Anyone who has seen “The Lone Ranger” will understand why critics thought it was a steaming pile of garbage. Everyone except the stars of the film that is.
During an interview with Yahoo U.K., actors Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer blamed U.S. movie critics for the film’s massive box office failure.
“I think the reviews were probably written when they heard that Gore [Verbinski] and Jerry and I were going to do ‘The Lone Ranger,’ said Depp, who plays Tonto in the movie. “Their expectations of it, that it must be a blockbuster, this and that … I didn’t have any expectations of that. I never do, why would I?
Depp added, “The expectations of the American press … I think the reviews were written seven or eight months even before we ever released the film.”
Hammer agreed, which means he may have a few less people crushing on him now.
“This is the deal with American critics, they’ve been gunning for our movie since it was shut down the first time. And I think that’s probably when most of the critics wrote their initial reviews,” Hammer said.
“If you go back and read a lot of the negative reviews, most of them don’t actually have anything to do with the content of the movie but more what’s behind it,” he added. “It’s gotten to an unfortunate place with American critics where if you’re not as smart as Plato, you’re stupid. And that seems like a very sad way to have to live your life.”
Right, except for the fact that overseas critics thought the movie was a piece of shit too. Take the Daily Mail, for instance, which said, “The film-makers’ contempt for logic, narrative and coherence is manifest.”
What about The Independent, which gave the film two stars, and titled their review “Behind the mask is yet another forgettable Lone Ranger?”
But the win for the snarliest put down of the film goes to The Guardian, which basically said that the only thing that makes the film watchable is the fact that you’re prepared for it to be a train-wreck: “If your expectations are low enough, even a paunchy, muddled, overstuffed horse opera can start to feel like a triumph of sorts.”
But I digress. Surely underpaid film journalists have it in for the millionaire movie stars. That has to be why the movie failed.
