The Lone Ranger (Gore Verbanski

[Sxottlan]

IMDB page (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1210819/?ref_=hm_inth_t1).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v79/Sxottlan/the-lone-ranger-poster_zpscb24aa9a.jpg (http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Sxottlan/media/the-lone-ranger-poster_zpscb24aa9a.jpg.html)

[[ETM]]

It's Verbinski.

[Sxottlan]

Yeah. That's what you get when you make a thread while falling asleep.

[EyesWideOpen]

I'm also gonna assume we shouldn't be posting pictures with another websites watermark on them.

[EvilShoe]

What the hell? Why is that poster not just saying "from the director of..."? Was there a memo going around saying we care more about producers than directors these days? Or we just care more about Bruckheimer? We do, right?

[number8]

This opened to $9 million.

Wow. That is cringe-worthy.

[Ezee E]

This is what Spielberg has been afraid of for quite some time.

He predicted that movies may eventually come to a point where prices are inflated based on the movie. He thinks the movie business could have a meltdown if there's 4-5 $300 million movies that all flop...

[Irish]

This is what Spielberg has been afraid of for quite some time.

Where was that? I remember seeing an article awhile back where he talked about it. Rolled my eyes at the idea that people would pay $50 a ticket. Speilbergo is out of touch. The theater going experience he imagines, probably one based on what he enjoyed during his boyhood, died in the 80s with suburban multiplexes.

Also: Good God, this movie is polling at 24% on Rotten Tomatoes. Disney would be well and truly fucked if they didn't own Pixar and Marvel. This is the second time in a year they've shit the bed on a big tentpole release.

[Lazlo]

Where was that? I remember seeing an article awhile back where he talked about it. Rolled my eyes at the idea that people would pay $50 a ticket. Speilbergo is out of touch. The theater going experience he imagines, probably one based on what he enjoyed during his boyhood, died in the 80s with suburban multiplexes.

Also: Good God, this movie is polling at 24% on Rotten Tomatoes. Disney would be well and truly fucked if they didn't own Pixar and Marvel. This is the second time in a year they've shit the bed on a big tentpole release.

It seems to have worked at least on a small, trial basis for Paramount. (http://variety.com/2013/film/news/paramount-world-war-mega-ticket-1200504085/)

Maybe this and Dark Shadows failing will disabuse studios of the notion that it's a good idea to let Johnny Depp do whatever he wants. Why anyone would think The Lone Ranger was a good idea is baffling to me. The property hasn't been relevant in 50 years.

[number8]

That was Lucas, actually, talking at a USC panel, and he wasn't predicting movies being priced higher or lower depending on the budget. He was talking about a future where the movie industry produces films mostly for television and internet broadcast, save for 4-5 tentpole movies a year that will stay open for an entire year or more at select theaters and cost $50+ a ticket, just for the consumption of a niche market the way Broadway is.

[Ezee E]

Disappointing to read about The Lone Ranger. Looked almost like a live-action Rango to me. I was stoked.

[Henry Gale]

Every negative review I've come across has casually thrown in one or more tantalizingly bizarre or hilariously grotesque character or plot flourish, framing them as arguments against it when they make me almost want to see it more.

If anything the trailers (even back when it seemed much more like a sure-thing exactly along the "live-action Rango" kind of lines E mentioned) always made it look too confusingly antiseptic in its design. But now, in a lot of the things I'm reading, people seem to be put off of the final product for exactly the opposite reason.

I'll catch it as a cheap matinee.

[Irish]

It seems to have worked at least on a small, trial basis for Paramount. (http://variety.com/2013/film/news/paramount-world-war-mega-ticket-1200504085/)

That's a great link. Pretty sly on Paramount's part. Seems like a good value proposition for fans who want to see something early and get extras like a DVD or poster at the same time.

I like this idea better than Spielberg's tiered pricing thing. I mean, $25 for "Iron Man"? Fuck that.


Maybe this and Dark Shadows failing will disabuse studios of the notion that it's a good idea to let Johnny Depp do whatever he wants. Why anyone would think The Lone Ranger was a good idea is baffling to me. The property hasn't been relevant in 50 years.

I think everyone hopes they're the ones who hit the next "Pirates of the Caribbean" big money lottery. But yeah. Depp. I saw the trailer and thought, "Oh, look, Johnny Depp playing another quirky weirdo. And they actually found someone blander than Orlando Bloom to star opposite. That poor bastard."

Wholeheartedly agree about The Lone Ranger. It seems like a good property but who the hell remembers Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels? The last time (in the 80s?) they tried to resurrect the character, it failed spectacularly too.

