Disney's Failed Next Big Thing: The Lone Ranger 

it’s really funny to me that this movie got a huge disney infinity playset and world and frozen just got two figures who didn’t even reflect the final designs of the characters. it’s a really good example of this phenomenon

The lone ranger could have been a really tight fun 100 minute film.

The biggest flaw was that the movie didn't know what it wanted to be. It was trying to be gritty, comedy, drama, adventure, all rolled into one. I lt was all over the place.

Answer: they wanted to turn The Lone Ranger into Pirates of the Caribbean in the West.

You know that a film is in trouble when it needs to gross *800,000,000 Dollars* just to break even. I think the rest of Hollywood learned that the hard way just last year.

It’s fascinating to think in the span of two years Gore Verbinski directed two bizarre westerns that star Johnny depp and composed by Han Zimmer.

This movie helped me get over my ex when it came out. My mom asked me if wanted to go cause i was all depressed. movie was long and boring i was able to zone out and reflect on my relationship i had lost while at the theater😂😂😂

The Lone Ranger Lego sets were the best

The problem is they tried to make it campy and funny, but the Lone Ranger was never any such thing. Sure it had some funny moments, but never like that.

Ya know what's funny, cannibalism happened in this film and not to the alleged cannibal himself

Lone Ranger films do seem cursed to almost be good, but not quite making it. The trouble here was they based the Lone Ranger on Seths Green Hornet, made Tonto the comic relief, and made too long a movie.

People making John Carter didn't know the first damn thing about John Carter!

I still remember when this movie came out. My parents went to see it in theaters and sang its praises to high heaven, begging me to go give it a chance too. I caved, and went. All I could really think throughout the entire film was how obvious they had tried so hard to parallel all of the popular elements of Pirates of the Caribbean and it left a terrible taste in my mouth.

its fascinating because the Green Hornet reboot made the same mistake with the Hornet by making him the totally incompetent comic relief character who grows a bit in the third act, and it also failed yet they made the same mistake here. I think the whole thing there showed they didn't really like the source material and the making Tonto the hero then casting a white guy to play him was one of those bizarre decisions that was going to please no one. Cast an American Indian actor and make both he and the Lone Ranger competent and heroic but with different strengths and flaws that need each other and you have a good movie. And for god sakes don't spend more than 100 million on a Western!

The problem with modern westerns is not that people don't like westerns anymore, it's that they're being made with the wrong themes. Westerns are about a desire to regress to an imagined ideal past when we were supposedly far less complicated and everyone was allowed to follow their natures. That's why Tarentino can still make a good western -- by my definition, ALL Tarentino movies are westerns. (PS, Pirates of the Caribbean was good because the screenwriters, Elliott and Rossio, were the same guys who wrote Shrek and Aladdin.)

Let's not forget about Westworld and how that wove western and sci-fi together brilliantly. Not a movie but worth a mention.

“Mommy can we get the movie Dead Man!?” “We have dead man at home”

A couple of things more. You didn't mention one of the reasons the budget ballooned was the original story involved a werewolf that stayed in the movie until Dizzy pulled the plug and had them retool it, costing them millions. Another reason, I think, is the misguided attempt at pathos with the opening and closing bookends of Depp as old Tonto telling the movie in flashback to a kid before wandering off into the sunset at the end. This movie had no idea of what it wanted to be, so piled cliches, set pieces, and bad jokes before mercifully ending. It was doomed from the start.

I got to work 30 days as a extra on this movie in New Mexico as a railroad worker. It was a blast. Great food and constant weed smoking.

Honestly westerners don’t work as big bombastic flicks they work as grounded honest adventures

Maybe I am beating a dead horse with this, but the film's score is very well written.

Not to mention all the pointless nonsense that they had in the movie that you easily could’ve cut, the most especially that rabbit scene…… And just a lot of other moments with John Reed, have they been cut out then the movie would of course not only be shorter and much better paced and length (which would also help them have more showtimes and make more money :-) been overall more focussed even an enjoyable :-) and the sad thing is, you can actually do it yourself with simple fan editing

All in all, I enjoy most of these films, but over all they are a couple steps above passable. John Carter is my favorite. Prince of Persia was pretty good. Lone Ranger was enjoyable. Tomorrowland had a lot of potential but was so boring.

It was too expensive. The tone was wrong and the marketing was terrible. Would have been better as a TV show

I've never seen the movie, but hearing that there are 2 huge action scenes inbetween 2 hours of fluff means this film was doomed to the fate of "the best parts are on RU-vid". The train scene looks awesome, but it also looks like "what if Pirates of the Caribbean was in the wild west?" which doesn't help The Lone Ranger stick out. Which it kind of needed to with a budget that ballooned.

