We asked an agent, a producer, and a publicist for insight on why C&A bombed so badly - and what the fallout might be for its makers and Hollywood at large.
As Harrison Ford scrambles into the nearest refrigerator, we at Grantland are left to wonder just what happened.
#COWBOYS AND ALIENS 2 MOVIE#
Note: Oh, blessed joy! The movie is in glorious 2-D.Despite a premise that fused two once-reliable genres and a cast featuring both Indiana Jones and James Bond, Jon Favreau’s $163 million Cowboys & Aliens got smurfing smurfed at the box office over the weekend, opening to a measly $36.2 million - well below even the modest $45 million its makers had predicted. On their home world, there must be fortunes to be made in opening manicure shops. One shudders to envision the use of these limbs during sex. The aliens here have chest cavities that open to extrude three-fingered hands, slimy with mucus. Ever since " Alien," we've had the phenomenon of aliens who unfold to reveal wicked inner parts. One alien element has become almost traditional. There is more genuine suspense when the rancher's loopy son ( Paul Dano) starts shooting up the town than when countless aliens appear, resembling a fusion of gorillas and lobsters. Yet I suspect the big audiences drawn to this concept will find themselves more deeply drawn into the conventional Western material in the opening scenes, before the aliens attack. A competent director - Favreau, say - could have ditched the ridiculous aliens and made a straight Western with the same cast, but today there's small chance of that. "True Grit," " Appaloosa" and " 3:10 to Yuma" were good, but limited in their demographic appeal. The last one kids liked was " Rango," an animated cartoon. We are told, however, that the Western is a dead genre. Sam Rockwell's Doc is the kind of small businessman who has come West while seeking his fortune among hard men. Harrison Ford, as the rancher, embodies the kind of man who comes riding into town at the head of his private posse and issues orders to everyone. Daniel Craig, cold-eyed and lean, plays a character familiar in the genre think of the Ringo Kid or Doc Holliday, bad guys who rise to goodness. You know, the old-fashioned kind, without spaceships. The acting from the large cast is of a high standard, Craig and Ford were more or less born into their roles, and director Jon Favreau actually develops his characters and gives them things to do, instead of posing them in front of special effects. As preposterous moneymakers go, it's ambitious and well-made. The movie will no doubt be popular and deserves success. It's almost too good to be true to learn, via a trade review, that this movie was inspired not by a comic book but by its cover. I call these monsters bug-eyed not to be unkind but to trace their lineage back to the mother lode of BEMs on the covers of such pulp mags as Thrilling Wonder Stories.
Their other purpose in journeying unimaginable distances across the void is to use mysterious forces to suck up gold - coins, watches, rings, whatever. But mostly they strafe the town, drop explosive charges behind characters but rarely upon them and reel up human victims into their smaller flying ships in order (need we be told) to study them. Oh, they arrive in a spaceship that's taller than a skyscraper, and they must have designed it.
The aliens, as usual, show limited signs of intelligence. Daniel Craig plays Lonergan, the stagecoach killer, Harrison Ford plays the not enigmatically named Woodrow Dolarhyde, and Keith Carradine is Sheriff Taggart, who has his work cut out for him. Humanity is in danger, and it's up to the rough-hewn cowboys of the Old West to save us.