Here we have a film that reunites beloved characters James Bond and Indiana Jones for the first time since their epic crossover Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where the two battled Nazis. In this time traveling sequel Jones and Bond are trapped in the 19th Century and must put aside their differences once more as they try to stop an alien invasion-
What’s that? This isn’t a James Bond/Indiana Jones crossover? And neither was The Last Crusade? Huh. That’s lame.
In reality Cowboys & Aliens is the latest Hollywood film based on a comic book no one has ever heard of. Apparently the story behind this property is a long and possibly scandalous one full of gambles and big payoffs but to put it simply, as I understand it, the comic was originally just a name and loose concept by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg that he hoped to sell as a film property based on a “still in development graphic novel”. When it didn’t immediately happen he went ahead and made the comic in 2006 where soon afterward it finally caught Hollywood’s attention. Now I know that this isn’t the first time people in the comic book industry have created comics for the sole purpose of taking advantage of Hollywood’s unstoppable hunger for adaptations (Mark Millar supposedly did something similar with Kick-Ass) but at the end of the day I’m a bit annoyed by that trend. I guess I just prefer the idea of comic books being written for comic book fans and/or art as opposed to comic books being written as bait for a high priced licensing deals. Anyway this film is directed by Jon Favreau, the man behind Iron Man and more embarrassingly Iron Man 2. It seems to be written by a ton of different dudes but the two names that stand out to me are Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, the men who wrote the first two live-action Transformers fiascoes films and also the Star Trek reboot film form 2009. However strangely it seems that this is more of a loose adaptation than anything else. I never read the original comic but as I can see the flick takes a lot of liberties with its source material to the point where its strongest connection to the comics was that they both feature cowboys fighting an alien invasion. Though technically only Harrison Ford’s character and his lot can really be considered cowboys since they were the only people in this film involved in the cattle business, but to be fair that’s the type of nitpicking that explains why I don’t get invited to parties very often.
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| It's basically this except with aliens and their ages reversed |
Full review after the jump.
