--- title: Cowboys & Aliens: Two Great Genres, One Mediocre Movie description: Hollywood sharpies spend endless hours at pitch meetings dreaming up hybrids of famous movies, and sometimes they hit pay dirt. "It's like Jaws, but on... canonical: https://time.com/archive/6911740/cowboys-aliens-two-great-genres-one-mediocre-movie/ author: Richard Corliss article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2011-07-28T04:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-23T15:37:39.593Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Cowboys & Aliens: Two Great Genres, One Mediocre Movie og:description: Hollywood sharpies spend endless hours at pitch meetings dreaming up hybrids of famous movies, and sometimes they hit pay dirt. "It's like Jaws, but on... og:url: https://time.com/archive/6911740/cowboys-aliens-two-great-genres-one-mediocre-movie/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt307bb7008748b291/698a4bb609208f80bf41bf1f/360_cowboys_aliens_0719.jpg?branch=production&width=360&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 360 og:image:height: 203 og:image:alt: 360_cowboys_aliens_0719.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Cowboys & Aliens: Two Great Genres, One Mediocre Movie twitter:description: Hollywood sharpies spend endless hours at pitch meetings dreaming up hybrids of famous movies, and sometimes they hit pay dirt. "It's like Jaws, but on... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt307bb7008748b291/698a4bb609208f80bf41bf1f/360_cowboys_aliens_0719.jpg?branch=production&width=360&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # Cowboys & Aliens: Two Great Genres, One Mediocre Movie (28 Jul 2011) > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with Ally. Ally is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: July 2026. ## Ally: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Ally is a digital financial services company offering online-only banking, including checking and savings accounts, through Ally.com and its mobile apps. Launched in 2009 as an original disruptor in financial services, Ally was built to challenge outdated banking norms with a simpler, more convenient way to bank. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [Richard Corliss](https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/) Jul 28, 2011 4:00 AM UTC  Harrison Ford as the iron-fisted Colonel Dolarhyde and Daniel Craig as a stranger with no memory of his past in Cowboys & Aliens. Harrison Ford as the iron-fisted Colonel Dolarhyde and Daniel Craig as a stranger with no memory of his past in Cowboys & Aliens. Timothy White / Universal Studios and DreamWorks II by [Richard Corliss](https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/) Jul 28, 2011 4:00 AM UTC Hollywood sharpies spend endless hours at pitch meetings dreaming up hybrids of famous movies, and sometimes they hit pay dirt. “It’s like _Jaws_, but on a spaceship”: _Alien_. Then the hybrid blossoms into its own format until it devolves and devours its own with _Alien vs. Predator_ and finally collapses, exhausted into the heap of _Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus_. That’s what happens when moviemakers take Spengler’s theory of the rise and decline of nations and use it as a business model. The title _Cowboys & Aliens_ — suggesting a merger of the cowboys-and-Indians Western genre with science fiction — triggered the salivary glands of some very important film people. As packed as the cast list is with stars (Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford) and vaunted character actors (Sam Rockwell, Keith Carradine, Paul Dano), it’s fair to say there’s more movie muscle behind the camera. Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer are among the producers. The director, Jon Favreau, did _Iron Man_ and _Elf_. The quintet of writers who receive script credit include guys who had worked on _Star Trek, The Proposal, Lost, Alias_ and the _Transformers_ and _Mission: Impossible_ series. Now all they had to do was dream up a movie that lived up to its title. [(Box Office: Captain America Makes Harry Potter a 98-Pound Weakling)](http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2084908,00.html#ixzz1TQp9LzVi) The film takes its name from a recent graphic novel, “created” by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, that imagines an alien race has landed in Arizona in 1873 to mine the gold that is even more precious on their planet than on ours. The story intercuts scenes in the alien camp with those involving a ragtag team of earthlings — hard-bitten cowboys, a tribe of Native Americans and a newly-arrived wagon train of settlers — and pits ray guns against rifles and bows and arrows. Beneath the comic-book sound effects of the weaponry (“SWABAMM!” “TWONG!” “KRAKABOOOOM!”), the book presses the metaphor of Manifest Destiny, with the aliens plundering the West as the white men did the Indians’ home land. Like many earlier Westerns, the _Cowboys & Aliens_ novel is a political morality play on horseback. What’s clear is that the filmmakers loved the title, hated the book. Prudently deciding that the white folks in the audience wouldn’t enjoy the movie so much if they kept being reminded that their ancestors were guilty of genocide, the writers cobbled a new story with more familiar contours. Now the hero is a nameless bravado (Craig) wandering into the frontier town of Absolution, and helping the locals and some nearby Indians fight off the invaders from another planet. The outpost is stocked with attractive stereotypes: the gruff sheriff (Carradine), the meek saloonkeeper (Rockwell) and his loving Latina wife (Ana de la Reguera), the imperious cattle baron Dolarhyde (Ford), his wastrel son (Dano) and a smart Indian (Adam Beach) he’s adopted. Also a preacher (Chris Browning), a pretty girl (Olivia Wilde) and a kid (Noah Ringer) — the whole sagebrush ensemble from Gene Autry or John Ford pictures, reunited for a retro movie with a nine-figure budget. At