I really enjoyed the first cowboys and & aliens movie, the sci fi spoof 1994 Oblivion, now available on DVD. It is set in the year 3030 on the planet Oblivion, which strongly resembles a frontier town from a spaghetti Western, peppered with the occasional cyborg, ray gun and ATM machine.
Oblivion is intentionally campy, has a silly plot and lots of tongue-in-cheek dialogue. The scene where the funeral is interrupted by the weekly bingo game upstairs is especially funny. The cast seems to be having lots of fun with the material. Musetta Vander as the rawhide whip-wielding dominatrix Lash and Carel Struycken as the death-forboding undertaker Gaunt are especially over-the-top good. In addition, Julie Newmar plays a cougarish saloon proprietor, and Star Trek’s George Takei is the Jim Beam-swilling town doc. Amazingly, Oblivion rated a 1996 sequel, Oblivion 2: Backlash, in which most of the cast returned.
I haven’t yet seen the $100 million summer blockbuster Cowboys & Aliens, which opens this weekend. Cowboys & Aliens is set on the planet Earth, where Daniel Craig, playing a Clint Eastwoodesque Man With No Name, awakes with his memory erased by aliens and a futuristic bracelet. Harrison Ford’s torch-bearing mounted lynch mob is interrupted by laser attack from an alien spaceship. Saloon gal Olivia Wilde (House, The OC) is pulled into the sky by alien forces. It takes itself much more seriously than does Oblivion, and I only hope that it’s half as entertaining as Oblivion.