I Left My Spaceship in El Segundo: Beats, Rhymes & Life vs. Cowboys & Aliens
Outside of a few distinct subgenres, my musical knowledge is laughable. I know next to nothing about A Tribe Called Quest, so when the boy proposed going to Beats, Rhymes & Life, I looked on it less as a movie than as a learning opportunity. Similarly, when the mercury rose to 95, the boy proposed seeing Cowboys & Aliens, which I looked on less as a movie than as a cooling opportunity. Let my education and temperature regulation begin.
Beats, Rhymes, and Life documents the formation, rise and inevitable fall of A Tribe Called Quest, the hip-hop group that dominated the late 80s-early 90s. Watching it had some of the same feeling as watching a “Where Are They Now?” VH1 episode, since you know that it’s all going to end in tears. And it does, as the band members slowly disengage with each other due to a number of very understandable problems: family, life, moving cross-country, health problems, you name it. The reasons are mundane, the reactions predicable, and outcome is preordained.
That said, the first part of the movie, which covers the early lives of the members and the formation of the band, is unquestionably inspiring. New York in the 80s was a laboratory for music, and it’s clear that members Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, and Ali (and sometimes Jarobi) were having a hell of a time simply experiencing the world of 80s hip-hop and rap. As they learn more about making their own sound (not just imitating the groups they admire), something kinda magical seems to have happened, as their sound coalesced and they scored a hit single...and then another...and another. Watching footage of early shows and hearing what people had to say about discovering the band, I was struck by how freakin’ lucky they were to be a ground-up phenomenon. At least according to the movie, it seems they had the luxury of largely directing themselves, defining their own sound and look, and working within a musical community rather than being dropped upon one.
These apparent strengths, like the perfectionistic Q-Tip producing the albums and the members writing their own songs, may have ultimately contributed to pulling the band apart, since personality conflicts (and the pressure of fame) just got too big to ignore in later years. How can you possibly sustain a band under the pressures of regular life and the demands of fame? Most bands can’t. ATCQ held it together for over a decade; that’s more than most do. The legacy of the group is evident in the music they produced: innovative mashups, a distinctly positive attitude, and songs chock full of samples from earlier eras in music, revived to create a new form of music for a new time.
Mashups are no longer limited to music, of course. The latest in title-driven films is Cowboys & Aliens, which airdrops Alien-style aliens into the Old West, where the extraterrestrial gold-diggers are opposed only by a cranky Harrison Ford and an enigmatic Daniel Craig. Everything about this movie says “rewritten ‘till we done wrung blood from the pages.”
Craig, an amnesiac cowboy, wakes up in the desert with an odd metal wristcuff and a sneaking suspicion that he’s had a really bad night. That doesn’t stop him from going all Jason Bourne on some rustlers who try to take him for a bounty, leaving them dead but instantly gaining the friendship and adoration of their dog, who follows him into the town of Absolution. And yes, every moral allusion in the movie is spackled on this thick.
Craig’s character turns out to be a wanted man, Jake Lonergan (the screenwriters must have seen the list of Good Cowboy Names in Beyond Jennifer & Jason). But before he can be hauled away to the federal marshals, aliens -- or as 1870's folk call them, demons -- show up and promptly start snatching up every previously established secondary character with a tie to a main character. I know, right? What are the odds? Only Jake’s timely use of his wristcuff-which-also-becomes-a-laser-gun drives off the attack.
These developments lead to Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), the de facto leader of the town, putting off his animosity toward Jake so they can rescue their kin. They ride out with a small contingent of men.1 Oddly, this contingent also includes a woman named Ella (Olivia Wilde), the Jarobi White of the Old West, who is part of the group for reasons no one can really explain.2 She didn’t lose any kin in town, has no definable skills (except the one), and has no actual connections to anybody. Why do they let her tag along? Why tolerate her? I cannot tell you. She just shows up in scene after scene, usually in the middle background, in a floral dress and gunbelt (WTF?), staring hungrily at Daniel Craig, and occasionally spouting some cryptic nonsense so useless that even his character looks like he wants to smack her in the face. Gee, I wonder if she has a secret connection to the “demons.” I wonder if she’s not who she says she is. I wonder if there will be a scene with her naked.
Plot details stop there. I just don’t have the heart to go on. Cowboys & Aliens was disappointing, and no amount of Junior Mints could save it. For one thing, it’s an oddly grim movie. There’s no levity or banter, let alone any dusting of meta-humor based on the ridiculousness of the premise. I’m not saying it should have been Briscoe County Jr, but Jon Favreau could have considered a bit of tongue-in-cheek dialogue or direction to lighten this piece up. Instead, it’s just a slow grind toward the boss fight, as we watch Craig shoot, wrestle, and glare his way into the heart of the alien ship, Ella in tow. Furthermore, both Sam Rockwell and Clancy Brown are scandalously underused, and all the characters’ relationships are annoyingly predictable. Hell, their names broadcast their motivations: Lonergan’s a loner, Dolarhyde is rich, and Ella is...female. Suffice it to say the baddies get beaten, and once the reason for teaming up is gone, the characters all drift apart to pursue their own destinies. You know how everyone kinda wished ATCQ never released their last album? I wish that there will never be a sequel to Cowboys & Aliens.
1 As far as I can tell, casting depended largely on how well potential actors could cope with dirt and dust, as based on previous experience. This explains why Sam Rockwell (Assassination of Jesse James), Clancy Brown (Carnivale), Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood), Adam Beach (Joe Dirt...jk! Smoke Signals, srsly), and Keith Carradine (Deadwood) all scored major speaking roles. Note that this does not explain Olivia Wilde’s presence. At all.
2 If I weren’t drawing parallels to ATCQ, I’d have said she was the Zeppo.3
3 You know what? I know exactly why she's in this movie. First, she's very pretty. Second, and I appreciate the motive, she's meant to be a Strong Woman. Counter to a stereotypical western, in which the women are all wives or whores, she's an independent woman with her own quest to complete. And that would be fine, it would be laudable, if only 1) she weren't played by Olivia Wilde, and 2) the character wasn't written as someone who actually can't do very much on her own. Ella has knowledge that could help the town, but elects not to share it until a lot of people get hurt. She knows what happened to Jake, but chooses not to enlighten him, either, instead making him endure a painful flashback. She redeems herself at the end, more or less, but only after a Major Event that forces her to reveal the metric crapton of stuff she's been hiding. Oh, and there's a third reason why Ella is a bad example of a Strong Woman, but I'll let you suffer through the movie to find that one out.