The Lone Ranger: Film Opens July 3rd

Cafe Society
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I just saw this last night, kinda by mistake (I got the movie time wrong for another film; this was available. I was never a big fan of movie westerns, and I wasn’t a fan of the Lone Ranger in particular. I saw a couple of TV episodes of the Clayton Moore series* (and as a kid was surprised at a movie matinee when I saw a trailer for a Lone Ranger movie that had been spun off from the TV show. It was in color, which blew me away a little bit. It must have been the kind of thrill people in the forties got when they saw a color movie of characters they’d previously only seen in black and white, or only heard on the radio.

I was aware of the 1981 version with Klinton Spillsbury as the Lone Ranger (that name looks like an attempt to recall “Clayton Moore” without actually doing so. He was the Spillsbury Doughboy.)

  1. Have you ever seen/heard of The Lone Ranger series?

Answered above. Not a big fan

  1. Are you interested in seeing the film?

I wasn’t, but I got interested when I learned the film was tanking, as the underappreciated John Carter was. I got the chance to see it and took it.

  1. If you have already seen it, what did you think of it?

This is a very weird flick. It needs weirdness, because there is absolutely no way you could play this straight today, especially with a painfully white guy playing Tonto. Disney has this weird relationship with American Indians. They made Pocahontas, trying to be respectful to the Virginia Indians, but tryting to keep close to the classic story, and the result was… awkward. and Bad History, too. The movie was best when they concentrated on the animals, which is really what vDisney does best. They achieved best what they were aiming for, oddly enough, in the straight-to-video Pocahontas II, oddly enough, when Pocahontas in London is terrified and appalled by Londoners bear-baiting. But that’s enough of a digression. Disney continues to release Peter Pan, with its stereotypical child’s image Red Indians, and that’s probably the only reason they could do it.

Tonto is clearly the heart of this film, with star Johnny Depp taking the role. To get around the objections to stereotypes, they take the name “Tonto” at face value – as has been pointed out (and as they “lampshade” in the film), “Tonto” means “Crazy” (or “Drunk”), and Depp’s Tonto clearly is. He can get away with weird actions and speech because he’s not in his right mind, and is making it up as he goes along. The film explains the origin of his craziness, which is consistent with the plot. If they did nothiing else, with his weird character and the appearance derivewd from Kirby Sattler’s painting “I am Crow”, they have salvaged Tonto from his limbo of perpetual second-banana-ism.

The Lone Ranger himself is almost impossibly clean and honorable, although not dumb. He’s about as beleivable a naive clean-cut hero as you can have shy of being Dudley Do-Right. Tonto clearly has superior survival instincts.

Helena Bonham Carter is back, playing what seems to have become her role as the weary, worldly-wise, corseted madame, this time with an ivory leg. She’s Madame Thenardier with a literally trick limb.

“Nature out of balance” announces Tonto many times, and we do get it, with Silver (not named until the very end), the improbably intelligent and miracle-working “spirit animal”, capable far beyond even Dudley Do-Right’s Horse. There are never-explained carnivorus rabbits, unlikely scorpions, and a string of highly implausible coincidences. Ultimately, the Lone Ranger’s success derives from his Tonto-announced statuis as a “Spirit Warrior” That, or from accommodating script-writers.

You require a pretty hefty helping of Willing Suspension of Disbelief and a gonzo sense of humor to watch this film. It is an interesting way to kill 2 1/2 hours (Yes, it really is that long)

*To my complete and utter surprise, I learned that Clayton Moore was NOT the only Lone Ranger on TV. He had a contract dispute, and for the third season the LP was played by John Hart. I learned this when I read Hart’s obit a few years ago. John Hart (actor) - Wikipedia

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Just saw it.

It was fun, and I really didn’t realize it was 2.5 hours during the viewing.

My 21 and 19 y.o.s liked it - thought it was POTC redone, but we all enjoyed that also.

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Saw it a little more than a week ago.

