The Lone Ranger: When Will Hollywood Stop Remaking Old Western TV Shows? And More Compelling Questions.

Years ago Hollywood got the bright idea to make a movie out of the old Western TV show Wild Wild West. The result as you recall was an unqualified clusterbleep. OH MY GOD GIANT ROBOT SPIDER DRIVEN BY A LEGLESS MANIAC. I don’t know much about the Old West but I’m pretty sure those things didn’t exist. In the Old West didn’t they just drink lots of whiskey and have sex with whores and shoot each other and get along with little doggies? Don’t know.

Anyway, long story short, Hollywood did NOT learn its lesson from Wild Wild West. Cause here we are some years later and they have made ANOTHER big clattering summer movie out of an old Western TV show. This time it’s The Lone Ranger. Yes, hi-ho Silver AWAYYYY. That Lone Ranger. You might have watched it with your grandfather one time when you were forced to visit with him as punishment and your Gameboy batteries ran out. Dude in a mask hanging out with an Indian, fighting bad guys out on the range. Perfect character to revive for a tentpole movie! If you think like a Hollywood executive. By which I mean not at all.

Well unlike most of America I dragged myself to this thing over the weekend. I am here now to answer any and all questions you may have about the movie. Q&A time!

Q: Who is the Lone Ranger and why is he lone?

A: The best way to describe the Lone Ranger? Think Batman in the Old West. So Batman but not cool and full of darkness and angst. The Lone Ranger is not pissed off at the world like Batman. He just doesn’t like bad guys. He is a fundamentally cheerful person who wants the world to be safe for little children and hot farmer ladies with quivering lips. He doesn’t have all those layers to him like Bruce Wayne/Batman. I would say overall he is a very boring dude. Oh and he is not really lone since he has an indian sidekick named Tonto. Actually I’m not sure why he’s called the Lone Ranger except that he’s supposed to be sort of mysterious and he lives outside the law. Which the movie explains to us but doesn’t really drive home. He doesn’t come across that passionate or driven frankly. Just sort of bland and a little self-righteous.

Q: How does Johnny Depp make Tonto different from Jack Sparrow or any of the other weirdo characters he has played?

A: He paints his face white and wears a bird on his head. I don’t recall him ever doing either of those things before. Oh and he has eccentric habits like sprinkling birdseed in front of the dead bird on his head. It’s some kind of medicine man thing or something. Or maybe he just thought it would make him seem stranger. Mission accomplished.

Q: Isn’t Johnny Depp sort of wearing out the weirdness card at this point?

A: Actually no. In fact I would say Johnny Depp is by far the most entertaining thing in The Lone Ranger. You may go into the movie thinking you are sick of watching Johnny Depp play crazy people but you soon become grateful that there is at least one performer in the film who has some concept of what he is doing. And let’s face it, Johnny Depp is good at playing weird. How was he supposed to play Tonto anyway? The stoic indian thing wasn’t going to work. Depp plays him as sort of a self-styled mystic nutcake who underneath is this deeply wounded outcast loser. There is actually stuff going on underneath the surface of the character and you get the feeling this is all Depp. Not anything that the writers or director contributed. Cause none of the other characters have any three-dimensionality to them at all. They are all stock.

Q: Armie Hammer is a handsome fellow. How does he fare in his first big starring role in a big-budget movie?

A: Armie Hammer as an actor is a very handsome fellow. Quite frankly, to call him wooden would be an insult to things made of wood. Maybe it is not entirely his fault though. It’s not like the writers have given him anything to work with. They do not even properly set up the character. They sort of half-heartedly explain to us that he’s a guy who loves the law and wants to bring justice to the world. And somehow he winds up being chosen by the gods or the four winds or the spirits or something and has to realize that there is a higher law than the one in his books. I think. Like I said this is not laid out very well. There is the suggestion that he is inept – at least Tonto seems to think that – but there are no scenes that really convey this.

Remember the montage in Django where Waltz taught Django to shoot? And we saw Django evolving from this clumsy novice into a steely-eyed gunslinger? Yeah there’s nothing like that in this movie. Scenes that show characters growing and changing are evidently boring. It’s better if one minute we are told one thing about the character and the next minute we are told something else WITHOUT the scenes that show the change happening. That leaves more time for CGI train crashes.

Q: So you don’t see Armie Hammer becoming a big-time leading man?

A: On the contrary, I think Armie Hammer is poised to have a great run as a leading man. He is exactly what Hollywood wants in its star actors. Complete absence of personality or quirkiness or anything distinctive or interesting or particularly likable. He is dull and good-looking. That is apparently all you need. Chris Pine anyone?

Q: What is the plot of The Lone Ranger?

