Went to go see Cowboys & Aliens--despite the relatively poor reviews--with my family today.

It is in my top three of the year.

...

Now mind you, I've seen a total of four movies released this year. So really, that means nothing. Really, it was one of those movies that was pretty much a small distraction while I thought about everything else I would have done differently.

For instance, I would not have an advanced and technologically superior group of individuals to a couple of cowboys and indians carrying guns and spears. Unless if the main character has s***tons of charisma. Then you can pretty much forgive anything.

Also, you know when a minor character gets injured, and the main character comes by and cradles the minor character's head hoping to help the injured character, only to see that the dude is dying, but not before the character rattles off some words of encouragement that will then most likely inspire the main character to overcome all odds? Yeah... I wouldn't do that. Or if I did, I'd have the main character pick the guy up, hear him say "I'm dying", and then immediately drop him and move on to killing bad guys.

Also, if my main character's loved one dies horrifically (either during the movie or right before the film's events take place), I would not have him wanting to get inside the leading lady SO EFFING CLOSE to your wife's death. (This movie wasn't really that bad with it... but it flirted with the issue. Braveheart mainly is the one that springs to mind whenever something like this happens in stories (which is one of the movie's lesser problems, but still manages to piss me off.))

Also, if I'm forced to have an obligatory kid in a movie otherwise completely populated by adults, I'm going to have the kid die. Which might be really cruel, but if you're going to manipulate emotion and always have a kid put out there in danger... you might as well go all the way with it once every so often.

There were others that I was thinking about during the movie, but have promptly forgotten in the hours since I was at the theater. I guess I shouldn't say that the movie was "bad"... but rather quite boring and ensconced in the usual Hollywood tropes. So yeah...