This is going to be spoiler-free review, so let me just say this movie is real bad. It's not even pleasing to look at. You;d think there would be some nice shots of the scenery since it is a pseudo-western film, but often times the camera is way too close to a person, colors are overly saturated or the contrast is too high. You would think with the premise of the wild west and aliens would be fun or exciting, but instead the fell flat and seemed joyless.

COWBOYS & ALIENS is one of those "what it says on the tin" type movies, obvious in content from the title. I wasn't expecting to like it much, feeling that modern-day science fiction films tend to be all about the big CGI effects without much warmth or character to go with them, but I didn't have worried. This film is refreshingly old-fashioned in feel and for two-thirds of the running time focuses on being a western rather than a sci-fi flick, which is all well and good.Things kick off well with Steve McQueen-alike Daniel Craig waking up in the desert, with an alien wristwatch and a cracking headache/case of amnesia. He's soon involved in a plot involving arch criminal Harrison Ford, but any local enmity is put on hold when the aliens show up in an impressively destructive set-piece. What I liked most about this film is that it's straight-up serious, rather than being loaded with annoying and goofy humour. The performances are therefore better than hoped for, and the direction is fine, with the early, brutal fight scenes really proving successful. Sure, it does go on a little too long, and the ending descends into effects-filled nonsense, but overall this is winning and watchable.

Mixing two B-movie genres does not give you an A movie. It gives you a lousy B movie, if that. Pretty much a set-piece action-porn flick, but with a huge budget. I heard about this reading on Favreau's movie Chef, a much better use of your time and his money. I also read somewhere that Favreau was mad at some famous actor who dissed this movie when it came out, as if that could have really accounted for the flop. No, all of SAG praising this turkey would not have made it watchable.Because Hollywood types live in this make-believe netherworld they have no idea how real humans beings would behave. They also have little understanding of how aliens would behave. Here is a realistic re-write. Big alien ship lands in the desert. OK they start drilling for gold, lets allow that stupidity. The Indians are a little freaked. The aliens start grabbing up a few Indians to eat, mmmmmm red meat. Then as they scout around, they notice the giant cattle ranch. Cattle are way meatier than Indians so they take all the cattle and start eating them. This would actually provide some interesting dynamic, when the big-man-on-campus cattle baron has all his cattle taken away. Suddenly he has no wealth, no power, no jobs. Lets see how people treat him then. Now he might have a reason to go fight the aliens. He sure would have not risked his life for his milquetoast son.As the aliens quietly mine for gold and munch on cattle, the locals work themselves into a lather. The aliens don't have to abduct anyone to do anal probing, they know all they need to from the first few Indians they ate. Stick a giant claw into a human and he dies. Research complete. Let's eat.OK, OK, so the townspeople and Indians join together and attack the Alien spaceship. Since these creatures have the capacity for interstellar travel, they sure don't need to engage in hand-to-hand combat. No, they just zap every human in about 3 minutes and the humans are all dead. Also, since the Aliens have surely mastered genetics, they don't look like crude creepy turtle-people. They all look like TV newscasters, all of them. So with their chiseled features and great enunciation, slowly but surely the audience begins to sympathize with them, instead of those dirty townspeople or savage Indians.So by the time the movie ends, we are delighted the TV newscaster aliens have killed all the humans, eaten all the cattle, and taken all the gold. Based on this level of narcissism and rapaciousness, we will no doubt nominate them to political office where they can start wars to kill more humans and graft more gold.Roll credits.I once read that the writers of a situation comedy reach creative bankruptcy when they do the "amnesia episode". I agree, so that aspect has to go. Also the alien-as-pretty-girl trope. That way you don't get distracted for 12 minuets wondered "How the hell did she get here?!" It is already a completely ridiculous premise, so chopping up the timeline just makes it more confusing. Straighten out the timeline, like a good B-movie. Fire all the high-dollar actors. Replace Daniel Craig with some young teen idol. I don't know who that is these days, but like DeCaprio 20 years ago. One star, one big paycheck. Cut the casting budget. Five townspeople, five Indians, three aliens. No dogs or kids, its tough enough having horses on set.20 million budget, 85 million domestic gross. Plenty of action figure tie-ins. Maybe a ride at Universal Studios where you ride a mechanical horse up to the spaceship and then get tasered. Legal has to work out some kinks, but I think it would really go big. Anything would better than this movie, anything.(Special tip o' the hat to the programmers at IMDb who won't let me write B + B = B- in the title, since they think it is shouting.)

A spaceship arrives in Arizona, 1873, to take over the Earth, starting with the Wild West region. A posse of cowboys and natives are all that stand in their way. The first time i saw the trailer for this film i thought it was lame i mean common Cowboys & Aliens? then i saw the film and i wasn't impressed but after seeing it again god damn it was a pretty good movie Daniel Craig was pretty good so was Olivia Wilde, Harrison Ford, Clancy Brown, Sam Rockwell and honestly everyone did a pretty good job although Paul Dano was useless. My main issue is that i wanted more Ford and more adventure but the film was good besides those 2 small problems and the cgi was amazing maybe the best i've seen in years especially the first contact with the Aliens was terrific if a movie such as this can take a 6.0 and a forgettable superhero sequel such as Iron Man 2 can have a 7.0 shouldn't Zathura also be higher than a 6.1? My point is that those 2 films that were directed by the same director were way better than Iron Man 2 and if you can study this film better and give it a chance i believe that you will not be disappointed 9/10.