05 Jun THE LONE RANGER RE-REVIEW

This is part of my ‘Re-Review’ series, where I revisit a movie that I haven’t seen in several years to evaluate if my opinion has changed with time.

Old Opinion: An incredibly bloated misfire on virtually every level except for the music and Armie Hammer

New Opinion: An outrageous dumpster fire of a movie that has aged so poorly it’s remarkable

There is a formula for having a short but spectacular career in Hollywood. Here it is:

1. Make visually impressive music videos
2. Direct a remake of a foreign movie and earn 9x its budget (The Ring)
3. Get asked to direct a Disney/Bruckheimer film that is ridiculously popular and successful (Pirates of the Caribbean)
4. Get signed for two sequels and make a couple billion $$ (Pirates 2 & 3)
5. Make a great, quirky animated movie (Rango)
6. Make an outrageously offensive Disney movie; make it bloated, terrible, and devoid of any life beyond the vitriol it inspires (The Lone Ranger)
7. End.

Gore Verbinki, however, leaned hard into step 6, one of Disney’s last truly awful live action disasters. Like some of the previous movies I’ve written about in this series (John Carter, Prince of Persia), this movie cost $215 million to make and only brought in $260 million worldwide (about $320 million less than it needed to break even).

Verbinski was asked to make The Ring because his music videos were disturbing but visually incredible, and that’s exactly what The Ring needed. So, he directed Pirates of the Caribbean, which was amazing. Then he got a LOT more creative control over the sequels and went completely off the rails, forgetting that a coherent plot needed to be included. But they made $2 billion because people love pirates more than plots, so he got a pass and made Rango to relax, which was a great, weird, animated movie. Then he started in on step 6…

The Lone Ranger was an attempt by Disney to kick off yet another live action franchise to milk for years to come, a la Pirates. Like JC and PoP, they picked an existing IP. They also got Bruckheimer involved, since he is a legit hitmaker (in aggregate). And since they wanted a Pirates-like success story, they invited back Verbinski. Sadly, Verbinski’s original script was awesome, but too expensive for Disney (rumored to be north of $250 million)—it included a lot more fantasy elements, including werewolves!

It was in this process of negotiating a compromise that I wonder if Verbinski’s hubris led to self-sabotage. Or ignorance reigned. I am mystified as to how so many people at Disney that could have pulled the plug didn’t raise their hand in objection to what Verbinski proceeded with…

The Lone Ranger is terrifyingly dull; too long by 30-40 minutes; and is a virtual itemized list of offensive stereotypes, cultural whitewashing, and cliché-ridden garbage. Also, nobody gives a damn about the Lone Ranger…the original TV show was so old that not even nursing home residents were interested. It’s shocking that despite all this, the movie was still approved with a $215 million budget. But here we are.

The intervening years have not been kind, and re-watching The Lone Ranger was by far the worst Re-Review I’ve done thus far. It is simply one of the worst movies I’ve ever sat through (twice, now, unfortunately…)

Casting Johnny Depp as Tonto was, by far, the most egregious sin of the entire movie. But that was hardly the only one. Here’s a few other problems: offensive caricatures of Chinese slaves; a terrible framing device that serves no function other than wasting screen time; paralyzingly dull pacing; tonal shifts from fun, western, slapstick comedy to nightmarish horror (one villain cuts out and eats the heart of the hero’s brother…WTF?!); late usage of THE ONLY THING PEOPLE REMEMBER ABOUT THE LONE RANGER: THE THEME MUSIC.

The list could go on, but…why?! This movie is just an abomination. Armie Hammer is solid as the Lone Ranger, and Hans Zimmer’s score, especially his arrangement of William Tell Overture, is awesome. But that’s it…there’s nothing else worth a damn about this movie and given the appropriate and responsible rejection of whitewashing in Hollywood movies in recent years, this movie is worse than when it was released 7 years ago. In fact, I have to believe that because of The Lone Ranger, there has been a legitimate shift away from this kind of trash cultural whitewashing.

Pros:

• Armie Hammer was a great choice for the lead, even though his character is sidelined by Depp
• Hans Zimmer’s score, especially the excellent arrangement of the familiar William Tell Overture

Cons:

• Cultural whitewashing and appropriation
• Terrible pacing
• Uneven tone
• Just…almost everything, really

Rating: .5/5
The only reason this movie gets ½ is because of Zimmer’s score, but just stream that and skip the movie.

Review by Jim Washburn