At 149 minutes The Lone Ranger is too long. The running time is due to a plot that is overly complicated. The character relationships are too interconnected or oddly convoluted where they don’t need to be. It’s a shame, really, because I love The Lone Ranger as a character. The television series was great, but not the first outing for the franchise. Originally a radio show, the character was the focus of two film serials in the late 1930s.
Along with Zorro there is plenty of potential for stories of old west justice. It’s a shame then that this film tries to pack in every seemingly important factor of The Lone Ranger franchise into this one film. We get Butch Cavendish, a vile villain, Dan, brother of John Reid (the name of The Lone Ranger), the origin of both Tonto and Lone Ranger, and of course some corrupt railroad executives taking over Comanche territory. There’s so much here it’s almost like 2 or three films and everybody involved knew there was one shot at the story so they just threw in everything they could.
A simple origin story would have been much better.
The Lone Ranger isn’t a bad film. It’s a decent action film set in old west that is a variation of the character many people know. It’s not, however, an appropriate beginning of a new franchise.
The film is so big that while it is supposed to be left open for a sequel, there is no way any sequel would do this one justice. This film is crippled under its own weight. How much so? Johnny Depp, who plays Tonto, gets top billing, then the title, then Armie Hammer who fills the titular mask. (Even 1989’s Batman put Nicholson and Keaton above the title.) The film is almost two and a half hours long. This isn’t supposed to be some sweeping epic, it’s a simple action western.
I enjoyed The Lone Ranger despite it being overly stuffed with more plot and connected characters than necessary. I would have enjoyed it a heck of a lot more if 45 minutes were cut and half the character relationships were excised. That the film should have been better, and easily could have been, doesn’t help perceptions and opinions of it.
Special features are pretty scant for a movie such as this. There are no audio commentaries, which seems odd, but then again, because it didn’t perform as well at the box office I’m pretty sure Disney doesn’t want to put a heck of a lot of money into the home video release. We do get a deleted scene and a gag reel, then three (why are they broken apart, why) featurettes that total to just over a half our looking at a couple of aspects of making The Lone Ranger.
I don’t see a sequel being made because this one didn’t do enough money, but now the weight of everything has been lifted the filmmakers would be free to do what they want, story-wise. It would be fun to see the characters ride again.