Also, it just occurred to me that if they did this movie, somebody out there is thinking of pumping life back into "The Shadow" again.

[Neclord]

I am also strangely interested in seeing this.

[Henry Gale]

I would like to hear your thoughts on this, Sxottlan. Especially since I'd say we tend to see pretty closely on a good majority of summer tentpole-type movies and you seem to like this more than most people have.

But I also haven't seen Rango in a while, and it got better for me each of the three times I watched it before. So I'll probably just remain content with what Verbinski did there.

[Sxottlan]

I enjoyed this. Well enough that I'm kind of startled by the low tomatometer rating. Saying that they're just trying to do some kind of land-locked Pirates of the Caribbean seems like a misnomer. Nothing particularly supernatural here. It's pretty much a straight-up western with a little spiritual blibber blabber. One with lots of visual references to other films (Once Upon a Time in the West and multiple nods to The Searchers being the most blatant), but still fun. Maybe the only similarities I could think of would be Depp playing a goofy main lead character disguised as a supporting character.

Some of Verbinski's other proclivities do shine through unfortunately. The movie is way too long: it has about two or three beginnings and a couple different endings that are both melancholy and exhilarating as though they couldn't figure out a tone. The Lone Ranger is also filled with the usual grotesques that Verbinski likes. One character inexplicably has half a melted face. Verbinski's filled a whole movie with those kind of characters before in Rango. However it's more scaled down here. And thinking back on it, I'm not sure what exactly I would have cut from the film. Maybe the unrequited love subplot involving one character.

Ultimately I found the film entertaining as did it seem much of the crowd that I saw this with. It did seem like an older crowd. I liked Armie Hammer quite a bit, giving more of a comical turn as the man very much out of his depth. Depp as Tonto is a bit distracting, but I liked him and his personality is explained in a way that I found believable enough (he's insane with grief). Helena Bonham Carter is kind of wasted in her supporting role and the villains don't stack up against, say, Geoffrey Rush. But there I go making POTC comparisons. The movie comes down to the relationship between Reid and Tonto and I bought into it.

I also don't understand the complaints about bludgeoning action. I found the action entertaining and easy to follow. No real noticeable scenes cut to ribbons. The climax is kind of astonishing: a roughly 20 minute sustained bit of comedic action filmmaking that does recall a lot of chase scenes from other Disney movies. I think I even saw the bad guy shake his fist at the heroes. It's CGI heavy for sure, but it's paced well and flows easily enough with a chase between two trains highly reminiscent of The Temple of Doom and hey, it certainly doesn't hurt that the entire sequence is set to the William Tell Overture.

The film pretty much had me from the beginning with a book ending scene set in the (relative) future. I'm a sucker for westerns that reflect on the end of the era or have characters live on as old men in the 20th century. Too many to mention. This film has a pretty good take although again I think it must come from another film.

So I'd say it's worth a viewing once in theaters. As bad as World's End? Hell no. A $200M movie with no real audience? Looks that way. Not sure why Disney keeps trying to provide the franchise first before considering who they're making it for.

And can a mod fix the thread title pretty please?

[Dead & Messed Up]

I thought this movie was boring, schematic, and very familiar to the first Pirates feature.

On that last point, both films have a dashing hero and a dull heroine whose romance feels pat and is meant to be usurped by a bizarre goofball with unexpected wisdoms. Both films have a stringy-gray-haired villain who has a supernatural hex placed on him who may or may not have deep ties to the goofball. Both films open with a sacking-the-good-people scene that establishes secondary villainy (including a chubby/skinny duo) while the goofball is imprisoned. Both films feature a post-first-act trip to the Den of Iniquity and Big-Busted Corseted Women, where the Heroes gain Vital Plot Information right before they're chased out, but not before they've enlisted the Dispenser of Information to their cause. There are significant scenes, especially towards the end, where Depp's mannerisms creep way too close to Jack Sparrow.

The trouble is that this film feels less confident than that one. It gradually abandons its supernatural considerations and tries to hand-wave them as part of the magic of storytelling, or something. Its romance is even more flaccid, despite a more likable Hero role (Armie Hammer does a fine job here). It has an uneven tone, with scenes that intimate rape and make explicit the genocide of Native Americans, in a misjudged scene that seems to exist mostly to give the film another villain, rather than relate any meaningful tie to history.

As the film is bookended by Tonto telling the film's story to a child, one can't help imagining him narrating, "And that's when the villain threatened to violate the child's mother - more popcorn?"

