Cowboys & Aliens is a 2011 American Plot
By morning, most of the posse has deserted, and Jake's former gang attacks the rest. Jake, who stole the gang's loot after their last heist, attempts to retake control but is foiled. The aliens attack again and abduct Ella. Jake jumps aboard the ship and attacks the alien pilot, causing the ship to crash in a river. The pilot survives the crash and attacks Ella, fatally wounding her, before Jake kills it with his wrist-blaster.
With this knowledge, they plan to attack the alien base. Jake leaves to persuade his old gang to join the fight while Dolarhyde takes command of the original group and the Apaches. After the combined groups maneuver the aliens into a ground battle, Jake and Ella board the ship and free the captives, but Jake is captured. Dolarhyde rescues him, and both men escape from the ship after killing the alien responsible for Alice's death (identified as Jake left a distinctive scar on its eye in his original escape). The ship takes off as the remaining aliens flee Earth, but Ella stays on board to end the threat: she sacrifices herself by entering the ship's core and turning Jake's wrist weapon into a bomb; it detonates, obliterating the ship.
With the aliens gone, the rescued townsfolk begin remembering their pasts. Still a wanted man, Jake chooses to leave; the sheriff and Dolarhyde decide to claim he was killed in the invasion. The citizens intend to rebuild their town with the gold taken from the aliens.
Design and effects
The trick was to make [the aliens] interesting through their behavior and what happens to them, and that was something that District 9 did very well. You were drawn into their world a bit and their idiosyncrasies had an immediate impact: they ate cat food. But those details overwhelm certain design aspects, so I was striving to find some behavior that fit in well with the Western genre, where you have people in very arduous conditions fighting the elements. And I thought that the irony of all this was that the aliens turn up and it could be more exaggerated for them. They're frontiersmen in a way: traveling to another place and having to deal with all the adversities of the climate. And in our case, we played up the fact that they weren't comfortable in our world. There are flies all around them; they don't like the light; and when they were wounded and exposed, a strange fungus grows around them
