to fully deliver.
Cowboys & Aliens had a huge production budget of $163 million that was shared between Universal, DreamWorks and Imagine Entertainment. It opened on Friday, July 29, 2011, with Universal forecasting an opening weekend take between $40 million - $45 million. There was a cause of alarm as its opening day gross of $13 million was bested by one of the other wide openers, The Smurfs, which earned $13.2 million. With Cowboys & Aliens predicted to win the weekend, how would it look that a big budget blockbuster headlined by Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig were to be beaten to the top spot by The Smurfs? Answer – it would look amazingly bad.
After the totals for Saturday and Sunday came in, Cowboys & Aliens had been confirmed as the #1 film, but only just, with a total of $36.4 million. The big surprise was that The Smurfs was close behind with a take of $35.6 million. The good news was short-lived. With a turbulent production history spanning 14 years in the making, Cowboys & Aliens spent just three weeks inside the US top ten, earning a little over $100 million. Paramount handled distribution overseas, with the film making an additional $74.5 million. It earned a total worldwide gross of $174.8 million. Oh dear. Just to rub it in, The Smurfs outgrossed Cowboys & Aliens in the long run and became a franchise.
Given the ridiculousness of how it sounds, some people probably stayed away after passing judgment on the title alone. Favreau said of the title, “[People] react very strongly to it. They either get mad at it, or they love it, or they cheer for it, or they’re confused by it, but they don’t forget it. And in this day and age, there’s a value to that.” Yes, there are people out there that judge a film by its title.
Cowboys & Aliens happens to be very straightforward. Aliens come, cowboys fight it out with them, cowboys win. The end. Fair play for the serious slant, but because of the complete lack of humor, the film most likely lost a good chunk of its potential audience. Cowboys & Aliens sounds like a fun blockbuster, but when Universal is having to spearhead a campaign to inform people that it’s not funny and very serious, then those moviegoers looking for a fun comedy are going in the other direction.
The film opens so well as we follow the mysterious loner Jake Lonergan to the town of Absolution. There’s a showstopper of a set-piece as later at night UFOs attack the town. Lonergan manages to shoot down a UFO and looks cool doing it, but after that raid on the town, the film goes downhill with little else that could be descried as a standout set-piece. Midway through, the revelation that Olivia Wilde’s character Ella is from another planet is probably the one minor surprise. Yet despite this amazingness, all she’s able to offer is background information about the invading aliens. It seems a missed opportunity that she has no spaceship, no otherworldly weapon and no mystical gadget.
That Ron Howard, Alan Gasmer and Rob Carlson were sold on the cover image of a cowboy on horseback pointing his gun at a huge looming spaceship, it’s rather unfortunate that no such scene appears in the film itself. The closest we get is a five second scene where Lonergan and Ella are on horseback, being chased by a small UFO that grabs Ella. It’s another missed opportunity that could have made for a great opening or flashback sequence.
The aliens themselves look incredibly menacing, but apart from that there isn’t really anything else unique about them. Their motives are pretty much the same as almost every other bad guy you come across in a western – they want gold. They don’t say anything, either (well they don’t come with subtitles), so it’s not really made clear why they abduct the townsfolk.
In November 2011, a few months after its release, President of Universal Ronald Meyer addressed a number of students and members of the public at the Savannah Film Festival, talking about his rise through Hollywood and some of Universal’s films. Talk turned to Universal’s disappointments, with Meyer calling Cowboys & Aliens “a big loss.” He went on describe how the film “wasn’t good enough,” saying, “All those little creatures bouncing around were crappy. I think it was a mediocre movie, and we all did a mediocre job with it...I have to take first responsibility because I’m part of it, but we all did a mediocre job and we paid the price for it. It happens. They’re talented people. Certainly you couldn’t have more talented people involved in Cowboys & Aliens, but it took, you know, ten smart and talented people to come up with a mediocre movie. It just happens.”
Meyer makes a valid point. Out of the 12 writers that worked on the film, only six were considered by the Writers Guild of America to have done enough to warrant a credit: Steve Oedekerk, Hawk Ostby, Mark Fergus, Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, and Damon Lindelof. Taking into account the numerous writers and producers that worked on the film, each one adding their own ideas as to what a Cowboy & Aliens film should be, it’s disappointing to see that in balancing it all out the end result is an average film.
In January 2013, Favreau was a guest on Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast show and commented on why he felt Cowboys & Aliens did not work. “I learned the lesson that you can make the best Bacon Sundae in the world but if people don't want to eat that flavor of ice cream...and the name was misleading. With so many [actors] associated with it, it was seen as the big dog and we felt we were underdogs with how obscure the material was...The name that was so interesting made everyone think it was going to be a comedy and maybe it would've been better served with a different vision...” While Favreau enjoyed the experience working with the likes of Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, Damon Lindelof, Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig, the feeling was that despite all the amazing talent, the bottom line is, is there a big audience out there for a film called Cowboys & Aliens?
I was sold on Cowboys & Aliens before I saw any footage, having always been drawn to the idea of a somewhat supernatural western. Then the trailer came in and I was definitely there. Also, seeing all the talent involved, it looked like a winner to me. I viewed the film at a preview screening and was left disappointed. All that talent and this was the best they could come up with? While the very idea of cowboys and aliens sounds fantastical, what Favreau delivered was a western that plays it safe, ticking all the western tropes. The bad guys just end up coming off much worse because they’ve been substituted for aliens, and since they don’t speak we never hear their side of the story. The end result comes across as an interesting curiosity that is unlikely to be attempted again.