My guilty pleasure film 😅 I'm a suckered for westerns shot on modern hardware

John Carter (of Mars) could have worked had Disney had any f*cking idea how to market science-fi or fantasy.

A high budget western could work. The biggest problem is that they keep trying to make them as a stereotypical western and expecting people who don't like stereotypical westerns to like these movies. Or they just get incredibly weird with them (Wild Wild West, Cowboys v Aliens, etc...) This isn't like RDR2 where a person is playing a cowboy, this is people sitting still for however long watching someone else play a cowboy. You have to give audiences something more than just "western" for the genre to work in a high budget. Not only is the myth of cowboys more readily known now days, but a vast majority of successful movies of any genre do this sort of thing.

The best thing to come out of this movie was having some new wild west themed lego sets. Hindsight (and being grown up with expendable income) is 20/20, wish I bought more of those sets, so so good.

This movie exists as a surreal blur in my childhood. I also remember the Legos because it was cool seeing a cowboy theme. And they also heavily pushed LR in Disney Infinity, something me and the mates have would play all the time. Great video lad keep it up

I think one of the under-appreciated issues with potentially reviving Western films is that these stories have, at their core, a sense of wonder at expanding into the unknown. 99.999% of people today don’t have that feeling. They see high home prices, inflation, expensive land, wealth inequality and no opportunity for real growth or expansion. Even farmers see consolidation and people aging out of the profession while their kids move to the cities for jobs opportunities. It hits different when you see the frontier and know you won’t ever experience that (and also realize this frontier was somewhat of a lie to begin with, displacing people and cultures in the pursuit of expansion). Space provides a similar feeling without the sorrow because most people know they will never go to space and accept that. Oppenheimer and other biopics provide a similar feeling of wonder, but they are presented as great men. People we should look up to, but not people we can realistically be. The western hero was someone that young boys aspired to be. When that’s impossible and even children can see it, it doesn’t resonate with audiences. It doesn’t help when actors have perfect makeup and la k the grit that comes from a hard life. Movies like True Grit and The Reverent come closer, but focus on specific people’s struggles with life, which is more akin to the issues people face today. Of course, people may disagree, but I think this is at least one issue Western revival faces.

The Lone Ranger was everything Rango directly opposed to as a movie

I agree mostly with the final analysis. I truly loved this movie but it did feel all over the place in that I didn’t necessarily like that it started in a Princess Bride fashion of being a story within a story and it was overly comedic but also serious and heavy. I also didn’t think that the Lone Ranger was casted perfectly as he was too innocent and too clumsy. I feel that for John Reed to work, he should have been casted more like Orlando Bloom as Will Turner: competent and capable in the world he is being introduced into but still fresh and able to be molded into it. I do however think Johnny Depp did a great job as Tonto. I disagree that the western is dead; it is however not done right. The problem with the genre is the same with the pirates genre in that it hasn’t found it’s modern day footing. Before Pirates of the Caribbean, studios thought that pirate movies were box office poison. If you had the right cast, right crew, right mood and tone, with the right effects, color, lighting, and intentions, you could rekindle the western in the present day. I remember watching it and wanting it to succeed and have a couple sequels even with the problems I saw, but it failed and not to be revisited again.😔

I wish folks would just realize that Johnny Depp is not as good as he thinks he is.

Ironically, Tarantino made light of racist atrocities in American history himself *the exact year before* with his western Django Unchained. His point about the genocide scene in The Lone Ranger is valid but the fact that he was saying it specifically gives me vibes of "I'm not racist, guys."

The dead bird on Tonto's head didn't help.

The only reason I know Lone Ranger exists is because I remember seeing the Lego sets in the "Lego Club Magazine" as a kid.

I saw it in theatres when it came out, I vaguely remember the big train set-piece and absolutely nothing else.

I actually enjoyed this movie a lot. Never knew people found it to be a "flop" until this video 😂

3:39 “leading man/cannibal” lmao

The 1980 Lone Ranger was good. The 2013 Lone Ranger "the classic re-telling of" uh-oh, there you go. Johnny Depp as Tonto was played as a spoof, bad casting. Armie Hammer looked the part, though didn't like the clothes he wore. Once again if you have Johnny Depp you must have Helena Bonham Carter, ehhhh

I was told that Johnny Depp is part Native American, and the markup he was wearing was from his ancestry tribe

Many of these films have one thing in common: Whitewashing. The Lone Ranger, Avatar The Last Airbender (2010), Etc. They also rely on big effects budgets instead of cohesive storytelling.