Again, Armie Hammer's a great-looking hero, he has a good sense of how to balance his inexperience and duty. And the final train chase sequence is reasonably entertaining. It leans heavily on CGI (unavoidable, really), but the action is comprehensible and even exciting, and the use of the 1812 Overture, along with, thankfully, a minimum of dialogue, almost turns the movie into a silent comedy for twenty minutes. It hints at a more light-hearted, unabashedly frivolous movie, and maybe this is just my bias, but I feel like Verbinski's style isn't really suited to that kind of filmmaking. He does it well at the end here, but that's after a two-hour parade of needless grotesquerie and bland story architecture.

24% on the Tomatometer might suggest that this is a total disaster, which it isn't. But if everyone thinks a movie is a "C" picture, that means nobody approves. The Tomatometer shouldn't be read as a sign of quality, only a sign of consensus.

[wigwam]

:|

[Skitch]

This is financially on track with Prince of Persia.

[Dukefrukem]

This opened to $9 million.

Wow. That is cringe-worthy.

They're saying Disney will take $150 mil loss on this.

[Lazlo]

Disney executive vp worldwide distribution Dave Hollis says: "It's very disappointing. Everything was perfect on paper, so today was incredibly frustrating." http://www.darkhorizons.com/news/27684/-lone-ranger-to-lose-150-million

Perfect on paper? Except for you were spending nearly $400m on a property that no one has given a shit about for fifty years.

[Dead & Messed Up]

1. We had a bankable star.
2. We had a brand.
3. We had the creative team from one of our biggest brands.
4. We had an expensive marketing campaign.

These are the steps Hollywood professionals take to make sure they can't be held personally responsible.

[number8]

To be fair, the same creative team turned an outdated theme park ride into one of Disney's biggest tentpoles. It's not that outlandish for them to think that they could do the same for a fairly well known masked hero during an age of superhero movies.

[Lazlo]

That's a good point. I even remember most people thinking Pirates would flop. Somehow, though, this one always had an air of "why?" to it.

[Rowland]

Given how cynical this film is about the legacy of manifest destiny relegating the genocide of the Native American population to a mere historical footnote, the widespread disinterest demonstrated by this remarkable box office failure strikes me as almost poetic, in a terribly dispiriting kind of way.

In any case, the first act has marvelous kinetic energy, after which the film buckles beneath blockbuster bloat, with performances that aren't inspired enough, action set-pieces that look and feel increasingly machine-tooled, and a narrative that is too predictably formulaic to make up for it, though there remain enough surreal comedic touches and a surprisingly nihilistic streak throughout to keep it all agreeably engaging. I still like Verbinski a great deal, but it feels like he exhausted most of his creative energy before this is even halfway over.

[Sxottlan]

On that last point, both films have a dashing hero and a dull heroine whose romance feels pat and is meant to be usurped by a bizarre goofball with unexpected wisdoms. Both films have a stringy-gray-haired villain who has a supernatural hex placed on him who may or may not have deep ties to the goofball. Both films open with a sacking-the-good-people scene that establishes secondary villainy (including a chubby/skinny duo) while the goofball is imprisoned. Both films feature a post-first-act trip to the Den of Iniquity and Big-Busted Corseted Women, where the Heroes gain Vital Plot Information right before they're chased out, but not before they've enlisted the Dispenser of Information to their cause.

True.

The Hollywood Reporter has a convincing argument that the film heavily borrows (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/lone-ranger-mask-zorro-plot-581765) from the writers' own Legend of Zorro.

[Derek]

Given how cynical this film is about the legacy of manifest destiny relegating the genocide of the Native American population to a mere historical footnote, the widespread disinterest demonstrated by this remarkable box office failure strikes me as almost poetic, in a terribly dispiriting kind of way.

Except that the original show was racist and having a white man play the Native American doesn't exactly inspire confidence that the film is going to tackle race relations in a deep or intelligent manner. Not saying it doesn't but it's ridiculous to suggest that's at all related to the widespread disinterest in this.

[D_Davis]

Zorro and The Lone Ranger - two franchises that I just can't get enough of!

I've still got my fingers crossed for a Phantom reboot, and I'm still hoping for that Fibber McGee and Molly feature filim.

[Rowland]

Except that the original show was racist and having a white man play the Native American doesn't exactly inspire confidence that the film is going to tackle race relations in a deep or intelligent manner. Not saying it doesn't but it's ridiculous to suggest that's at all related to the widespread disinterest in this.I didn't intend to suggest that it was a literal reason, hence my use of the word poetic, which those who are understandably less charitable towards the film might affix with justice.

