Cowboys & Aliens

[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409847/]

Went to see “Cow­boys & Aliens” yes­ter­day. For those peo­ple still unaware, its based on an inde­pen­dent com­ic about an alien attack on the Amer­i­ca South­west, prob­a­bly some­time in the 1870s. These aliens are attack­ing the locals, kid­nap­ping them for exper­i­ments while at the same time min­ing gold in the region. Over­all it was a good movie, bet­ter than I’ve seen it reviewed, and I enjoyed it. (It was also nice to see that Har­ri­son Ford has­n’t lost his touch.)

How­ev­er, the rel­e­vant area of the movie is only a brief scene, but it also explains a large plot point. When the lead, Jake Lon­er­gan, is dis­cov­ered, he has no mem­o­ry of him­self, only a pic­ture of a woman and a mys­te­ri­ous met­al bracelet on his left arm. Only when he’s in town is he iden­ti­fied as a want­ed crim­i­nal. But when he is to be takn away and the aliens attack does the bracelet reveal itself to be an alien weapon, which brings down one of the alien assault ships. How­ev­er, the many oth­er ships have already car­ried off a num­ber of the townsfolk.

Through a num­ber of tri­als and dif­fi­cul­ties, Jake and the remain­ing towns­folk track the aliens back to their ship and mount a res­cue. Dur­ing the res­cue, Jake dis­cov­ers the miss­ing towns­folk in a large cham­ber, still bound in the alien grap­ples, all star­ing blankly at the light in the ceil­ing. Despite being warned, Jake looks at the light and starts zon­ing out, only to awak­en when his com­pan­ion shoots the mech­a­nism. As for the oth­ers who were under the light for much longer, their mem­o­ries are affect­ed, caus­ing minor to severe mem­o­ry loss. (And for at least one indi­vid­ual, its an improvement.)