Summer 2011 has really been out of this world for producer Steven Spielberg. Although the most powerful filmmaker on the planet hasn’t deigned to sit in the director’s chair himself, that Spielberg sheen has dominated our movie screens nonetheless, with three collaborations with other directors, and a slight sense that the chap is running out of ideas. We’ve had automobile aliens fighting off the onslaught of vehicular villains in Michael Bay’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon. Then we had some good old-fashioned Goony-fun as a mysterious monster from beyond the stars rips a town to shreds in J.J. Abrams’ Super 8. And now, taking the Ronseal approach to film titles, Spielberg produces director Jon Favreau’s Cowboys & Aliens, which is, unsurprisingly, about cowboys and aliens.
But to say that this is Spielberg’s show is a tad unfair, as Favreau’s style dominates the film, and the Iron Man man clearly stamps his sense of dry humour and gritty emotion onto this loose interpretation of a 2006 graphic novel of the same name.
