Cowboys and Invaders

Summary

Arizona , 1873 . An amnesiac man wakes up in the desert ( Daniel Craig ), wounded, nameless and with a strange bracelet on his wrist. After eliminating three men on the verge of killing him, he wanders in the small town of Absalom , where local preacher Meacham ( Clancy Brown ) is healing his wound. Shortly after, the unnamed man brutalizes Percy Dolarhyde ( Paul Dano ), a drunkard who terrorized the population. In a bar, Sheriff Taggart ( Keith Carradine ) recognizes him as Jake Lonergan, a wanted bandit, and stops him. Jake tries to escape but a mysterious woman named Ella Swenson ( Olivia Wilde) knocks him up to deliver him to the authorities. Livestockman Woodrow Dolarhyde, sometimes called “The Colonel,” ( Harrison Ford ) arrives in town with his men and demands that his son Percy be released. He also wants Jake’s skin, with whom he has an account to settle. But light ships begin to attack the city, and Percy, Taggart sheriff and many people are kidnapped. With the help of his mysterious bracelet on his wrist, Jake shoots down one of the flying machines. The occupant of the ship, a monstrous creature, escapes into the desert.

An expedition composed in part of Dolarhyde, his henchman Nat ( Adam Beach ), Meacham, Ella, sheriff’s grandson, Emmett ( Noah Ringer ), and Doc ( Sam Rockwell) then mounts to follow the monster. Jake, on his side, goes to an abandoned house and, in a flashback, remembers living there with his wife, Alice. Jake returns to join the troop who is spending the night in a mysterious abandoned boat in the middle of the desert. The creature, who was hiding there, then kills the preacher Meacham. The next day, the expedition is attacked by the former Jake gang. As they try to flee the bandits, Dolarhyde and the others are once again attacked by the extraterrestrial ships trying to seize new prey. Ella, mortally wounded, dies in Jake’s arms.

After the attack, the Apaches capture the group, accusing the men of Dolarhyde of attracting the demons. At the time of their execution, Ella mysteriously returns to life completely naked once her body thrown into the fire. Ella is actually a non-human creature who has come to Earth to fight the invaders, fearsome monsters looking for gold in the depths of Arizona. The young woman tries to reunite the two clans to stop the monsters before they exterminate all life on the planet. After taking a hallucinogenic drink offered by the Apaches, Jake remembers the death of his wife Alice by the Invaders, and escaped from the mothership by seizing the weapon on his wrist.

The Indians and the men of Dolarhyde unite to face the Invaders, while Jake returns to his gang and persuades his former colleagues to join the fight. As the battle outside rages and many men are killed, Jake and Ella release the captives aboard the mother ship deep in the ground. When the latter takes off, tearing off large portions of land, Dolarhyde and Jake escape but Ella sacrifices herself to destroy the gigantic machine that explodes in flight.

Victims of Invaders find their families. Still wanted, Jake decides to leave the region while citizens rebuild the city.

Technical sheet

• Original title: Cowboys and Aliens
• French title: Cowboys and Invaders
• Quebec title: Cowboys and Aliens
• Director: Jon Favreau
• Screenplay: Roberto Orci , Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof , based on the graphic novel by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg  (in)
• Artistic direction: Christopher Burian-Mohr and Daniel T. Dorrance
• Sets: Karen Manthey
• Costumes: Mary Zophres
• Photography: Matthew Libatique
• Special Effects: Roger Guyett and Daniel Sudick for Creature Effects , Halon Entertainment , Industrial Light & Magic , Legacy Effects and Lidar Guys
• Sound: Mark Ulano
• Editing: Dan Lebental
• Music: Harry Gregson-Williams
• Production: Brian Grazer , Ron Howard , Alex Kurtzman , Robert Orci , Scott Mitchell Rosenberg and Damon Lindelof; Daniel Forcey and KC Hodenfield (co-producers); Karen Johnson (associate); Steven Spielberg , Jon Favreau, Denis L. Stewart, Ryan Kavanaugh and Bobby Cohen (Executives)
• Production Companies: Universal Pictures , DreamWorks SKG and Reliance Big Entertainment , with the Relativity Media Association
• Distribution Companies: Universal Pictures
• Country: United States
• Language: English
• Format: Color – 35mm – 2.35: 1 – Dolby Digital / DTS / SDDS
• Genre: Science Fiction
• Budget: 163 million to USD ¹
• Duration: 118 minutes
• Release dates ² :
  •  United States , Canada :  July 29 , 2011
  •  France , Belgium , Switzerland :   August 24 , 2011

Distribution

• Daniel Craig ( VF : Eric Herson-Macarel , VQ : Marc-André Bélanger ) : Jake Lonergan
• Harrison Ford ( VF : Richard Darbois , VQ : Mario Desmarais ) : Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde
• Olivia Wilde ( VF : Barbara Beretta , VQ : Catherine Proulx-Lemay ) : Ella Swenson
• Sam Rockwell ( VF : William Lebon , VQ : Benoit Ethier) : Doc
• Adam Beach ( VF : Bruno Choel , VQ : Kevin Houle) : Nat Colorado
• Paul Dano ( VF : Donald Reignoux , VQ : Sebastien Reding ) : Percy
• Noah Ringer ( VQ : Xavier Laplante ) : Emmett
• Keith Carradine ( VF : Paul Borne , VQ : Jean-Luc Montminy ) : Sheriff Tagart
• Clancy Brown ( VF : Sylvain Lemarié , VQ : Manuel Tadros ) : Meacham
• Walton Goggins : Hunt
• Ana de la Reguera ( VQ : Isabelle Leyrolles ) : Maria
• David O’Hara : Pat Dolan
• Abigail Spencer ( VQ : Magalie Lépine-Blondeau ) : Alice
• Chris Browning : Jed Parker
• Toby Huss ( VF : Laurent Morteau ) : Roy Murphy
• Wyatt Russell : Little Mickey

Source and caption : French version (VF) on Voxofilm ³ ; Quebec Version (VQ) on Doublage.qc.ca ⁴

Box office

Cowboys and Invaders , at a cost of $ 163,000,000 , is a failure in the United States. Only the revenues abroad (particularly in the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Japan and Australia) allow the film to break even with 174 822 325 $ of total revenue.

Production

Scenario

Cowboys and Aliens is initially ahundred-page graphic novel created by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, on the writings of Fred Van Lente and Andrew Foley, published by Platinum Studios inDecember 2006.

Jon Favreau had announced in The Hollywood Reporter in the endAugust 2009that he was going to adapt the novel to the screen ⁶ . He was more interested in the script, not the graphic novel: “What challenged me was the concept and the script. I read a very good script and I loved the idea of mixing these two genres and juxtaposing a serious extraterrestrial film with a sincere western. We fired our inspiration from films such as Close Encounters , Alien and Predator for the alien side, and we took a lot to John Ford , Sergio Leone and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to the western side ⁷ ” .

Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, originally, were approached for the scenario that will eventually told Roberto Orci , Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof ⁶ .

The theme reminiscent of the Book of Poul Anderson , The High Crusade : the clash of civilization and intuitive crafty face another, structured and hyper-technological.

Shooting

The film was shot in the following places ⁸ :

• New Mexico , United States
  • Abiquiu
  • Santa Fe
• California , United States
  • Randsburg

Around the film

Winks

• Jake never loses his fedora , much like Indiana Jones .
• Jon Favreau makes a cameo in a poster of the thief Todd Kravit on the sheriff’s wall.

Notes and references