And if his train represents globalization, it’s not hard to draw a comparison between Cole’s willingness to muscle out-or completely destroy-the indigenous people who stand in his way and the modern Hollywood business model of market saturation, which has little concern for the national cinemas or independents it crowds out of multiplexes. In the case of The Lone Ranger, the train represents the future Cole envisions, one connected not just nationally, but globally, linked via enormous networks of transportation and communication-including movies like The Lone Ranger, which eventually played in more than 50 countries around the world.Ĭole calls this future “progress,” but director Gore Verbinski seems skeptical, and he repeatedly focuses on the cost of that progress, particularly in human lives. “The single most important enterprise under God,” Cole says in his first scene, is “the unification of this great country of ours by iron rail.” At the dedication ceremony for the new railroad, a banner reads “A Nation United.” “Whoever controls this,” Cole says later, referring to the train, “controls the future.”Ĭole’s line anticipates a crucial one in this summer’s Snowpiercer -“We control the engine, we control the world”-another action-adventure about a life-or-death struggle on a train that serves as the film’s central location and central metaphor. (It’s almost the exact same plan used by Hedley Lamarr in Blazing Saddles.) Cole’s dreams go beyond simple monetary wealth-he already has $65 million in raw silver-to connecting the entire country under one transportation system.
![story of the lone ranger story of the lone ranger](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/loneranger/images/f/f6/RangerSilver.jpg)
By tricking the settlers into believing the Native Americans have broken a treaty, Cole can disregard the treaty himself, and claim the natives’ land for his railroad. The ultimate villain of the film is a railroad man named Latham Cole (Tom Wilkinson), the secret engineer of the conflict between the Texans and the Comanche. Its entire narrative-about an elaborate scheme to drive a wedge between Native Americans and settlers in 1860s Texas in order to claim land for a transcontinental railroad-is a deeply ambivalent take on big business, technology, and expansionism that can also be read as a deeply ambivalent take on modern blockbuster filmmaking, which sits at a unique intersection of big business, technology, and economic expansionism. But while many members of the press were obsessed with The Lone Ranger’s budget, few noticed the film’s suspicious subtext about money, power, and possibly even the Hollywood system that created it. When production resumed two months later, that number had dropped to $215 million.ĭisney’s attempts to minimize its risk only added to the media scrutiny, and the shutdowns and repeated delays fed into the perception that The Lone Ranger was a doomed project. At that point, The Lone Ranger was expected to cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $260 million. Before the film became infamous as a flop-one so extreme, it reportedly forced Disney to take a $190 million write-down last summer-it was notorious as an out-of-control production that was shut down weeks before shooting was originally scheduled to begin in fall 2011, over fears about its enormous budget. The pre-release discussion around The Lone Ranger focused on the same thing as The Lone Ranger’s plot: an enormous pile of money. More than once I looked over at the friend I brought to make sure she was still alive.” -Wesley Morris, Grantland
#Story of the lone ranger movie#
I don’t know whether my intent is to change the channel or fast-forward or hit stop, but for long stretches of this movie I felt the urge to reach. Every once in a while I’ll be at a movie and find myself reaching for the remote.
![story of the lone ranger story of the lone ranger](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02634/bass-reeves-lineup_2634408c.jpg)
There are too many scenes involving the dead brother’s dull wife (Ruth Wilson) and their young son (Bryant Prince) holed up with the mean, old train tycoon (Tom Wilkinson). “The undifferentiated mess that follows strains the capacity to care. And as satisfying as it is to hear snatches of Rossini’s ‘William Tell Overture’ and hear a stirring ‘Hi-Yo, Silver,’ it’s just as sad to report that although this Lone Ranger is good at helping strangers, rescuing his own film is beyond even him.” -Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times “It’s also good to see a big Hollywood feature shoot in Monument Valley for the first time in years, though it’s odd to be told the location has been moved to Texas.
![story of the lone ranger story of the lone ranger](https://cinema.hbu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/The-Lone-Ranger-Tonto-and-Horse.jpg)
Hammer’s performance-always game, never mugging-certainly helps his likable but buffoonish Lone Ranger is an essential part of the movie’s irreverent tone.” -Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, The A.V. “Though it lacks the sustained manic energy of Rango or Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, The Lone Ranger is crammed with enough fun matter-rollercoaster train chases, fourth-wall gags-to compensate the slower scenes are at least interesting to look at, thanks to Verbinski’s detail-packed compositions.