The lone ranger 2013 movie#
The lone ranger 2013 series#

Give us a story that works and then, if youвЂ™re lucky enough to earn a sequel, you can give us flashes of an origin tale down the road, as opposed to weighing down your first movie.

The lone ranger 2013 series#

HereвЂ™s a suggestion, Hollywood - try starting a series in media res. As a result, thereвЂ™s a heavy sense of obligation and Catch-22-ness to the entire task. But, if youвЂ™re going to try to establish a franchise, the origin story must be told, especially with a character as obscure to current audiences as the Lone Ranger. The Lone Ranger spends a good chunk of time marking off origin-story checklist items and very little time on the actual lone ranging.

The lone ranger 2013 movie#

As a result, the movie must make its way through not just one, but a pair of origin stories, as we learn both how lawman John Reid (Armie Hammer) became the masked avenger as well as how face-painted, dead-bird вЂ“wearing Tonto became the wandering outcast of this version. You donвЂ™t pay Johnny Depp money and then shunt him to the side. ItвЂ™s a choice that makes sense, given that the Native American is played by Johnny Depp in full, mugging Jack Sparrow mode. The Lone Ranger is as much a movie about sidekick Tonto as it is about the titular masked man. (Even if The Lone Ranger flops, Hollywood has not been known to always learn from its mistakes.) Yet, as studios continue to plumb our pop culture past for any recognizable names that have yet to be made into a movie/potential franchise, weвЂ™re likely so see more films along these lines. In the mid-nineties, two films with similar comic strip/old-time radio heroes - The Phantom and The Shadow -В were equally unsuccessful. The year before, Seth Rogen starred in director Michel GondryвЂ™s film version of The Green Hornet, another pulp-era hero (the character is actually the grand-nephew of the Lone Ranger) who audiences had no interest in getting to learn about. That might have to do with the fact that few were likely familiar or interested in a movie about a character from an early 20th century series of sci-fi adventure novels. Questions of quality aside (the filmвЂ™s Metacritic score is split almost down the middle at 51 percent), John Carter was simply rejected by audiences. Disney tried this last year with John Carter and failed. As a result, studios will glom on to practically anything that is even vaguely recognizable (hello, Battleship!), preferably one with a title that is the name of a person or a cartoon or a superhero. has Batman, Superman, and the Lord of the Rings series Universal has the Bourne movies and the hit Fast and Furious series Sony has Spider-Man.Д«ut in addition to all those very recognizable properties, there is pressure to expand and find more. Each studio has its own set of titles: Disney is basically a franchise machine these days -В the studio is now in charge of the Star Wars, Marvel, Muppets, and Pixar brands Paramount has Star Trek and Mission: Impossible Fox has Ice Age, Planet of the Apes, and the X-Men films Warner Bros. Whether itвЂ™s ready-made properties like Star Wars or surprise hits that studios can then sequelize until the properties burn out (see the Hangover series), franchises are, and will continue to be, the name of the game. ThatвЂ™s because, as Obst writes in her book, studios need movies with вЂњpre-awarenessвЂќ - titles that are familiar enough to sell in both the U.S. Last November, shortly after it was announced that Disney had acquired Lucasfilm and would make a new Star Wars trilogy, VultureвЂ™s Kyle Buchanan posited that we were entering a phase in which we would begin to see films from the same franchises over and over and over. These are not small problems, and there is no sign that they will be riding off into the sunset anytime soon.

In addition to being massively expensive, The Lone Ranger demonstrates the industryвЂ™s franchise obsession, origin-story laziness, over-reliance on bloodless violence, and inability to prevent running-time bloat.

It also happens to be a perfect example of almost everything thatвЂ™s wrong with the current Hollywood blockbuster system. Pirates of the Caribbean 4.5: Sparrow Goes West - is looking like it might be a huge tentpole movie (it reportedly cost $215-250 million) that goes down this weekend. During their conversation, she grimly agreed with the two moguls, predicting, вЂњIf, say, four huge tentpole were to go down at the same time in the same season, it would be catastrophic.вЂќ Curious about whether or not this was simply exaggeration, VultureвЂ™s David Edelstein got in contact with producer Lynda Obst, author of a new book titled Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales From the New Abnormal in the Movie Business. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg recently took part in a symposium in which they predicted an imminent вЂњimplosionвЂќ in the system as a result of the industryвЂ™s current obsession with blockbuster movies.