5 Reasons Why The Lone Ranger Was an Epic Flop

Daniella Cuencas ’16 / Emertainment Monthly Editor
Despite a huge budget and likable leads, The Lone Ranger had a dismal 5-day domestic debut of $48.9 million last week. (It cost over $250 million to produce.) So what went wrong?
1.)   The movie is about John Reid, so why wasn’t John Reid the narrator? I understand Johnny Depp is a big star and has a lot of so called “power” to make people spend money on a movie ticket, but the way this was executed made his character extraneous. Tonto is a great character, but if they wanted to focus on Tonto’s story, he should have had his own movie.
2.)   John Reid should not have been so naïve. Honestly, he was this bookish, unrealistic, and very juvenile character. Gore Verbinsky was aiming for mature characters with lots of characterization, and he conveyed that in some respects. But honestly,  as I sat there and watched the movie, I couldn’t help but think that the Lone Ranger was kind of an idiot.
3.)   This movie got pretty boring. Time after time, the bad guys would be caught, but because John Reid doesn’t have too much common sense they would escape again. There were also some unnecessary scenes that could have easily been cut to give the film a steadier pace. Also, the ending was incredibly long and was muddled with too much action. I was bored and just wanted the bad guys to be caught already; but no, the main characters needed to keep jumping off of moving trains.
4.)   The film did not have a strong target audience. I’m sure that most of the younger generation hasn’t even heard of The Lone Ranger. I haven’t even seen any reruns of the show played on TV. This movie needed a larger fan base. Armie Hammer and Jonny Depp are amazing, but the movie failed to rack in big bucks because no one under the age of 50 really knows much about this series.
5.)   Finally the last reason this movie flopped is because it is a little too reminiscent of Pirates of the Caribbean. Both featured a quirky hero portrayed by Johnny Depp, and Armie Hammer and Orlando Bloom both play naïve but charming men on a mission for revenge Both Will Turner (Bloom) and John Reid (Hammer) also had to save the girl. The Pirates movies were wildly successful, but that doesn’t mean that they can be poorly recycled and then expected to bring in the same amount of money.
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