Disney's "The Lone Ranger"

True but if they can't at least handle the gore in a competent manner, then the movie deserves the criticism and low box office haul it's getting so far. Just saying "Well action comedies are built on juxtaposing violence and humor" doesn't mean the director is unable to screw that formula up.

Like I said, the reviews all say the difference is so jarring it's like going from a gritty deconstruction to a PG-rated kiddie film. The tone is just all over the place.

How is the tone being all over the place a bad thing? Movies that keep a consistent tone for their entire running time risk becoming boring. By changing the tone repeatedly, you keep things interesting.

I think the mood whiplash is a problem because the deaths shown have a historical basis in a real life genocide. It's like, in Indiana Jones, you can have Nazis be the bad guys, but you don't show them rounding up people for concentration camps.

Tone is not synonymous with Mood. It is connected to the Willing Suspension of Disbelief. Tone needs to be consistent or it takes the audience out of the story, makes them realize what they are watching is fake.

Mood Whiplash can be handled properly so long as it stays within the boundaries of realism the story has set. Imagine if a serious war drama like Saving Private Ryan suddenly became comically bloody a la Tarantino.

The goofiest thing in the movie is probably Silver somehow finding his way onto the roofs of buildings (partly justified by his Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane nature), and the grimmest was Cavendish cutting out and eating a man's heart (though not while the camera was watching). I don't see what the problem is with those elements existing in the same movie universe.

Saw it this afternoon. My judgement is...eh. It's slow to get started (I think they could have just opened with John Reid coming to town and nothing would have been lost). It seems to lack commitment, too. John isn't really given a compelling reason, or at least doesn't manage to sell it as a compelling reason, to keep being the Masked Man. I think the actors did a fine job, and most of the faults I found were on the director's side. I may have said it before, but it's quite remarkable really how dark the Ranger's origin is, for how lightly the material is often treated.

I liked the "Do you know what Tonto means in Spanish?" bit at the end. In Spanish-language versions of the Lone Ranger, Tonto's name is usually changed to "Toro," because "tonto" means "slow," as in "slow-witted."

'Tonto' means literally 'Dumb'. 'Toro', OTOH, means 'Bull', which is a better accepted name for a Native, like in 'Sitting Bull'.

More like "fool", really, from the way I've heard it used.

Personally, it seems like the issue with the Mood Whiplash thing is that it feels like a Reconstruction that skipped a few steps. It doesn't put enough weight on the "these things were wrong about the original, but..." part.

And the Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane angle doesn't help the entire racial controversy.

edited 7th Jul '13 10:19:54 AM by chihuahua0

Yes well johnny deep hat is a bird. So your criticisms are invaild

That was pretty racist.

I still wonder whose bright idea it was to design a Native American character after some white dude's extracted-from-anus conception of the same.

I think it might've been Depp's.

Depp said he got the idea from a painting he saw. The painter said that he didn't base it off of anything historical although Depp seems to think he did. As far as I can tell there isn't any tribe that used paint like that.

edited 7th Jul '13 5:11:19 PM by Kostya

Well, who knows - maybe it'll be a cult favourite one day, like Antonia Bird's glorious Ravenous .

Yeah, Depp lifted the costume idea almost exactly from a painting call "I am Crow" by a guy named Kirby Sattler. So, a fantasy picture, by a white guy, supposedly of a tribe from the northern plains, which even the artist admits is a totally made up image. One of the many baffling choices made in this movie.

Michael Horse, who played Tonto in the equally ill-fated 1981 adaptation (and, of course, deputy Hill in Twin Peaks), has his own opinion on the subject◊...

I believe it's more or less explained that Depp!Tonto dresses weirdly for a Comanche even within universe, so it's not like it's supposed to be accurate anyway. Besides, I could kind of see it as being kind of the equivalent of Lone Ranger wearing a mask in the first place, just as a get-up or a disguise.

It's actually not the first time I've seen criticism of how a native person is portrayed in a superhero type of setting, the other being a jaguar goddess in an Aquaman comic. I think the context permits it, because in either case these characters aren't supposed to be normal, or not anymore normal that the white hero characters.

The problem is though, it's much easier to tell when the white hero is supposed to be "in costume" because most of the audience is probably white and can tell what the costume pieces are meant to be and what they mean. When you look at Tonto in this film, you can't really tell if it's supposed to be considered "normal" or accurate, mainly because of ignorance of the culture he's supposed to represent.

