{"id":5247,"date":"2013-07-03T01:50:26","date_gmt":"2013-07-03T08:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cinemastance.com\/?p=5247"},"modified":"2013-07-03T01:50:26","modified_gmt":"2013-07-03T08:50:26","slug":"the-lone-ranger-who-is-this-unpleasant-movie-made-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/?p=5247","title":{"rendered":"THE LONE RANGER: Who is this unpleasant movie made for?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nSomething is off balance with this new version of \u201cThe Lone Ranger\u201d. Something just doesn\u2019t feel right. If you take the parts and examine you will find a Disney funded, mega-budgeted, Western Summer Flick based on a decades old character that stars one of the world\u2019s biggest celebrities, Mr. Johnny Depp. You would assume a family-friendly adventure that would introduce the Masked Man to millions (Hell, he\u2019s even before my<\/i> time) while entertaining those of all ages. But what is waiting is a bloated movie that, for some reason, is pre-occupied with being mean-spirited and unpleasant. The sum of the parts add up to an end product is just plain bizarre.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s place the blame on director Gore Verbinski. Verbinski brought us the first 3 \u201cPirates of the Caribbean\u201d films and those really devolved into an ugly mess. Then he turned his cartoonish sensibilities towards an actual cartoon and came up with \u201cRango\u201d. There I thought his off-kilter vision worked and Verbinski delivered an abstract animated film that brought to life an ugly and quirky world. He approaches \u201cThe Lone Ranger\u201d with much of the same rationale and it backfires.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The film is littered with greedy capitalists, legless prostitutes, cannibalistic villains and cannibalistic rabbits (???). The violence is unfiltered and brutal in spurts and starts. Corpses are pummeled as they fall from horses and trains. Native Americans are massacred and poor Ruth Wilson, who plays the Lone Ranger\u2019s love interest\/brother\u2019s widow, is given a role that nearly entirely consists of scenes where she is sexually harassed.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The plot is simple and contains reveals and surprises that never really surprise once revealed. I\u2019m usually terrible at putting the pieces together if a plot has a mystery to present but I figured it out way too early. There is a pointless wraparound that takes place in 1933 San Francisco (the year \u201cThe Lone Ranger\u201d radio show premiered). Armie Hammer plays the Lone Ranger\u2019s innocence and virtue with the right kind of poise but the performance is dwarfed by the inconstant tone of everything else going on around him.<\/strong>
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\n\u00a0Of all the misguided problems plaguing \u201cThe Lone Ranger,\u201d the biggest offender is actually the main reason everyone is interested in the first place: Johnny Depp. Here he adds yet another role to his ever-growing list of Weird Characters who wear Pale Makeup:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Barnabas in \u201cDark Shadows\u201d<\/strong><\/li>\n
  2. Mad Hatter in \u201cAlice in Wonderland\u201d<\/strong><\/li>\n
  3. Sweeny Todd<\/strong><\/li>\n
  4. Willy Wonka<\/strong><\/li>\n
  5. Edward Scissorhands<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    It\u2019s an exhausted acting choice that Depp usually makes for Tim Burton directed projects but here he has been so kind as to let Verbinski helm a movie where he spends his screen time with white makeup smeared all over his face. He plays Tonto, a slightly insane Indian with a dead bird adorned on his head. His madness does not fit the world of The Lone Ranger, the character is too contemporary and then there is the question of appropriateness of a white actor playing a Native American. It never gels and results in an act that could be viewed by some as being comparable to wearing Black Face while singing \u201cmammy\u201d. I\u2019m sure there is at least one Native American actor they could have been secured to utter the wonderful line \u201cStupid White Man\u201d. Getting a stupid whit man to do it is just another decision here that just doesn\u2019t make sense. Regardless of your stance on this (I usually try to run away from Politically Correctness but this is bugging me) the performance is distracting and out of place.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    When you consider the amount of money it took to bring this waste to life (Well north of $200 million dollars) it\u2019s easy to view \u201cThe Lone Ranger\u201d as a travesty and a wasted opportunity. It\u2019s going to be hard to recoup Disney\u2019s money when there is no target audience to come running. \u201cThe Lone Ranger\u201d was made for no one.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Something is off balance with this new version of \u201cThe Lone Ranger\u201d. Something just doesn\u2019t feel right. If you take the parts and examine you will find a Disney funded, mega-budgeted, Western Summer Flick based on a decades old character that stars one of the world\u2019s biggest celebrities, Mr. Johnny Depp. You would assume a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5251,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1808,8529,10936,19309,21403,24119],"class_list":["post-5247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-armie-hammer","tag-gore-verbinski","tag-johnny-depp","tag-summer-movies","tag-the-lone-ranger","tag-western-movies"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}