The Lone Ranger

So there’s been a lot of debate on tumblr, with some of the social justice brigade saying that Johnny Depp playing a Native American is cool, and others saying holy shit, it’s a white guy wearing tribal facepaint to pretend to be an Indian. Now, I’m not going to take sides in this debate. You shouldn’t skip The Lone Ranger because Johnny Depp is playing Tonto. You should skip it because it’s a horrible fucking movie.

I’d try to do one of my “Five-Minute Lone Ranger" things here, but the whole movie is so ridiculously convoluted that I can barely remember it. So, just a few things.

*

Tonto is a hella asshole in this. He’s a grave robber, a racist, and a whole-hearted advocate of mercilessly slaughtering your enemies in cold blood. Moreover, he’s a really obvious riff on Jack Sparrow. Let’s see… betrayed by the villain in the backstory, leaving him both “wackily" traumatized and out for revenge, with a significant object he carries around to return to the villain at his moment of vengeance. Also teams up with a dorky straight arrow whose forbidden love affair he advises on.

*

Speaking of: In POTC, you could root for Will and Elizabeth because they were both into each other, it was just class keeping them apart. In TLR, there’s some really wonk, Green Lantern-type backstory where the Lone Ranger is in love with his brother’s wife, who always loved him but married his brother for some reason. Once again: the hero of this movie lusts for his brother’s wife and, when he poo-poos the notion of going after a widow of about a week (one who HASN’T EVEN LEARNED HER HUSBAND AND THE FATHER OF HER SON IS DEAD YET), Tonto basically goes “oh, you silly white people and your ‘civilization’". No, I think most societies would look down on anyone who attempts to give the D to their sister-in-law after one whole week of mourning.

*

Also, they seem to be suggesting that the Ranger knocked up his brother’s wife at some point and big bro has been raising the bastard. WHAT THE SHIT?

*

Speaking of shit-whattery, the story is told “from Tonto’s perspective" (i.e., the first character we meet is John Brett and we only find out Tonto’s backstory an hour in), as the movie—holy shit—starting in 1933, then flashing back to events in the latter half of the story, then finally flashing all the way back to the beginning. Leonard Shelby couldn’t figure this shit out. The initial hook would seem to be “hey, what’s the Lone Ranger doing robbing a bank, he’s supposed to be a paragon of virtue?" only for the movie to repeatedly shit on the notion of being a moral paragon.

*

Also, the framing device in 1933 is that Tonto ends up being exhibited in a circus as a “noble savage" and tells his story to a little kid. Because that’s not depressing at all for a light-hearted adventure movie. Why not have Raiders of the Lost Ark be told by a cranky, senile Harrison Ford in-between rants about Mexicans taking people’s jobs?

*

Speaking of, I guess they were going for a whimsical sort of The Princess Bride thing here, with the crotchety old Tonto narrating to a precocious young lad. But whereas Princess Bride got all metafictional, TLR just points out cursory plot holes. And this kid would not cut it as a TV Tropes contributor at all worth his salt. He never gets an answer on how Tonto breaks out of prison, he never finds out how Tonto and Lone Ranger found out where the dynamite was hidden, he allows ridiculous contrivances to pass without a single lampshade hanging—by my count, a horse ending up on the roof of a building to save the characters, the characters surviving a train crash, Tonto surviving falling off a train onto another train (don’t worry, the silver ore broke his fall). I guess it’s just the movie’s way of saying “the best way to approach this story is as a particularly slow sixth-grader."

*

B-T-dubs, in this new version, the Lone Ranger is a Spirit Walker, basically a Native American superhero, so we can have a bunch of Chosen One nonsense and destiny and visions and blah blah blah. I gotta wonder, why can’t Tonto be the one with the grand destiny and shit? Isn’t this a little like a Batman movie where Bruce Wayne travels to Dakota to recruit a Native American to be the Batman, while he dresses up as Robin?