My verdict…it wasn’t TERRIBLE. There were quite a few things about it I liked–the atmosphere, the action sequences, the use of the William Tell Overture, Armie Hammer’s beautiful blue eyes and deep voice. :wink:

So I think that if it had been a completely original story, if there had never been a Lone Ranger mythos and this were a new start to an entirely new franchise, it would be excellent. As an adaptation of the Lone Ranger, however…

I understand the need to fine-tune the character. As much as I liked the original character, he did seem about as infallible as a non-Kryptonian could possibly be, which doesn’t exactly make for much drama. But there has to be a way to make him fresher and newer, to make him appeal to modern audiences, without Batmanning him up (like I’m given to understand the Dynamite comic does) or playing him for laughs (like this movie does). (Don’t get me wrong, I like Batman as much as the next person, but I’m so tired of the grim, gritty anti-hero trend I could scream.)

The implication that audiences would only laugh a hero like the classic Lone Ranger off bothers me a bit. I can think of one hero who had many of the same values and morals as the Ranger. In-universe, he ends up in a time where he’s not sure if his type of heroism is still relevant, but it turns out it is. This character not only did well in his own stand-alone movie, he was also instrumental in last year’s biggest release. Both movies got some humor out of his character without belittling him or mocking his heroism. So how come it’s okay to present Captain America like that, but not the Lone Ranger?

It also bothered me a bit that the makers of this seemed a bit embarrassed by the very mythos they were presenting. I mean, what happens in the last moment of the movie? The Ranger does his classic “Hi-Yo Silver, Away!” only to have Tonto snap, “Don’t ever do that again,” and the Ranger meekly reply “Sorry.” I mean, I know today’s audiences might see this gesture and others like it as corny, but instead of sending it up why not present it in a way to make us believe in it?

I wasn’t all that crazy about Tonto’s presentation or the “Jack-Sparrow-in-the-Old-West” business. In small doses, it might have been funny; as it is it seemed like a very transparent attempt to cash in on POTC. (Though I did rather like his backstory.)

I definitely wasn’t that crazy about John Reid’s love interest being his widowed sister-in-law. It’s, what, TWO DAYS after her husband’s death and she’s macking on his brother? Did she show ANY grief for her husband and the father of her child? I can see where they tried to gloss that over by having her husband confess that he knew she’d always loved John and give his blessing before dying, but that only makes it look like she married one guy while never being over the other…which doesn’t paint her in the best light. Better another love interest–or a reference to a deceased love in John’s past.

Other than that, the plot itself was good–the bad guys and their schemes were well-drawn. So I don’t think the movie was anywhere near as terrible as the reviews made it out to be–I can’t help but wonder if their vitriol was more of a backlash against Depp than a desire to review the movie fairly. I just think that it could have been presented better if they’d had more trust in the characters and mythology they were portraying.

(Interestingly enough, I’ve come across an earlier draft online–the one that concentrates entirely on the supernatural/Wendigo plot. It’s not perfect, but this treats John Reid with more respect–he’s a Texas Ranger from the outset, and convinces his brother to re-join to go after Cavendish, whom he’d helped put away years ago. More to the point, this actually has The Lone Ranger Creed referenced in John’s dialogue early on. If they could have combined the main plot of the movie we got with the character presentation of this earlier draft, we might have really had something.)

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Ouch. That, by itself, absolutely kills any lingering desire I might have had to see this film. It makes it a parody, but, worse, an unkind parody.

(I like a good parody! Zorro, the Gay Blade had something going for it. But it held a basic underlying respect for the original. It made fun of it, but with an emphasis on “fun.” What you just described seems like jeering and mockery. Not fun at all.)

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I WAS the Lone Ranger as a kid. My parents bought me the entire outfit in 1964. Blue shirt, white hat, pearl grip cap revolvers with little wooden silver bullets in the belt, mask. You name it! That piece of garbage they made in the early 80’s really pissed me off.

But I saw this new one on the plane on our way to San Juan 2 weeks ago. I liked it so much I made a point to watch it again on the way home.

I felt like a kid again watching as he rode Silver through the train car. I thought it was exciting as hell. And I thought the attempts at humor were mostly successful.
I really liked it.

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Well, I rented it from Red Box today.

I actually liked it. I may watch it again a bit later.

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MODERATOR NOTE: Please note prior thread was from 7/2013, until revived on 2/16/2014 by post #126.

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Depp: Why are they still giving me jobs?

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Yeah, holy crap dude! I resurrected a 6 month old thread because the movie was out on Red Box! I should think such a thing is fairly common given DVD release schedules.

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Makes sense to me.