Yes I know that this is the fifth negative review in a row, but anyone that I can convince not to see this movie, well their two and a half hours is more important than me trying to mix it up a bit. Then again if I can find some good and interesting things to say about The Walking Dead game then I can use that next time.
Directing (Non-action scenes): The fact that I'm singling out the direction that doesn't involve the action isn't to inadvertently praise the action scenes. The scenes themselves are stupid and predictable and the direction is average, it looks exactly like a Pirates movie, nothing more or less. That being said, why am I talking about the direction? Well, it is just kind of weird. There are several scenes that don't have any kind of transitionary... anything. No sound effect, no similar backdrop, no characters engaging in a similar activity. And I'm not just saying that it doesn't include those traditional ways of transitioning between scenes, there are scenes that just cut to another one without any transition. This breaks the flow of the film, snapping the audience out of the movie entirely. This combined with numerous scenes drenched in bloom and lens flare, and it feels like a weird hybrid of Verbinski post-Pirates 1and Liebesman.
Hatred of the source material: I try, not always succeed, to not make crazed rationalizations. Saying things like "Gore Verbinski hates the Lone Ranger!" seems too hyperbolic for you readers to take it seriously, even if I think its true. But when you jettison much of the character's history/personality/key traits, and the ones you keep you mock... constantly! Well I don't consider the filmmakers fans at that point. I can understand wanting to alter the character, I can even understand trying to make the whole thing this morally ambiguous "dark" film (which it totally isn't by the way). But when the ONE time in the entire movie that the main character utters his catchphrase and gets reprimanded for it. When the original score is used twice, and all of it during the last thirty minutes. And when you make a big deal about the whole "no-killing" thing only for both of the main villains to meet fairly gruesome ends. Well you clearly have some issues.
Lonnnnnnnggggggggg: This movie is really long. And boring. Yes these are criticisms that pretty much every single critic on the planet, even the ones who defend the film, have leveled at it. The only reason that I bring it up, is because it really is a problem. You see they have this whole two and a half hour space to fill, and almost none of it is with the title character, doing what he does. Hell he doesn't even decide to become the Ranger for real until nearly forty minutes from the end of the damn movie. That's right you only get a little over thirty minutes of the actual title character, doing what he does.
Grimdark slapstick: How many films am I going to see this summer that have tonal problems? Seriously I'm asking here. Man of Steel, Equestria Girls, and now Lone Ranger. Is it really so hard to create a consistent tone? Or at least to create transitions between the comedy bits and the dramatic stuff. In this movie one of the main bad guys eats a human heart, that he just cut from the body of a character that had been characterized for a while. A few scenes later, Johnny Depp is stealing from dead bodies, and they want us to consider this funny. And later still, Depp drags Hammer through horse poop. People, myself included, gave Pirates 3 a lot of stick for its inconsistent tone. But this... this is a whole other level of stupid.
Occasional funny moment/cool character: I would be lying if I said that the film didn't make me laugh at least once or twice. A couple of the ways that The Lone Ranger screws up and yet still comes out on top are decently funny. Special props should also be given to Johnny Depp, who tries his damnedest with a radically redesigned Tonto. The script still kills the part, but it was at least a good effort. Helena Bonham Carter also does have several fun moments as Red, the friendly neighborhood prostitute. She also cares far more about her minor supporting role than Hammer does about the lead character, so those two do elevate the film slightly. And this is all coming from someone who usually dislikes them for appearing in every awful Tim Burton movie outside of Planet of the Apes.
Conclusion: After the disappointment that was Man of Steel. And now the triplet horrors that are After Earth, World War Z, and Lone Ranger I wonder what the film watching audience did to deserve this. I mean really, it makes me want to see Equestria Girls again. I mean yeah that movie was only mildly above-average, but that is better than absolute garbage. Yeah the movie was barely the length of three episodes without commercial breaks, but that's better than teeth-grindingly long. Pacific Rim... its all up to you now.
1/5
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