Texas doesn't have the strange rock formations of Utah shown, as anyone who lives there can tell you - the portrayal is as the exhibit sets up, images of the wild west, introduced to us first through a carnival where you expect exaggeration. This exhibit sets up the tone of the story -"witness the wild west as it really was." The movie, of course, does not concern itself with backbreaking accuracy, but with sweeping vistas, evoking what people think when they think of the Old West, as the classical westerns of yore did.
The movie starts off following a kid in 1920s San Francisco, who meets Tonto in a carnival exhibit. Despite what the critics say, The Lone Ranger is an excellent piece of media - and here's why.
Essentially, it's Keith and I sitting around having a conversation and what it boils down to is his wisdom and philosophy and his experience."Įveryone's favourite Peter Pan, Depp turned 50 on 9 June, marking that milestone with a quiet dinner out with daughter Lily-Rose, 14, and son Jack, 11, from his former relationship with French singer Vanessa Paradis.And yet this movie has not just wandered off into the desert to die - it still shows on the TV regularly, is still a talking point on the internet and a guilty pleasure for some while being a proud favorite for others. Having forged a close personal relationship with the veteran Rolling Stone, he's now putting together a documentary on Richards which he will also direct: "I wouldn't say it's a documentary on Keith so much as it's an opportunity to experience Keith as people don't get to see him, as he is quite a mysterious being. Which will probably be a problem down the line, but I am not worried about it. I can't stop him! These characters that you have gotten to live the majority of probably an unhealthy amount of time, they never go away. He's still in there!" he says, slipping into his familiar Captain Jack/Keith Richards cockney accent. Set to reprise Captain Jack Sparrow a fifth time in 2015, he confesses it's been tough shaking off the reprobate pirate: "That's one of the problems. I am shocked," laughs Depp currently filming Wally Pfister's sci-fi thriller Transcendence.
It's my small sliver of contribution to try to right the wrongs committed in the past," says Depp, who directed Brando in the little-watched Native American drama The Brave in 1997. "I learned more about this from the great mentor, father and friend that I had in Marlon Brando. So I wanted to play Tonto not as the sidekick to the Lone Ranger, a go-fetch-a-soda-boy kind of thing, but as a warrior and as a man with great integrity and dignity.
In returning The Lone Ranger to the screen – 80 years since the masked lawman and his feathered friend debuted their adventures on radio, comics and a popular TV series – he says: "The Native American has been treated very poorly by Hollywood and portrayed as a savage. One day I got a call from this great Comanche woman, LaDonna Harris, who decided she wanted to adopt me into her family and into the Comanche nation, which will always be the greatest honour I have ever been given," recalls the actor who underwent an emotional "adoption" ceremony. That's different."ĭuring a seven-month shoot on locations around Utah's Western majestic landmarks in Monument Valley and Moab, the crew was careful not to re-open old wounds: "The production was blessed by the Navajo and the Comanche.
Basically, it probably boils down to somewhere along the line, you were a product of rape," he argues. If you have one-sixteenth of native blood, which a lot of people do, you can't really trace it, because you weren't part of the nation. Having long claimed Cherokee and Creek Indian ancestry, Tonto is a role he claims he was born to play: "As far as my own heritage, there's no way to track it. It's impossible to review Depp's career without mentioning Tim Burton with whom he's collaborated eight times, beginning in 1990 with Edward Scissorhands through Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and A lice in Wonderland to, most recently, Dark Shadows, encompassing a range of genres: fantasy, horror, family, musical and animation.
So people can critique and dissect but I know that I approached it in the right way. The great Christopher Hitchens said that everyone in the world has a book inside them, and that's exactly where it should stay. Unperturbed by bad reviews, he says: "There's always going to be naysayers, everybody has got an opinion, man. Slammed by critics, the $250m-budget movie failed to even make it to the top of the US box office, and the Los Angeles Times now use it as a benchmark by which to compare other big-budget flops.
That luck may just be running out now that the abysmal reviews for The Lone Ranger are in.