Cowboys & Aliens: A Review

Note: Originally I meant this to be a review of the movie but it turned into a movie rant.  If that doesn't bother you, keep reading.

*WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW (NOT LIMITED TO JUST THE MOVIE AT HAND)*

Over the weekend, I went to see Cowboys & Aliens.  My fiancé said that she wanted to see it after seeing the preview that played before the last Harry Potter movie.  While I expected that it would be a fun movie to watch from an action point of view, I was pretty sure that the plot would be terrible.  After all, with a name like Cowboys & Aliens, what chance did it really have?

Well, I was wrong (and you won't hear me say that very often).  The plot was very good and even allowed me to suspend my disbelief in the fact that band of cowboys and Native Americans could possibly defeat the advance scouts of a space-faring race of aliens.  I won't give a plot re-cap here because that can so easily be found elsewhere.  What I do want to say is that I appreciated the ending of this movie more than the usual Hollywood ending.

Usually a movie ends with one character selflessly giving up his/her life to eliminate the threat to everyone else and everyone else pretty much survives and goes on to live happily ever after.  The main character goes largely untouched and everything is just hunky-dory.  Take the most recent Harry Potter movie: despite being at the center of the near-destruction of the wizarding world, witnessing the deaths of countless friends, and going toe to toe with the nastiest wizard ever, Harry Potter still has this wonderful perfect life afterwards (don't even get me started on the death and back-to-life thing.  Worst ending to an epic series ever).  On the other end of the spectrum would be Oedipus Rex.  At the end of the story, everything goes completely wrong for the hero: he learns that he killed his dad and married his mom and puts his own eyes out.  I can't always hope for an end like that, but I can hope for something a little more like Lord of the Rings, where Frodo returns, broken, to the Shire to find that he can't adjust back to life and eventually fades into the distance with the elves.

This is a little like what I found in Cowboys & Aliens.  While there was the typical sacrifice of a character near and dear to the protagonist to seal the antagonists' doom, the main character just wasn't quite able to put his life back together.  All he can do is just ride out of town without a plan or a friend.

It may be strange to not want a happy ending at the movies, but here's why: I can't believe in the perfect hero who saves the day and emerges unscathed.  I can't believe in a person like Superman or Harry Potter.  I can believe in a hero who tries his/her hardest (and may, like Frodo, ultimately fail) and emerges scarred.  The fact that a hero can exist, even if he is not invincible, is what gives me hope.

-Lane