Cowboys and aliens. What's not to like about that combination? Sure, westerns are hardly the guaranteed box office draws they once were back in the 50s and 60s, but with Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford leading the cast and director Jon Favreau on board there was good reason to look forward to Cowboys Vs. Aliens. While the end result wasn't quite the unmitigated disaster of a film like WIll Smith's godawful The Wild Wild West (which shoehorned in the giant robotic spider just to please the demands of a producer), Cowboys Vs. Aliens was still a bit of a mess which chopped up and scattered the elements of the two genres rather than blending them smoothly into a coherent whole. Favreau has proven himself to be a great director of spectacle-packed science fiction movies but here he completely misstepped. The result felt like an extended two hour gimmick with no real substance.