*

Okay, I don’t know a lot about the Lone Ranger, but from being a huge nerd, I know that he carries silver bullets to remind him that every life is precious, so he shouldn’t be shooting a lot or killing people. In the movie, it’s because the villain is wendigo that can only be killed by silver, except he’s not, because Tonto’s voodoo is full of shit except when it isn’t (see, the existence of William Fichtner is throwing nature out of balance, which is Tonto’s deal because, you know, Native American, connected to nature… wow, it sounds horribly offensive when I say it like that).

So we have a character that’s, well, a Technical Pacifist. Shoots guns out of people’s hands, knocks them out instead of killing them, brings people to courtrooms instead of graveyards. That is, if the movie were faithful to the source material.

Here, Tonto seriously calls the Lone Ranger a pussy for not executing a man in cold blood. And the movie agrees with him! The Lone Ranger and co. end up killing all the bad guys, except in a Batman Begins sort of way so it’s for kids, even though they also tend to make gleeful one-liners as villains fall to their doom. You can’t really say “I didn’t mean to kill him!" and “Hasta la vista, baby!" in the same breath.

Imagine if a Doctor Who movie had the Doctor toss his sonic screwdriver away in disgust and pick up a shotgun to blow away Davros, because REAL MEN SLAY BAD GUYS WHEN THEY’RE NOT SLAYING PUSSY, BRAH! That’s about the size of it.

*

And there’s a point in this movie where the bad guys have faked Comanche attacks on white people, so the US Army retaliates and wipes out some Indians. Lone Ranger finds out about the plot and tells the Indians, who summarily bury him to his neck in the ground and leave to go kill a bunch of white people. The Army retaliating against the Indians is, of course, painted as ridiculously evil, while the Indians retaliating against the Army is all good and noble (to the point where the Army is displayed as monstrous for defending themselves). It’s like one of those James Bond movies where SPECTRE is playing the US and Russia against each other, only to say that one side is bad for doing the exact thing the other side is doing.

By the way, this entire plot is so the US can void their treaty with the Native Americans and grab their unobtainium, I mean, silver. A cursory read of history would show that there would be no need for such an excuse. The bad guys would just say “eh, Indians, fuck ‘em," and the movie would be over.

*

By the way, it just feels really disingenuous for the movie to be criticizing white atrocities while not having any minority actors in it. And no, Johnny Depp doesn’t count. If the extent of your POCness is such that you have to get a Certificate of No, Really, I’m A Native American, then shut up. It’s like Tom Cruise being considered to play Shaft because his uncle’s cousin’s boyfriend’s daughter’s roommate was black. With that kind of tortured logic, no wonder they tried to get Shailene Woodsley to play a supermodel.

*

What else, what else… oh, one of the good guys turns on the Lone Ranger and assists in the murder of his brother. You’d think this would be setting him up for a special comeuppance later, you know, what with the personal betrayal and all that. No, he just gets offed by the villain later for no reason, and with no explanation of why he did any of what he did. Gee, that subplot was important.

*

Oh, and the villain FUCKING EATS A DUDE’S HEART ON CAMERA. Like, I don’t know, isn’t that a little messed up for a Disney movie? I’m just saying, you can’t say “oh, it’s a kid’s movie, it doesn’t have to make sense," then have scores of people die violently on screen and brothels and stuff.

*

Speaking of brothels, that’s about the extent of the women in this movie. Helena Bonham Carter plays a hooker with a heart of gold, because hey, you need a hooker with a heart of gold in a Western, and Alice from Luther plays Whatshertits, who spends pretty much the entire movie either being held captive and saying “My boyfriend’s gonna kick your ass" to the bad guy, or wanting to fuck her brother-in-law. And I know, Elizabeth in POTC spent most of the movie held prisoner too, but she was always scheming and figuring out stuff and trying to escape and shit. All Alice does is have people really want to rape her (or just, you know, consensual boning, in the hero’s case).

*

Oh, and both HBC and Alice have black people working for them, because they’re nice. DIVERSITY!