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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.

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