We took a chance Wednesday night and went to see The Lone Ranger
before the reviews came out. Big
mistake, kemo sabe. This movie is so bad, it’s difficult to list
all the ways in which it went wrong.
First was Johnny Depp casting himself as Tonto. What was he thinking? This was an opportunity to create a strong
positive role to counter Hollywood stereotypes of Indians and put a credible
Native American actor in that role.
Instead, they gave the part that was owned by Canadian Mohawk Jay Silverheels
to white Kentucky native Johnny Depp, then painted his face white and put a dead
crow on his head. In an interview, Depp claimed to see this as
an opportunity to “. . . pay his
respects to the native American community.”
If this is respect, I’d really hate to see his idea of ridicule.
Before seeing The @Lone Ranger, I wondered why the Native
American community had not protested this casting decision and insisted on
putting one of their own in the role.
The answer is twofold: (1) They never much liked Tonto to begin with,
and (2) no self-respecting Native American with a shred of dignity could have
performed this version of Tonto and lived with himself afterward. Native American blogger Adrienne Keene says
she’s glad a Native person “wasn’t
embroiled in that mess” and I think she’s right.
Clayton
Moore’s original Lone Ranger was an honorable man who treated Tonto with respect. Here, Depp’s Tonto is not the sidekick, he’s the motivator and
Armie Hammer’s insipid John Reid is a clueless foil who lacks wits, charisma,
drive, common sense, and honor. Who but
a clod would abandon the man who had already saved him, walking away until he’s
presented with a clear benefit to himself in going back to help Tonto? But Depp’s Tonto is also crazy as a loon—or maybe
the crow that he carries around on his head.
Efforts are made to make Tonto seem mystical, a sachem who can talk to
animals, but even Chief Big Bear (Saginaw Grant) tells Reid that Tonto’s “mind
is broken.”
Depp's Tonto & Kirby Sattler's "I Am Crow" Not Historically Accurate |
The framing device of a Wild West Show is taken from Little
Big Man or The Princess Bride but it doesn’t work as well and interrupts
whatever passes for a story. It also
raises a few questions:
Why is this kid
alone in the Wild West Show? Is Tonto
really alive and just posing as a statue or a statue that really comes to
life? Why is Tonto feeding the dead crow
on his head? Why is the kid eating
peanuts with the shell on?
It goes downhill from there and the viewer is expected to either
not see errors or just go along for the ride, uncritical and unthinking. Here a few examples:
- John Reid is a lawyer and district attorney who supposedly hates guns but a few frames later can suddenly shoot like a gunslinger and rob a bank with impunity.
- Native Americans didn’t wear warpaint all the time or use dead birds as headdresses. They also didn’t look like they wandered out of a Kiss concert and forgot to shower.
- Real Comanches didn’t taxidermy rattlesnakes, mount them on sticks and use them for tipi ornaments. They would have seen no point to doing so when the real thing was all around them.
-
Decent women didn’t wear lipstick. Only whores and actresses painted their faces.
- At the 1869 ceremony celebrating the joining of the Transcontinental Railroad, they play John Philip Sousa’s Stars and Stripes forever but he composed it in 1896 and it was played for the first time in 1897.
- The Transcontinental Railroad was an enormous project and it took six years to build one track across the country. Yet we see a wild chase with trains running on two parallel tracks through the mountains, across bridges, into tunnels and eventually converging. Who built them?
- Silver is supposedly a wild spirit horse who comes to John Reid voluntarily yet he’s shod and takes to a saddle and rider with no problem. Tonto seems to ride him more than John Reid does.
And speaking of Silver, there is as Tonto says, “something
very wrong with that horse.” He has
to be the equine version of Superman because he:
- Can tell when a man isn’t really dead
- Gets up onto a barn roof by himself
- Jumps down from the barn with two men on his back without breaking a leg
- Climbs a tree with a hat on
- Runs across the top of a moving train’s passenger cars.
Who Needs the Lone Ranger? |
These are all un-horse-like behaviors that could only be
dreamed of in a Hollywood CGI master’s head—and probably someone who never got
close to a real horse. We’re also expected
to believe that something has gone wrong in nature and we are given carnivorous
bunnies as examples, (yes, really) but there’s no reason for this unnatural behavior to occur
so it’s just silly.
Had enough? We did,
too—and long before the 149-minute running time was up. At the end, the best we could say was that
another generation of kids would hear the William Tell Overture and think of
the Lone Ranger. But the audience mostly
consisted of senior citizens looking to go back to the days of yesteryear, so
maybe not.
The Lone Ranger steals from a long list of other films from the Indiana
Jones and Pirates of the Caribbean franchises to The Goonies. If Depp had played it straight and given us a solid western with
the two main characters coming together to save the day, it would have
been a much better film. Bottom line: The Lone Ranger is Johnny Depp’s movie and his portrayal of Tonto
really owns the film but what he does with it is enough to make you scratch
your head. Just make sure there isn’t a
crow on it.
A truly horrible movie. I thought the carnivorous rabbits particularly insipid.
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