Cinema 2011 #80: Cowboys & Aliens

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. 

Cinema 2011 #78: Super 8

J.J. Abrams has always been something of a collaborative filmmaker, with his back catalogue of hits and critical successes consistently feeling like a genuinely cumulative effort. Whether it’s big budget remakes of classic anorak-favourite television shows steeped in years of constructed history and expectations (Star Trek, Mission: Impossible III), or cherished high-concept cult, in the broadest sense, television shows of his own invention (Alias, Lost, Fringe), there’s always a sense that the man is open to ideas and input from everybody and anybody on set, and ready to lend an ear to the rising talent he, and his production company Bad Robot, surrounds himself with.

While this generally works out for the best, there is also no denying that Abrams’ pet projects can sometimes suffer from an unnecessary fussiness that pulls away from clever and concise to grandiose and tangled. When his twists and thrills become the story, rather than adding to it, the audience loses the affection earned at the beginning, their enthusiasm for shocks and awes ebbing as his stories reach their convoluted coda and get, ahem, Lost in their own grandeur.

As such, it is important that Abrams chooses wisely whom to work with, and here, with Super 8, a nostalgic sci-fi romp that rekindles memories of summer favourites of yesteryear, he’s gone right to the source of the summer blockbuster itself, Steven Spielberg. And it almost works perfectly.