Trailer Trashin’: Saddle Up with the Lone Ranger

It may only be the beginning of October, but it’s never too early for the studios to start hyping their slate of 2013 movies. On this week’s installment of Trailer Trashin’, I aim my film journalism six-guns at the first trailer for next summer’s The Lone Ranger.

Premise: Native American spirit warrior Tonto (Johnny Depp) recounts the untold tales that transformed John Reid (Armie Hammer), a man of the law, into a legend of justice – the Lone Ranger. They are taken on a runaway train of epic surprises and humorous friction as the two unlikely heroes must learn to work together and fight against greed and corruption.

My take: I don’t think anyone would deny that Westerns have had a rough time of it in Hollywood over the past several decades. It’s hard to even get them made, and when one isn’t successful, it just sets the genre back once again. For every 3:10 to Yuma (2007) or True Grit (2010), there’s a The Alamo (2004) or Cowboys & Aliens (2011). And for the last ten years, various studios and producers have been trying to get a new movie of the Lone Ranger off the ground. Now that movie is finally coming our way, courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and director Gore Verbinski. The first trailer is out, and while I think it looks good, it’s not on my “must-see” list.

The film certainly has an interesting cast. Armie Hammer, best known as the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network (2010) and who would have been Batman in George Miller’s scrapped Justice League movie, plays the title role of John Reid/The Lone Ranger; Hammer is a great actor, and I really hope this movie can help launch him into stardom. But the real focus here is on Johnny Depp as Tonto, who is traditionally the sidekick but in this film is being treated as the main character. I’m glad that Depp is being pretty restrained in his performance here; because I was worried he’d basically be Captain Jack Sparrow again. However, Depp’s casting and the treatment of Tonto feed into my main issue with this film, which I’ll get into later. Unless I’m mistaken, the person we hear in the first part of the trailer is Tom Wilkinson as Latham Cole, but we don’t actually see him; ever since Batman Begins (2005), I’ve been a fan of Wilkinson, and I hope he gets some good stuff to play. We unfortunately do not see William Fichtner as the evil Butch Cavendish; hopefully we’ll see him in the next trailer. Fichtner is a great character actor with a long resume of small but notable roles – most people would recognize him as the shotgun-wielding bank manager in The Dark Knight (2008) – and I’m glad that he’s getting a major role in a big tent pole film. There’s a brief shot of Helena Bonham Carter as a character known only as “Red.” Not appearing in this trailer is Ruth Wilson or James Badge Dale – I guess we’ll have to wait for the next one.

The movie definitely looks good, and is clearly going to deliver on the big action we expect from Bruckheimer productions. We’ve got gunfights aplenty, horse chases, what looks like a jailbreak, and a lot of stuff with a huge steam train. This all looks pretty exciting, and it should be well shot as it’s directed by Verbinski. And I have to say I love how the characters talk about the railroad like it’s the Spice from Dune or something (“He who controls the Train, controls the universe!”).

As I mentioned earlier, the main problem I have is with Johnny Depp as Tonto. The movie may be called The Lone Ranger, but the focus is clearly on Tonto, who is played by one of the biggest movie stars in the world, while the Lone Ranger himself is played by an actor with nowhere near that level of star power. This aspect reminds me of Tim Burton’s Batman (1989), where Michael Keaton as Batman was so overshadowed by Jack Nicholson as the Joker. If Disney is trying to re-launch the character of the Lone Ranger for the general public, it’s probably not a good idea to do a movie that’s really about his sidekick. I don’t want to drag the issue of race into this, but even though Depp does have some Cherokee ancestry, I’m still not sure I’m okay with the idea of him playing a Native American character. Personally, I would have preferred to see someone like Adam Beach or Jay Tavare as Tonto.

To sum it up, there are things in this first trailer that I think are really cool, but also other things I have doubts about. If it works, it could be a rollicking high adventure like The Mask of Zorro (1998) or Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003); if it doesn’t work, it could be entertaining but forgettable like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010). However, I remember that when I saw the teaser for the first Pirates of the Caribbean, I thought that was going to suck, and the movie ended up being awesome. Because of that, and the considerable talent of the people involved here, I’m going to at least wait until I see another trailer. In the meantime, I would say I’m cautiously optimistic for The Lone Ranger.

ANTICIPATION: It looks pretty, but I’ll need to see more before I’m going to ride off into the sunset with it.

Release Date: July 3^rd, 2013

Starring: Armie Hammer, Johnny Depp, William Fichtner, Ruth Wilson, James Badge Dale, Tom Wilkinson, Barry Pepper, Helena Bonham Carter, Mason Cook, James Frain, and Harry Treadaway
Director: Gore Verbinski
Writers: Justin Haythe, Ted Elliott, and Terry Rossio

P.S. This past Friday, the title song for Skyfall, sung by Adele and appropriately titled “Skyfall,” was released, and I think it’s awesome. We’ve got Q, we’ve got a song that uses the movie’s title, now we just need the gun-barrel opening back in its proper place.