first the man with no name and his mysterious alien bracelet suggest a Western remake of _The Day the Earth Stood Still_: what if the Clint-Eastwoodian stranger who upends a Western town were an extraterrestrial? But it’s soon revealed that he is the all-too-human renegade Jake Lonergan, wanted for many a nefarious crime and, more important, ripe for redemption. So are the townspeople, who, like rival members of a platoon, band together to fight the otherworldly intruders. The Absolutionists also need to free their loved ones who’ve been abducted by the aliens, both for purposes of research and as expression of an intergalactic Bad Neighbor policy. [Friends with Benefits: Soft Porn, Meet Snarky Charm](http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2084650,00.html#ixzz1TQpQetLN) [Special: See Top 10 Long-Running Movie Franchises](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2083403%5F2083407,00.html) In its first half, when it’s content to plunder favorite Western tropes, the movie provides some vagrant pleasures. The supporting actors savor each element of their characters as if it were the tastiest tobacco chaw. (Kudos, in passing, to Rockwell, Browning, Beach and Ringer.) Lonergan’s entry into the Absolution saloon plays like a live-action reprise of a similar scene in _Rango_, with Johnny Depp voicing a cowboy chameleon; but that just proves the sturdiness of the genre, and the ability of modern filmmakers to honor and tweak Western conventions. And when tough-guy Craig confronts mean-man Ford, it’s like the world champion glare-off of steely blue eyes. In Hollywood’s ancient prime, maybe a third of all movies were Westerns. But those days are as dead as the horse-mounted cavalry; in the past 30 years, the genre has been resuscitated only when some powerful director wanted to make a movie like the ones he grew up loving. So _Cowboys & Aliens_ has got to get to the aliens pretty damn quick. Even here, Favreau and his crew sprinkle a few memorable moments: the aliens’ low-flying scout planes, looking like 10-winged titanium dragonflies and lassoing the townspeople for abduction; a desert vision of an upside-down steamship, which momentarily summons the ghost of Werner Herzog’s _Fitzcarraldo_; and the recurring image of Craig retrieving his cowboy hat, whether he’s fighting off human varmints or escaping from the aliens’ stronghold. A man ain’t a man without his Stetson. [(See 32 Epic Moments in Reality-TV History)](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2063886%5F2063809%5F2063838,00.html) Gradually, though, the movie sinks into ordinariness, serving up too many Spielbergian reaction shots of each cast member gawking or gulping at an alien encounter, and too many moral lessons that must be learned or taught. _Cowboys & Aliens_ is the kind of movie where anything that happens in Act One (the kid is given a knife, the saloonkeeper doesn’t know how to shoot) will predictably pay off in Act Three. And why is the ancient wisdom of Indian shamans always taken at face value? Modern movies usually mock a Christian’s belief in miracles; yet the summoning of spirits by aboriginal Americans, here as in other Westerns, is shown as a certain conduit to another, higher world. These clichés test the attention span of viewers and force them into the fallback job of seeing how the actors are doing. Wilde, as an ethereal cowgirl with a few mysteries of her own, has not a trace of 19th-century dust on her slim frame, but her runway beauty seizes the screen. Craig, in the interval between his last James Bond movie and his starring role in David Fincher’s remake of _The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo_, occupies the Lonergan character forcefully, though his appeal still stops just this side of star quality. And Ford, as he’s done ever since the early _Star Wars_ movies, overindulges in scowling and growling. He should know by now that his weathered face is its own cranky editorial comment. We wish that the movie had lived up to our expectations and its makers’ ambitions. But in films as in foods, some hybrids make sense and others don’t. _Cowboys & Aliens_ could have been the tangelo of genre-blenders. Instead, it’s more like the Jimmy Dean Chocolate Chip Pancake & Sausage on a Stick. [Special: See the 25 All-TIME Best Animated Films](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2079149%5F2079152,00.html) [All-TIME 100 Movies](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1953094,00.html) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6911740/cowboys-aliens-two-great-genres-one-mediocre-movie/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6911740/cowboys-aliens-two-great-genres-one-mediocre-movie/"},"headline":"Cowboys & Aliens: Two Great Genres, One Mediocre Movie (28 Jul 2011)","datePublished":"2011-07-28T04:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-23T15:37:39.593Z","description":"Hollywood sharpies spend endless hours at pitch meetings dreaming up hybrids of famous movies, and sometimes they hit pay dirt. \"It's like Jaws, but on...","url":"https://time.com/archive/6911740/cowboys-aliens-two-great-genres-one-mediocre-movie/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt307bb7008748b291/698a4bb609208f80bf41bf1f/360_cowboys_aliens_0719.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Richard Corliss","url":"https://time.com/author/richard-corliss/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt307bb7008748b291/698a4bb609208f80bf41bf1f/360_cowboys_aliens_0719.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"360_cowboys_aliens_0719.jpg","caption":"Harrison Ford as the iron-fisted Colonel Dolarhyde and Daniel Craig as a stranger with no memory of his past in Cowboys & Aliens.","creditText":"Timothy White / Universal Studios and DreamWorks II","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6911740/cowboys-aliens-two-great-genres-one-mediocre-movie/","name":"Cowboys & Aliens: Two Great Genres, One Mediocre Movie (28 Jul 2011)"}}]}] ```