It's so interesting to see a childhood movie through the eyes of an adult. Also, I promise this movie will hit very differently, again, in another 20 years. Looking forward to that review!

i feel like without any special mythology like the pirates universe (that gave the writers more freedom to explore) there would be nowhere left to take any sequels either way. regardless if it turned out to be a hit

I love this movie; it's one of my favorites. The action and visuals are incredible and it has one of the best ever Hans Zimmer scores that is CRIMINALLY underrated. Butch Cavendish was also a very menacing villain that I stole every scene he was in.

Banger series. Keep it up and you’re gonna get real big. Subbed

Even as an edgy teen I liked Lone Ranger Despicable me on the other hand I despise to this day as a franchise

In fairness…I found the “high-ho silver” bit to be absolutely hilarious 😂

Biggest mistake was trying to shoehorn their leading man into the sidekick role with that Captain Jack flavor.

Johnny Depp as Tonto is probably the only reason anyone DID go to see it.

On the topic of the real Native American massacre hurting the tone of the movie: I feel like the same thing happened for Blue Beetle. It's a light hearted fun superhero movie. Except the main character's father dies right in front of his family. And we have to watch a close Hispanic family deal with the death of their father. It just utterly kills the light hearted tone they were going for. It creates this depressive cloud that hangs over the entire movie. And yet none of the characters in the movie actually give it the emotional attention is deserves. They act like witnessing their father die is the same as losing a pet. Hell, I've seen families take losing a pet harder then blue beetle's family took losing their father. It just utterly kills what the movie was trying to accomplish and it's a trope by Hollywood that needs to die. Hollywood loves killing family members as just a check list item. Then the character is a bit sad in one scene, then by the next they're already laughing. It just tells me these Hollywood writers live safe, comfy little lives and they don't actually know what it's like to lose someone close. So they use their experience of having a bad day, or having their fish die, and just apply that to something much more extreme like witnesses your parents die. I lost my father. And I'm so fucking tired of seeing movies throw in the "dad dies" as a trope without the movie characters realistically reacting to something like that. It's just cheap and shows the writers as not good writers, but also just not good people as they can't even be sympathetic. Hollywood writing is such shit.

I agree with just about everything you said in this video. It’s not a great movie, and it’s not a horrible movie, it’s just okay. I remember when it came out one of the complaints were Johnny Depp should’ve played the Lone Ranger. But I don’t know if that would’ve worked either.

Honestly the film had potential…The action scenes were definitely so well put together, especially the train crash…But it seemed to get a little too hard to follow and so many threads with the fantasy and evil spirits thrown out as quickly as it was mentioned and Tonto retelling his time with the Ranger to the kid and then being like “it’s up to you decide”. Undoubtedly was incredibly stupid.

After those remarks, it’s a good thing Tarantino never made a lighthearted action/comedy movie about slavery or nazis or the Manson murders

My biggest issue with it is: Why Johnny Depp? Like they literally casted Pocahontas better than lone ranger, so... As for the Western is dead argument, idk, I mean I think it has potential, just perhaps not in the ways it's done, most of them in recent memory aren't all that serious or are just not 100% effort like the studios didn't try hard enough, perhaps something more emotional and gripping? Either way I think that westerns have potential they just gotta be done right, not a film but RDR2 did really well.

Great video on the Lone Ranger. Completely forgot about this movie. Ironically Johnny Depp's miscasting was the only interest i had in the film at the time. I didn't care for westerns but was a big Johnny Depp fan. But the reviews turned me off from ever seeing it, then i just forgot about it.

chicken pox? when your film crew has an outbreak of a childrens disease something fishy is going on...

Am i the only one that liked this movie Literally everyone is just bashing this film in the comments for its flaws, yes it had some flaws but those can be overlooked, apart from that this was a great movie

I've read that the film needed to earn around $650 MIL at the box office in order to break even; not $800 MIL.

The way the movie is structured it gives me vibes of a tv show sometimes. Theres alot of bloat because they are trying to tell many different stories and wxplore many different themes. If it was an 8 episode 40 min 1 hour per episode it could explore all that without becoming a bloated movie

its weird to reflect on just how many attempts there were to revive the western genre in the early 2010s. They could try to pick up these properties in current day and, solely due to the success of RDR2, they might actually turn into something.

