It’s been a long, hard road for The Lone Ranger, but a new trailer for the reboot of the classic western recently debuted.
It’s already stirred up a lot of buzz and critical armchair quarterbacking all over the ‘Net, so here’s what we, and several other net pundits, think so far…
One of my first impressions watching the trailer is that The Lone Ranger is a major effort to bring the western back. One significant concern with the film is that the western genre’s dead in America, and it would also be a real tough sell overseas. But the trailer shows the new Lone Ranger could be a hell of an adventure, and you could see why Disney had major issues over the film’s budget, because like the great westerns of yesteryear, this is a big, widescreen movie.
Some pundits apparently feel this is more Tonto’s trailer than The Lone Ranger’s. Yet I didn’t see the coming attraction as unbalanced, especially considering it moves very fast, and packs a lot of punch in under two minutes.
In fact, the action moves so fast, you forget about the Ranger’s horse Silver, or that this trailer doesn’t have his theme song, the William Tell Overture. (You do see silver bullets, though). Similar to how Batman went missing for much of The Dark Knight Rises, as Movieline points out, you don’t see The Lone Ranger himself much in this coming attraction either.
Like Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, Johnny Depp could very well be the off-center character who steals the show here again, and Depp, as well as the crow that rides on his head, is the primary focus of the film’s teaser poster. This movie will probably need a character that’s a bit weird to interest modern audiences because The Lone Ranger’s from another era long ago – another strike against it.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, other issues with the Lone Ranger include the film costing $250 million, and a shooting schedule twice as long as Raiders of the Lost Ark. The LA Times also noted how this Lone Ranger trailer has stepped away from the traditions of the character, again, no “Hi-yo, Silver,” no one saying, “Who was that masked man,” meaning this trailer gets “as far as you can get from the aesthetic of the original Lone Ranger.”
We’ll find out whether anybody cares about that change when The Lone Ranger hits theaters July 3, 2013.