A: Have you seen the show Hell on Wheels? It’s pretty much that. There’s this evil railroad tycoon who wants to start a war with the indians (I think). I know he’s an evil railroad tycoon because he gives a speech to gullible-looking yokels while standing behind a podium that says “Transcontinental Railroad” on the front of it. Wasn’t that in an SNL sketch once? Oh and he actually gives TWO speeches standing behind the podium. Cause that’s how you set up the idea that the guy is evil and trying to screw everyone over. You show him talking menacingly from behind a podium. Not doing evil things in an evil way. Have I mentioned that this movie isn’t written very well? Anyway, the evil tycoon must be stopped before he creates a railroad that spans the continent. Because that would be bad for the wildlife I guess? And there’s some stuff with the Lone Ranger’s brother’s wife. I think she’s his brother’s wife. She has a kid so I assume she’s the brother’s wife? Wait I need to back up. Oh screw it. The plot doesn’t make any sense. It’s a bunch of disjointed bullcrap that no one bothered really thinking through. At no point did I really care how any of it came out. I was just waiting to see what crazy thing Johnny Depp would do next. He runs funny!

Q: How are the special effects?

A: Dumb question. Only intensely unhip people discuss the special effects in summer movies. Hip people don’t just yawn over CGI they yawn over the whole idea of thinking or caring about CGI. We have better things to do. CAN’T YOU SEE I’M TRYING TO BE BORED BY THIS LATTE WHICH I SEE AS A SYMBOL OF SOCIETY’S INDIFFERENCE TO HUMAN SUFFERING?

Actually I want to talk about the special effects in this movie for a second. Mostly they are competent but there are some scenes toward the end where they start to look really fakey. The final train chase doesn’t look right at all. It almost seems deliberately fakey. Like they were going for simulated quaintness? I’m not sure. Maybe they just got terribly lazy. Okay back to yawning.

Q: Will this movie help continue the Western revival begun by True Grit and Django Unchained?

A: Excuse me? I wasn’t aware that there was a Western revival going on. Two successful Westerns in a couple years equals a revival? No. True Grit and Django Unchained have not revived the Western. Those movies were not made because there was some untapped market for Westerns out there. They were only made because the Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino wanted to make them for personal reasons and had the clout to get them made. Those movies succeeded because people like the Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino. Those guys could make just about anything and people would show up. Trust me, the audiences at those movies for the most part cared nothing about the Western genre. And they certainly do not care about The Lone Ranger. Johnny Depp is the only reason anyone turned out for The Lone Ranger. They saw him in the trailer and thought “OH YEAH JOHNNY DEPP IS DOING CRAZY AGAIN LIKE IN THE PIRATE MOVIES!”

Actually I would not really call The Lone Ranger a Western. It is not invested in the form the way True Grit and Django Unchained are. In fact it sort of mocks the whole thing. There are lots of jokes about The Lone Ranger’s mask, for instance. It seems very self-conscious and almost apologetic to me. It even veers into snarky irony in the final scene when the Lone Ranger music cranks up. Don’t go hipster on me Lone Ranger! The whole thing feels very tentative like they weren’t sure what kind of movie to make. It doesn’t go flat-out like Pirates of the Caribbean. And the story is really not interesting at all. The great thing about True Grit and Django was, they had very simple, straight-forward stories where you knew what the characters wanted and you rooted for them to get it. It didn’t matter that it was a Western because there was just fundamentally good simple clear storytelling and characters you cared about. The Lone Ranger has a convoluted boring story and characters whose motivations don’t always seem clear. It’s just a total mess on a script level. And Gore Verbinski never finds the correct tone. At times it seems to want to go comedy. Other times it’s kind of dark. It is beautifully photographed though. I have to say that. It is almost as amazing-looking as True Grit.

Q: Are there any hidden themes lurking in the movie?

A: Of course. This movie was made by Hollywood liberals. The entire thing is an attack on corporations and they way they manipulate the law to serve their own ends. The hidden message of the movie is WE ALL MUST BE VIGILANT LIKE THE LONE RANGER. WE ALL MUST WEAR THE MASK. AND THE PANTS IF POSSIBLE. The movie uses a framing device featuring Tonto years after the main story as an old man acting in some hideous Wild West sideshow. Tonto tells the Lone Ranger’s story to a little kid. At the end the little kid dons the Lone Ranger’s mask. THE LITTLE KID IS US. I’m pretty sure that’s the point. Or maybe the writers did too much peyote.

Q: Does The Lone Ranger do for cowboys what Pirates of the Caribbean did for pirates?

A: Johnny Depp and Gore Verbinski are now 1-for-2 in reviving old Hollywood genres. Pirates of the Caribbean did successfully bring pirates back into the culture but only by adding a supernatural element that made the whole thing palatable to today’s audiences. And of course people love Johnny Depp’s performance as Jack Sparrow. The Lone Ranger sort of kind of hints at a supernatural element but never develops it. Nothing is successfully developed in The Lone Ranger as a matter of fact. It is a mish-mosh of half-realized ideas with a coat of big-budget gloss slapped on it. So forget cowboys. Not happening.

Q: What are the chances of a big-budget Gunsmoke movie?

A: I would say the chances of that are 100%. Hollywood never learns. Wild Wild West failed and so did The Lone Ranger? Greenlight that Rifleman movie! Get me Channing Tatum!