The closes thing in genre to Lone Ranger to ever hit movie theaters is Zorro - as a sequel/ prequel/ reimagination, the lates comparable is 1998's "Mask of Zorro" with had a budget of 95 mUSD and a box office of 250 mUSD; adjusted for inflation that comes close to 135.7 mUSD for production and 357 mUSD for box office. The 2005 sequel performed much worse already with a 145 mUSD box office and production costs of 65 mUSD, signalling a dying trend in "masked vigilante western" as a genre. I find it quite baffling that a budget of anything close to 150 mUSD or above was even approved...

This is a great idea for a video series

It really doesn't matter if Depp has NA ancestry or not. The fact is actors play characters who aren't them. Sure they may sometimes play a role that is similar to who they are in real life but most of the time, they are playing characters who are completely different from themselves. The hallmark of a great actor, imo, is the ability to completely become a different person when they are playing a role, rather than just playing themselves for 100 mins.

Before Pirates of the Caribbean, no one was watching pirate movies. So, if the intent was to recapture PotC, I get why they thought they could revive a dead genre.

This tells me that Kevin Costner Horizon movie coming out this year will probably flop at the box office even if it’s a good movie.

I would love to hear your thoughts on John Carter. We enjoyed that movie, but it does have its issues. Wish there could have been a sequel.

Yooooooo keep it up this is a totally cool idea for a video series two fire movies I love the Lone Ranger lmao good shit

Great vid mate ! Covering stuff I reallt enjoy ! Clicking sub now

This movie seemed more like a Parady of the Lone Ranger ratger than a true Lone Ranger film.

They always overestimated Depp as a 'box office attraction'. Studio's seem to think that Depp+'wacky' role=instant $$$$$$$ which is obviously not the case but somehow they don't see that and kept casting him in such roles after pirates and those movies all failed pretty damn hard.

The trailers turned me off to it. I was a huge fan of the lone ranger TV series despite being far too young to have seen it originally. My grandpa had taped the reruns off cable. It's a fond memory of us together watching them after school everyday.

I liked this movie saw it with my dad

This movie impacted Depp’s career more negatively than any domestic violence incidents.

Its important to understand that Western flicks are, by nature, VERY low budget films with a tried and true story line. You're not gonna make a multi million dollar western film and recoup your money. You've GOT to approach it like the Italian show runners did (by the way that's why it's called a spaghetti western, westerns got a revitalization in Italy) and use an absolutely minimum budget to make a film that hits home with an audience.

It had its problems, to be sure - it was too long and the framing device was weird, but there was a lot to enjoy in this movie; I was sorry they didn't make a follow up. The final train/horse chase complete with William Tell overture is outrageous - in a good way!

I remember the train scene, where they actually played the music, was simply amazing. I remember nothing else about the movie except I thought the guy playing the lone ranger was just wooden and awful.

I do remember loving playing the Disney infinity version of this movie with my sister when we were kids They built a pretty cool sandbox old west town for kids to have fun in

i honestly find suprising how much people hate this thing. Sure its not perfect by any means and the fact Depp as a white man is playing an indigenous man is just ugh but i remember me and my family were having so much fun watching this. Its just one big satire on old cowboy movies while adding some not so bad ideas to the mix. Its not perfect but i do not think its that awful

I think almost every filmmaker secretly wishes to launch a new franchise, even if it's only a small one. Making movies is serious business in the post-blockbuster era, and the sheer amount of publicity that many films have received - especially in the 1980s and '90s - has been mind-boggling. There are entire collectible and novelty stores jam-packed with forgettable merchandising from nearly-as-forgettable films from 20 years ago or more. Even so, and as downbeat as these videos are, I appreciate honest tributes like this. Most entertainments will have quite a few people who enjoy them, regardless of how "good" or "cool" they are or are not. THE LONE RANGER has one of the most stirring climaxes in recent memory, especially when Depp is confronting Tom Wilkinson on the silver train. Hans Zimmer managed to turn "The William Tell Overture" into something almost completely new.

My Dad had these The Lone Ranger posters and giant action figures, the ranger and his horse, and they were beautiful! Toys are just not made the same anymore. I'm still sad my parents told me to sell them on eBay.

Westerns that take place in the American wild west aren't popular, but films and shows that are westerns underneath the covers still thrive. Fallout, cowboy bebop, samurai jack, firefly to name a few are structured like a western and shared themes but have nothing to do with the traditional western setting.

Disney ended up winning in the end. They got their franchise. It was just marvel comics instead of cowboys or martians.