Again, context matters; white people aren't offended by the Lone Ranger or Batman because they wear a mask or dress like a bat. We know that's not a stereotype of white people. But with Tonto, it's a person of color from another culture being portrayed by white people, and it's harder to tell what exactly it is about him that's supposed to be "normal" and what's supposed to be weird about him. I'm assuming most people outside Commanche culture don't know if they wear face paint like that or a dead bird, or if they only would for certain situations or ceremonies.

It's got me thinking though of what the American Indian equivlent of a superhero really would look like, and I'm sure it exists, as some legendary character. It's a shame those legends aren't as well known as the Greek or Norse myths.

But anyway, besides the costuming, there's also the issue if this new take on Tonto is good or not, because it sounds like they made what was more or less an intelligent and respectable character (from what I've gathered about him anyway) into the sort of quirky nutjob that Depp keeps playing as in movies. I still have yet to see the movie, but I may soon.

Man you love this phrase.

I find the costuming choice odd and discomforting because I'm not sure anyone knows where on the spectrum of "everyday" to "outright costume" it falls. From what I can tell, Depp concluded "Hey, that looks really nifty" and that's the extent of thought that went into it. And that seems to extend through the whole of the production.

I do?

It's a good phrase.

Depp is no longer excited in acting - he picks his roles based on what cool clothes he gets to wear.

To be fair, even his old movies involved wearing Zorro outfits, bad accents and such.

I enjoyed the humor/action parts of the film pretty well, but it suffers from most of the things I disliked about the second and third POT Cs-the mood whiplash, the plot wheels audibly grinding to get everything in place for the next big setpiece, the totally unearned and unwarranted delusions of grandeur and mythicalness.

As a western, it has nothing new or profound to say: most of its thematic content comes from Once Upon a Time in the West via Rango, which is to say that the director is stealing from himself basically, and the more interesting character stuff for the Reid brothers is borrowed from The Searchers (for the love triangle with the two brothers) and Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, with Hammer's character as Jimmy Stewart and the other one as John Wayne. Some of the horse related gags seemed inspired by the Antonio Banderas Zorro movies, which had the same writing team. Even the "well-meaning but clueless European-American dude who gets beat up by the plot by way of sensitivity training" is a cliche at this point, or feels like it to me.

The cavalry officer who *needs* to believe that his attacks on the Comanches were justified because he can't live with himself otherwise is pretty much the only unique thing the filmmakers come up with in that department; it deserved more space and a better movie than it actually got. Soundtrack was so derivative that they'd have been better off just going all Quentin Tarantino and paying for the useage rights to various suitable spaghetti western tracks; it would have sounded better and been more honest.

Depp struck me as more Mad Hatter than Jack Sparrow in this, due to the trauma in Tonto's backstory. I could see where the casting of the role would rub Native American groups the wrong way, and although I thought they did a good job of explaining why Tonto was not "representative" of his people, they took an awfully long time getting there. Hammer was basically doing the same schtick as in Mirror Mirror: well-meaning, clueless "square" standing in for the old school male hero, whose naive expectations always get him into trouble and whose skillsets and more post-modern/diverse friends are magically sufficient to get him out of trouble.

edited 8th Jul '13 7:28:54 AM by odadune

As for the music - I guess Zimmer tried the same approach he did for Rango. What worked in that film's favour, didn't so much here.

So I'm trying to watch this thing, and I think a page of Cat Ballou got into the script by accident. Seriously, they better go back and explain that bank robbery scene.

You know, there are the remains of an interesting character about Tonto. I think they're trying to make him The Atoner, but they didn't have to go the whole "he's crazy" route for that.

I want to like Armie Hammer in this movie, I really do, but the script isn't letting me. Is one of the Rules of Screenwriting "make sure that your audience doesn't fucking hate the main character?" If not, then it should be.

Why not have Tonto convince Danny to let him out? It looked like they were going that route, but they screwed it up with their whole Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane schtick.

...Okay, the part where Tonto is like "No, bring back this one" is Actually Pretty Funny.

And then the shit joke. Way to go, guys.

Oh, so now John picks up a gun. Be consistent, dammit. And stop reminding me how this movie would be much more interesting if this pansy had stayed dead! He fucking went Mola Ram on your brother, and you still want to do the whole "drag him into court" thing? If he's that dangerous, he's really just better off dead as soon as possible.

Oh, Helena. Why must your biggest scene be so utterly stupid? I know a nine-year old who could almost certainly write better than this.

It's official. John Reid has replaced Merida as my least favorite character in anything ever. I will actively pray for his slow, violent death until the end of this crapfest.

-sees Reid and Tonto riding around with parasol- My God, it's not even trying anymore.

edited 8th Jul '13 4:15:56 PM by Mort08