With Cowboys and Aliens, director Jon Favreau has managed to rip the award of “most explicit film title ever” from the grasp of Snakes on a Plane. The film stars Daniel Craig alongside Harrison Ford (who for once is playing the villain), and seamlessly blends Western scenery and genre conventions with Science Fiction spaceships and extra-terrestrials.
The film marks Harrison Ford’s return to the Science Fiction genre that made him so famous. Surprisingly however, Ford told STV that he was more interested in the other major aspect of the film:
“My interest in it was the cowboy part of the story, and happily that’s the prevailing component.”
Indeed the setting of the film does remain rooted in the Western genre throughout, with the Aliens serving as invaders rather than transporting the characters to another planet. Daniel Craig, who stars as hero Jake Lonergan, gave STV some insight into how he researched his part:
“I really just watched as many Westerns as I possibly could. I watched a lot of John Wayne ones, but my personal favourites are the ones from the seventies. I try and let everybody else do the talking and I do the action”.
Craig’s source of inspiration is obvious, with his portrayal of Lonergan paying homage to Sergio Leone’s Man with No Name, made famous by Clint Eastwood.
Cowboys and Aliens adds to a particularly excellent summer of blockbusters and still manages to stand out from the crowd. The film is rated 12A and is out now.
