The Cowboys were awesome, the aliens not so much. As a western this could have been a really good movie, but it ended up falling flat. The effects, cinematography and acting all stood out as very good, and even the writing when it didn’t involve alien stuff, but I was not a fan of the overall story.
So the aliens are there to get gold. Whatever, it’s a thin premise but we need to get behind it. My thinking is that a space faring civilization has clearly figured out lots of stuff we haven’t, do they really need to mine other planets for gold, even if it’s something they use for tech instead of value? There must be an easier way to accomplish whatever it is the gold does for them. Anyway, they need to gold, and have set up shop mining a shit ton of it. So why start abducting humans? To figure out their weaknesses? Why the fuck do they care, they are happily mining a shit ton of gold out in the desert with no human interference! Plus, it’s pretty clear that human weakness is basically “shoot/explode them and they die”, it’s easy. Why all the light blades and hypnotizing blobs and disintegration? Even is movies like this where the central conceit is one very far from reality, it still needs to make sense within its own internal logic. I don’t care how crazy a movie gets, if it follows its own rules I will be on board.
The Olivia Wilde storyline was just dumb. So she’s another alien from another planet, but she’s the only one who is following them. It’s never quite clear what powers she has or why she’s pretending to be human. She could have just watched from the distance, but instead decided to become romantically involved with Daniel Craig.
I just don’t care enough to go on anymore. This movie had some solid western parts, and it was shot very well, but the story was lacking.
