Have you seen Disney’s “The Lone Ranger”? For a movie that cost upwards of $250 million to make and was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer Films and directed by Gore Verbinski (director of the Pirates of the Caribbean saga), it sure has received a lot of negative press. Well, I’m here to tell you it is a very good movie.
In its first few days of release it has pulled in an estimated $30 million of receipts across >3,900 theaters and has been, completely, “blasted” by the media. They compare it to Disney’s 2012 perceived flop “John Carter” (which drew in an equivalent $30 million of receipts in its opening days). Well, did you know that John Carter’s combined $283 million of gross revenue outweighed its $250 million price tag? Sure, its U.S. “take” was $73 million. It was saved from unprofitable status by its foreign draw … which yielded $210 million of receipts!
Look, “The Lone Ranger” is a Disney movie. It has its comic moments … mostly powered by the very well-timed and quirky delivery of Johnny Depp. Armie Hammer (as ‘The Ranger’) is, undoubtedly, Tonto’s side-kick in this rendition of the masked man’s story. But, the fact of the matter is, five minutes into the movie, you’re laughing with hysterics … because of Depp.
And, this is where purists start having their problems. It is a Western. There are gunfights, blood, death, and violence. How can this be a Disney movie? There are bad guys and good guys, cowboys and indians, guns and arrows. This is serious stuff! How can there be laughter? And, Tonto is “the boss”? What’s up with that? Armie Hammer plays a lukewarm foil to Depp’s brilliance. Who cares? Every version of every story is different! How many times have we seen different re-tellings of King Arthur and Merlin, The Three Musketeers, Star Trek, James Bond … and on and on and on?
Tonto is a wise-cracking, slightly crazy, outcast Comanche. John Reid (The Lone Ranger) was a well-educated Harvard lawyer whose Western skills paled greatly in comparison to his ranger brother Dan. At one point, Tonto says something like, ‘I got the wrong brother’. Hah! When The Ranger’s famed horse – Silver – arrives on the scene, Depp comically tries to direct him to brother Dan in John’s stead.
This movie is not your traditional take on The Lone Ranger’s story. Oh, there are guns, silver bullets, explosives, trains, outlaws, indians, cavalry, damsels-in-distress, and everything else you want in a Western, but it isn’t a drama. It’s a Disney movie. And, it’s VERY entertaining!
