On Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer and an Army of Critics
You may have read an article in the last day or so in which “The Lone Ranger” stars Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer and producer Jerry Bruckheimer blamed critics for the film’s abysmal showing at the box office, at least in the United States. The action comedy opened July 3 with a paltry $29 million, and since then has made only about $86.8 million domestically. (International figures double the gross to about $175 million total. But still — not great.)
Depp said in an interview with Yahoo! U.K. Movies that he believes critics walked into the $250 million Disney blockbuster with their minds already made up and their knives sharpened. “I think the reviews were written seven-to-eight months before we released the film,” said the actor, who does a version of his familiar, heavily made-up, eccentric persona as Tonto.
Against the advice of his publicist, co-star Hammer, who plays the title character, added: “While we were making it we knew people were gunning for it. I think it was the popular thing when the movie hit rocky terrain they jumped on the bandwagon to try and bash it. They tried to do the same thing with … ‘World War Z,’ it didn’t work, the movie was successful. Instead they decided to slit the jugular of our movie.”
As much as I hate to disagree with Hammer — for whom my admiration is well-documented, as my good friend and “What the Flick?!” co-host Ben Mankiewicz points out on Twitter — this really isn’t the way we film critics do our jobs. We may have had certain expectations of what “The Lone Ranger” might look like, what tone it might strike, based on the fact that it reunites the star (Depp), producer (Bruckheimer) and director (Gore Verbinski) of the enormously successful “Pirates of the Caribbean” films. There is a precedent here; these people don’t exactly function in a vacuum.
But I truly don’t believe that any of us walk into a movie hoping to be miserable, especially when that movie is 2 1/2 hours long. We don’t make enough money doing this to choose to inflict misery upon ourselves; we write about film for the love of writing about film. We want to be entertained — we want to be dazzled — and we want to share that joy with the world. (I will speak for myself, however, in acknowledging that seeing a raunchy Adam Sandler comedy on the horizon inspires certain pangs of dread. Sandler knows his target audience, and we are not it.)
Similarly, an effects-laden summer spectacle like “The Lone Ranger” should be critic-proof — not unlike the “Transformers” movies, which also are based on a well-established pop-culture phenomenon. If word of mouth killed “The Lone Ranger,” the words probably weren’t coming from critics’ mouths, but rather from those of regular moviegoers who saw the film for what it was: overlong, bloated, choppy and unfunny. I actually forgot there had been any production troubles as I was watching it and focused on the end result on the screen.
Also, the notion that critics go into a movie with any sort of group-think mentality is sort of ridiculous. We love to be contrarians — we love to disagree. We love to get into the nitty-gritty of a movie and champion the elements that work and dissect the parts that don’t. Forming your own opinion and fighting for it is one of the great pleasures and privileges of the gig — why would we relinquish that just to arbitrarily bash a blockbuster?
One of the many qualities I appreciated about Roger Ebert, as I wrote in my remembrance of him the day he died, was his ability to sit down for any movie of any genre with an open mind and heart, hoping to be wowed the way he was as a kid. Hopefully, the better part of all of us follows that same approach.
With The Lone Ranger, I think it was the marketing that hurt the film more than anything else. The trailers really didn’t excite people and didn’t really give a sense of what tone the picture was going for. I had no real desire to see it, at least in theatres, but had the opportunity to see an advanced screening. I was very pleasantly surprised.
I actually really enjoyed The Lone Ranger. It was much better than I had expected. I admit that it struggled to find its tone. I didn’t think it was too long. And the final action sequence was brilliant. A note about that. Too many action movies suffer from the “Transformers” syndrome. Loud, confusing action that does not in any way advance the story and just bombards your senses. Gore Verbinski does shoot action very well and the final sequence in The Lone Ranger was a great example.
Although I would not blame critics for the performance of The Lone Ranger, I do think that it is a better film than the box office results would indicate.
Amen, Ben. The LR movie was much less confusing and earshattering than Man of Steel, which was itself a major disappointment. The anti-LR chatter DID start months before the release and too many of the reviews I read (about 75) sounded like they came from the same pre-digested thesaurus. I wondered if they had indeed seen only the trailers. The review published on Roger E’s site was the fairest of them all, attentive and appreciative, and did remind me, sigh, why we miss Roger.
Are there any blockbuster or comedy type films that were bashed by critics and then turned out to be regarded as great films?
TCM showed an interview with Chevy Chase on Carson to promote The Three Amigos. Roger was the next guest and he said the film was the worst of the season (I have no idea what else was playing at the time) and could not recommend it, this is with Chase right beside him. Now I have not seen Three Amigos from beginning to end or from a critical standpoint anytime recently, but I do watch a good deal of it when it comes on TV and find it pretty enjoyable. Thoughts?
It’s interesting, though. Why do you suppose that people expect someone to come in with knives out? You’re of course right that the world of critics (and journalists, largely) doesn’t work that way. But what do we make of a society that simply assumes that because someone has come up with a negative conclusion, they went into things expecting to have one? I see that more and more in all aspects of American culture.
Sometimes critics do fall into some sort of weird group think. I haven’t seen Lone Ranger yet but by any account the fact that only 29 percent of critics gave it a passing grade is alarming. It can’t be worse than the Pirates sequels, both of which were terrible, but received more positive reviews. Did that many critics really turn on Depp’s/Verbenski’s particular brand of bloated garbage?
Showgirls is another one that suffers from this fate. That movie which is regarded as a cult classic and is ambitious and interesting. It sits at 17 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and some of those positive reviews of are of the “Its so bad, Its good” variety. Its hard to believe that 83 percent of critics didn’t respond to Verhoven’s particular brand of satire, when 67 percent of critics liked Starship Troopers, which is another satire with similar bad movie trappings.
I’m not sure they’re entirely wrong. When Hammer speaks about World War Z, let’s not forget that most of the press about the movie leading up to its release was about how it was going to be an incredibly expensive flop. And for The Lone Ranger, most of the press pre-release seemed to be people–mostly not professional movie critics, and mostly not representatives of Native American tribes–saying that the movie was racist.
The economy of the internet is built around attracting page views to get advertising money. Predicting that a movie will be a flop, or saying that it’s racist, has a *far* better chance of attracting more page hits, and maybe even going viral, than saying that there might be issues, but it’s hard to say for sure without having seen the film.
So, professional critics are probably not out to sink films before they’re released. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t (amateur) critics out there doing just that.
With movies based on television series (Star Trek, Mission Impossible, Wild Wild West come to mind before The Lone Ranger), the producers/directors have more pressure IMO to pull off a “knock it out of the park”. For the older audience who remember the old series fondly, stray too far from the original and proceed at your own risk of losing what should be a loyal following. The younger audience without the reference point thinks 60s show that isn’t relevant to me anymore, so it better be outstanding or I’ll tune out. Star Trek worked unless the script/story was subpar. Mission Impossible didn’t figure it out until film #3. Wild Wild West decided to throw comedy in and it didn’t work. I would focus on the character created for Johnny Depp after the last two bad “Pirates” attempts – why would the engaged audience want another round with the Native American version of Jack Sparrow that was shown in the advance previews?