[Watashi]

Man, the first two hours of this is just a slog to get through.... but then comes that amazing climax. Almost saved the film.

Almost.

[ledfloyd]

I thought this was a ton of fun. The two train sequences are fantastic. It could've been a bit shorter, sure, but I'm kind of taken aback by the outright disdain for this.

[Ezee E]

This made Quentin Tarantino's Top Ten of the Year.

[Pop Trash]

This made Quentin Tarantino's Top Ten of the Year.

Er...it's October.

[number8]

Er...it's October.

It's a top ten of the year so far list.

[ledfloyd]

I have it sitting at #14 currently.

[Grouchy]

This is the movie everyone hated? It was actually a lot of fun. The closing train scene is excellent and it's filled with colorful characters and references galore to Sergio Leone and John Ford.

Also, it's kind of remarkable how seriously they took the subject of Indian genocide and removal from the land of ancestors. It's still just an action blockbuster from Bruckenheimer, but those themes make the whole thing gain more weight.

[Dukefrukem]

This is the movie everyone hated? It was actually a lot of fun. The closing train scene is excellent and it's filled with colorful characters and references galore to Sergio Leone and John Ford.


Well, I didn't find this very fun, but regardless it should win the Matchie for best VFX. Not sure there is anything that can top it in 2013.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbuzAV1TAYc

[Lazlo]

This is the movie everyone hated? It was actually a lot of fun. The closing train scene is excellent and it's filled with colorful characters and references galore to Sergio Leone and John Ford.

Also, it's kind of remarkable how seriously they took the subject of Indian genocide and removal from the land of ancestors. It's still just an action blockbuster from Bruckenheimer, but those themes make the whole thing gain more weight.

Yeah, it's pretty solid fun and there's been some strong writing about what it has to say about America, its history of expansion, it's current imperialism issues, as well as the concept of history as a storytelling medium.

The problems lie in its wildly shifting tone. We go from vicious murder, cannibalism, and genocide to ridiculous jokes about the horse in a matter of seconds sometimes. Hard to get one's bearings on what's emotionally important in the story. Add to that Depp's Jack Sparrow mugging in every reaction shot. But overall my fondness for this has grown in my memory.

[Dukefrukem]

The problems lie in its wildly shifting tone. We go from vicious murder, cannibalism, and genocide to ridiculous jokes about the horse in a matter of seconds sometimes. Hard to get one's bearings on what's emotionally important in the story. Add to that Depp's Jack Sparrow mugging in every reaction shot. But overall my fondness for this has grown in my memory.

ON top of the fact that the Lone Ranger is a big pussy and hard to root for.

[EyesWideOpen]

So you are only capable of rooting for "non-pussies"?

[Grouchy]

The problems lie in its wildly shifting tone. We go from vicious murder, cannibalism, and genocide to ridiculous jokes about the horse in a matter of seconds sometimes.
I actually appreciate that in movies as a general rule.

[Lazlo]

I actually appreciate that in movies as a general rule.

Any other examples of this that really work for you? Seems like a pretty big flaw to me.

[Grouchy]

Any other examples of this that really work for you? Seems like a pretty big flaw to me.
The Coen Brothers do it a lot. Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski combine violence with absurd comedy pretty much non-stop.

Other than them... Three Kings is a good example. I love that movie.

[Rowland]

South Korea used to be known for that sort of tonal schizophrenia, not sure if that's still the case.

[Sycophant]

A lot of Hong Kong stuff from the 80s and 90s is pretty wonderful for its tonal dexterity.

[Lazlo]

The Coen Brothers do it a lot. Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski combine violence with absurd comedy pretty much non-stop.

Other than them... Three Kings is a good example. I love that movie.

Yeah, but in the Coen stuff the violence is often played for laughs as a part of the comedy. Violence can be funny. But with the emotional gravity you're expected to feel from the massacre in Lone Ranger it's a different sort of violence that's undercut by the "joke" of the horse standing in a tree in the very next scene.

Three Kings is a good example. Technique can be effective, just doesn't work in Lone Ranger.

[Rowland]

But with the emotional gravity you're expected to feel from the massacre in Lone Ranger it's a different sort of violence that's undercut by the "joke" of the horse standing in a tree in the very next scene.Yeah, that scene was just weird.

[Bosco B Thug]

Starts off kinda badly or uninterestingly, lasting even through the film's attempt to be a surprisingly gritty, 'roided-up modern Western (the intense shoot-out in the Valley... a bad scene...), and it's never really creative enough, but it's a very admirable blockbuster. Armie Hammer seems too serious or disciplined an actor to take on the one-liners of an action hero. Johnny Depp was surprisingly acceptable, as someone who has come to absolutely hate the sound of his voice.

