Though the movie’s title is pretty up front when telling us what the movie will be about, Cowboys & Aliens has a good job of showing us cowboys while at the same time keeping the aliens in the background. We’ve seen a claw reaching here and there, we’ve seen plenty of their ships, but really haven’t seen a lot of the actual aliens themselves. There’s little doubt that this decision to leave them as a surprise is intentional, that’s probably why Paramount Pictures rejected an otherwise stunning Cowboys & Aliens poster created for them by well known poster artist Drew Struzan.

The image below is from a poster created by Struzan and leaked to First Showing. The claws on the creature should, at least, look familiar.

[IMAGE REMOVED AT REQUEST OF NBC UNIVERSAL]

Word is that Struzan’s pretty upset that the poster was rejected, but I suspect that rejection has a lot more to do with the fact that Paramount doesn’t want to show us that much of the alien than any particular problem with the artwork itself.

If you’re not familiar with Drew’s work, here’s an example of one of my favorites of his recent posters. Look around the next time you see a cool one sheet, you’ll know his work when you see it.