Like a good many such exercises in Hollywood gigantism in this bright dawn of the age of C.G.I., when almost anything that can be imagined can be portrayed, “The Lone Ranger” overflows with astounding, astoundingly detailed visual spectacle. Still, the interludes of sadism, murder, and genocidal mass slaughter are jarring in a movie whose main point is to have fun.īut there are plenty of things right with it, too-more than enough to reward a couple of hours in the dark. By the loose moral standards of twenty-first-century moviemaking, its individual scenes of violence are on the mild side, in that fountains of arterial blood and heads exploding in clouds of pink mist are mostly abjured. It’s basically a comedy, but the whiplash induced by its sudden, rapid, and repeated transitions between gags and gore is severe. There are plenty of things wrong with it, of course. Really, though, “The Lone Ranger” deserves better. Audiences in places like China don’t generally embrace Westerns with the same enthusiasm they lavish on alien invasions, sci-fi franchises, teen wizards, zombies, and superheroes, especially when the cowboys aren’t even in 3-D. (“Despicable Me 2” clocks in at seventy-nine.) What to do? Industrial-scale megamovies often look to foreign markets to indemnify themselves against domestic doldrums, but that hope appears wan in this case.
The critics, including ours, have not been especially kind to “The Lone Ranger.” On ’s Tomatomer, it rates a paltry twenty-six out of a hundred. (“Despicable Me 2,” by contrast, grossed half its production cost over that same weekend.) It’s going to be a long, steep climb to the break-even mark. Fifty mil may sound like boffo bux to you and me, but “The Lone Ranger” cost roughly a third of a billion dollars to make and market.
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