[dreamdead]

There's not a single surprising note in the script, but for all that the film manages to address if not analyze the fatalism inherent to western expansion, greed, and progress of a people. Naturally, these kinds of themes are handled without much subtlety, but the attempt to even engage with them is appreciated. The initial response of the kid to shoot the Indian who comes to life says it all, unfortunately.

Despite an egregious amount of mugging, Depp is able to make Tonto interesting. The same can't be said for Hammer and Ruth Wilson, though that's saddled with worse narrative aspects. The William Tell Overture, which apparently never heard of an abridged version loses its wonder and becomes excessive. That said, Verbinski does handle the action credibly.

Could have been much worse for a Hollywood blockbuster--I found the schitzoid tone pleasing.

[D_Davis]

Any other examples of this that really work for you? Seems like a pretty big flaw to me.

Nurse Betty

[EyesWideOpen]

I'm baffled by the poor reception for this. Depp was great and the time flew by.

[Irish]

ON top of the fact that the Lone Ranger is a big pussy and hard to root for.

^ Thiiiiiiiiiis. Good God, what were they thinking?

It's not even that he's a pussy (although he is), it's that they made him an object of ridicule within the film. Nobody takes him seriously and he's a constant object of derision (the worst was when Tonto bitch slaps him late in the second act).

I realize they wanted to make a light hearted comedy & family friendly film, but they turned a classic western hero into a complete buffoon and the movie into Inspector Gadget in the Wild Wild West.

There aren no really bad scenes in the film, but they're all dull. The feel functional and that's it. Every idea here is cliched as hell, hackneyed, old. That would be forgivable if the movie had any set pieces to speak of, save the ending. But it doesn't. It's a western adventure film that never feels adventurous, never has any energy, never gains momentum. Where are the set pieces?

Second: This is another retrograde, boys-only, puerile blockbuster whose only conception of women is of mother (Ruth Wilson) or whore (Helena Bonham Carter). Seriously, Wilson has some chops and they couldn't think of anything better for to her to do than be a human McGuffin? Fuck you, Verbinkski.

Third: So John Reid becomes disillusioned, and his response is to destroy private property, murder private citizens, and attack members of the US military? Weirdly subversive message. In a modern context, that makes the Lone Ranger into a domestic terrorist.

Fourth: Whoeever thought that credit cookie was a good idea should be fired. Seriously. The final impression this film gives is of a sad, alone, broken Tonto shuffling off into Monument Valley as melancholy music plays on the soundtrack. Uh, gee, yeah. Thanks for that. I sure had ... fun?

[Dukefrukem]

Inspector Gadget in the Wild Wild West is probably the best analogy to describe this film. He always succeeds at the most accidental way when the audience is looking for a hero.

[Spinal]

He always succeeds at the most accidental way when the audience is looking for a hero.

So he's kind of like Rango?

[TGM]

So perhaps it's because I was expecting the absolute worst, but I actually thought this was surprisingly really damn good. And though there are literal train wrecks abound, the movie itself was hardly the train wreck I had heard it described as. And Johnny Depp wasn't nearly as obnoxious as I expected. This movie was just a whole lotta fun, and hell, I even think this movie is easily better than Rango.

[Henry Gale]

It's the one year anniversary of this, everybody! That must've been what all those fireworks I saw on TV the other day were about.

Apparently I never said anything about it, and maybe the circumstances of how I watched it play a bigger role than they should, but putting aside a cold afternoon this past February to watch this more like a mini-series in one go rather than taking the time last summer to make a (borderline 3-hour) trip to the theatre for it really put all sort of pressure and expectation off to end in result in me feeling like nothing all that bad towards it at all.

Sure its plotting and characters are definitely muddled and its overall storytelling is more than sluggish here and there, I'm still not really sure how I feel about Deep's performance -- though I will say I was oddly really taken by him in the make up-assisted Old Tonto scenes -- and Hammer just kind of comes off as a blank slate, but for those incredible key action setpieces, the gorgeous, grand, omnipresent western vistas created for it, and the general feel it maintains more often than not, I really did have a time with it that I remain fond of.

I'd go as far as to say I love the first and last 45 minutes, but have next no strong opinions on the middle hour one way or another. And I guess the key problem lies there. There's an arguably expendable hour of it. But still, there was probably a perfect 90-minute blockbuster that could've been worked out before they ever rolled film(!) (Anamorphic too!) on it. So as it is, its reputation, at least from those that honestly saw it, is way unwarranted.