Disney needs to make a blockbuster based on the Skibidi wars.

Know I'm definitely in the minority, but I liked "The Lone Ranger". Agree it was too long and outlandish in some parts, but it was entertaining. I enjoyed watching it.

I had a big issue with a lot of the tonal incongruence in this movie, but the genocide is what made it completely irredeemable. I was completely checked out after than and was only sitting through the end because my ride was still interested to see how it ended.

This movie's legacy is a pretty solid line of wild west LEGO sets, which I'm thankful for.

Start with the fact it was Disney and then add some very, very, dark elements and humor. What do you have? Pirates of the Caribbean. But add genocide, cannibalism, and gruesome death, you have a film few can recommend to a wide audience. And with THAT budget, it needed a lot of people to watch it. I enjoyed it but wouldn’t want kids to watch it and buy toys.

I think we need to stop this Lone Ranger bs lore and give Bass Reeves who the Long Ranger was based on his own movie showing why he was THAT guy back then

Damn Despicable me did so much more damage to Disney than i thought well done illumination

I've been thinking about this movie, as someone who grew up with the radio show (yes, really--I'm not that old, but I was a weird kid). You're right that it didn’t need a giant budget or wacky self-referential comedy. Or Johnny Depp. I imagine, instead, a low- to mid-budget movie with good cinematography (gimme those Western landscapes), non-linear storytelling, and a focus on the relationship between the two leads. Use tropey elements from the old stories and dig into what they mean for the characters. The Lone Ranger wears a mask and uses a lot of disguises? Something's going on with his identity and sense of self, possibly related to his near-death experience. Tonto keeps getting captured/hassled/otherwise abused by villains? He's obviously dealing with a ton of racism, but let's also dig into his life before his trauma and how pieces of that play into the choices he makes now, especially his refusal to assimilate into another culture even when his people are gone. Cast relative unknowns in the lead roles (including an indigenous Tonto, ffs--if you could do that in the 40s with Jay Silverheels, you can do it now). Cut back and forth between the present, where the Lone Ranger is missing and Tonto is getting himself deeper into trouble while working some kind of case, and the past, where we see their relationship develop. Hint that they didn’t get along perfectly at first, didn't always understand each other. Leave the audience to wonder if they’ve had some kind of falling out. Make them genuinely worry. Then, at a key moment where it looks like Tonto can't possibly get out of whatever, one of the "bad guys" who's been lurking mysteriously in the background the whole time basically pulls his face off and turns out to be the Lone Ranger in deep cover. Let the leads hug on screen; they're basically each other's family at this point. Then together they take on the bad guys from the main plot, bring some measure of justice to the victims, and ride off into the sunset before the actual Texas Rangers or other law enforcement can show up and arrest them for owing up the very profitable operations of the richest men in town (seriously, "rich guy who owns the town" was a VERY common villain in the show). Make it episodic, make it character-driven, make it take itself and the period seriously without making everything the color of dust. Have scenes instead of set pieces. Get at least one writer from theater or audio dramas who knows how to write dialogue and minimize the number of locations. All of that is cheaper than a ton of CGI anyway. Make a cult classic buddy-drama Lone Ranger. You'd make back that smaller budget, and launch a much more profitable franchise at the same time. I also have some specific historical theories on why John Reid should be gay, but that's for another time and probably the second movie.

Simple fact films need to be under a budget of 100 million, no more.

the movie didnt know what it wanted to be a dark western or an action adventure comedy movie it begins with a man eating another man's heart then it tries to be comedic afterwards

Depp as Tonto was a major miscast. Woulda been better casting Depp as THE villain on par with the Ranger.

Say what you will about this film, but that final train scene is the stuff of legends.

Whether you know about the Lone Ranger, or not, the bottom line is that the Ranger he had to be a bad ass from the start and instead it relied too much on Depp's Tonto. So much potential squandered and I fear, like John Carter, it's tainted the Lone Ranger story and character for a long, long time.

Just started watching your Disney flops video, enticing and intriguing. I really like that you don’t dismiss this film outright. Yes, it is a dud, but it is such a spectacular one that I find it interesting and mildly watchable.

Gotta love the Millennials and Zoomers here who have no idea or clue about the original Lone Ranger...only one historian claimed it was based on Bass Reeves, and that was never proven correct, yet the 40 and unders believe everything if its repeated enough 😂

The biggest problem is that the real lone ranger was black and the real Tonto was a combination of Cherokee men. This film lied about them