I've read the reviews and I've heard the complaints and seriously, these are the groaning of people who were destined to hate it. As I stated before, I wanted to hate this film myself. Even with my prejudice I was unable to hate this film. It was great in just about every facet. The story was well written and thought through, the acting was on point, there was not an excessive amount of CGI so it had a very good look to the film, and it even made me remember why I couldn't wait to see Pirates of the Caribbean the first time, Johnny Depp is amazing. This film also lived on its own, it didn't make nostalgic references or jokes you would only understand if you were a lifelong fan. Now I know people argued that this was not the Lone Ranger you remember from your childhood, but considering that there hasn't been any Lone Ranger anything for about thirty years, it's easy to point out that the film was not made for the generation who grew up with LR. The action sequences were very well choreographed. At no time did I feel these scenes went on for too long or were too violent, considering how many people complained about the level of violence. Iron Man 3 was exceedingly more violent. This movie also never took itself too seriously. Yes I enjoy the DK trilogy but its refreshing for an action adventure film to not think of itself as this serious piece of dramatic art. One of the greatest issues with Man of Steel was how serious it took itself, this making the ridiculousness of it seem way more ridiculous (and that's considering I'm a nerd). One of my favorite jokes was the meaning of Kemosabe.
The villain was also a little obvious but he was a well rounded and thought of villain (unlike Aldrich Killien in IM3). The plot was also not so convoluted that you weren't entirely sure what the point was (same movie IM3). One of the best things was that for movie that had an over 2 hour runtime, it didn't feel that long.
Now granted, there were a couple issues with the movie. My main issue was the old Tonto telling the story of the Lone Ranger to a child. This felt a little useless considering this was meant to be the beginning of a franchise. Another great issue was the music at the finale. I felt it was played a little sarcastically and came off that way, not to mention it was incredibly loud. Let me caveat that with the fact that I loved the music. The last issue I had was how Rebecca, the love interest, was constantly in peril, way more than even LR and Tonto. Also the love story was kind of creepy.
Now since I'm writing this a week after the film was released, I know that this film has turned out to be a bomb. This was a very unfortunate result as I enjoyed it so thoroughly. I can however see some issues and think that in my previous hater look at it was right.
First of all, you enter this movie with a black eye for Johnny Depp anyway because though each Pirates film does really great business, people have a predetermined hate for him. I know many people who hate Depp's wild and eccentric characters (aside from Jack Sparrow). Perhaps people are just a little burnt out of his antics, I know I was. I'm just saying Johnny go ahead and play a regular guy who is not covered in eyeliner and with a dead bird on his head.
A second concern, was the budget. This movie had a huge budget. I feel this was very John Carter esque in the sense that the inflated budget made the movie go in with this return target already of over half a billion dollars. And I know that a lot of this has to deal with Verbinski's ridiculous train being built, which doesn't even make sense because the Constitution wasn't even seen that often. And when you did see it, it was in the background or they showed only one side. It's probably why Disney parked it in DCA to use it since they paid an arm and a leg for it. 
Another great issue was the marketing. They basically marketed the movie as Captain Jack Sparrow in the desert with a cowboy... Oh and that's a dead bird in his head. I understand that they felt a necessity to link the film to the creative team and star of POTC but they basically tripped themselves because now there was this audience of people who thought, I'm not gonna pay money for that! This is an instance of Iger's synergy getting the better of him. Oh and not to mention the rumor that if it did well they would retheme Big Thunder Railroad to Lone Ranger. Now yiu had a new group of Disney purists whi were crying foul and were now awaiting the demise of this film and any park tie in ideas there might be. It was very reminiscent of Tony Baxter implying that a new land where Big Thunder Ranch sits would become Oz of Oz: the Great and the Powerful did well (also why is Big Thunder the area they want to destroy?). Talk about outraging your fans, and this was only a rumor!
Well I hope you enjoy my rant and review of Lone Ranger and sorry for the long absence, I will be trying to update at least every other week
No comments:
Post a Comment