When Indiana Jones, James Bond, and John Wayne’s grandson starred in a flop western
Towards the end of his career, John Wayne repeatedly voiced his displeasure with what Hollywood was becoming, so it boggles the mind as to what he’d think about his own grandson appearing in a blockbuster that had one foot in the genre he defined, before becoming something entirely different prior to being declared dead on arrival at the box office.
It was inevitable that several of his family members would follow ‘The Duke’ into showbusiness, but his grandson Brendan Wayne – the son of his second-born child and first daughter Mary Antonia Wayne LaCava – has shown greater longevity than his uncles Michael, Patrick, and John Ethan, all of whom enjoyed brief acting careers before they fizzled out.
He’s been working solidly for over 20 years at this point, but the most prominent role of the third-generation Wayne’s filmography is one that doesn’t require him to show his face. Brendan shares duties with Lateef Crowder playing the title hero on the set of The Mandalorian now that Pedro Pascal provides the voice only, which reunited him with Jon Favreau.
Their first time working together seemed too big to fail, with none other than Indiana Jones and James Bond playing the biggest parts in a star-studded and genre-bending comic book adaptation from the director who launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe with Iron Man. On paper, it sounded like a guaranteed winner, but Cowboys & Aliens was anything but.
Daniel Craig’s amnesiac gunslinger strolls into the dusty town of Absolution, where strangers aren’t welcomed, immediately placing him under the scrutiny of Harrison Ford’s Woodrow Dolarhyde. However, when an extra-terrestrial menace suddenly invades the frontier, the duo must put their differences to one side to ensure their survival in the face of a cosmic invasion.
In theory, a high-concept fantasy that fully explains its title with two words and an ampersand to the masses with the current 007, the iconic Indy and Han Solo, the filmmaker who instigated a paradigm shift in blockbuster cinema, and the grandson of ‘The Duke’ himself (playing the admittedly minor character of Charlie Lyle) on deck alongside the Oscar-nominated writers of Children of Men, Darren Aronofsky’s regular cinematographer Matthew Libatique, and executive producer Steven Spielberg sells itself.
Somehow, though, Cowboys & Aliens was a commercial calamity. Craig and Ford are good value as you’d expect from talents of their calibre, but treating such a silly setup with such seriousness killed the film stone dead, never mind Favreau’s inability to navigate its tonal balancing act between old-fashioned Western and epic sci-fi. It barely recouped its mighty $163million budget from cinemas, but it endures as startling proof that no amount of talent and credentials can guarantee any movie is safe from disaster.
If ‘The Duke’ was concerned about what the Western was becoming towards the end of his iconic tenure as its de facto figurehead, then who knows what he would have made of little green men from beyond the stars descending on 1870s New Mexico to kidnap one of his grandchildren.
Never Miss A Tale
The Far Out John Wayne Newsletter
All the latest stories about John Wayne from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.