The Lone Ranger bombed and no one liked it. Don’t believe me? Even The freaking Tourist grossed almost triple The Lone Ranger in notoriously un-choosy international markets. Nonetheless, despite all evidence to the contrary, mushroom-skulled super producer Jerry Bruckheimer is convinced that Johnny Depp’s bird hat will age like bird hat wine and history will eventually vindicate him. Which raises the question, who is more ballsily out of touch, Jerry “history will vindicate me” Bruckheimer, or M. Night “You just don’t have a European sensibility” Shyamalan? Discuss.
From Vulture:
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer believes the final verdict on the Johnny Depp movie (which cost roughly $250 million) has yet to be written. “It reminds me of a critic who called Flashdance a ‘toxic dump,'” the legendary movie man told Vulture this morning, referencing the 1983 hit he produced with late partner Don Simpson. “Ten years later [the critic] said, ‘This is really a good movie. I missed it.’ I think [Lone Ranger] is going to be looked back on as a brave, wonderful film.”
Oh yes, so brave of you to take a 70-year-old product you don’t have to pay royalties for and turn it into the same crap movie you’ve already made seven times with your star pirate in the Indian role. You really stormed the beach at Normandy there.
Sometimes it feels like I’ve disliked Jerry Bruckheimer so long that I forget why, but it’s good of him to continually remind me. He turned Johnny Depp into a winking ventriloquist’s dummy and a big-budget pirate movie into a campy cartoon about talking monkeys and dancing skeletons, and in turn turned Tonto into an American Indian version of his crappy pirates. But as always, he has no regrets, because regretting crap requires taste. I know he’s a squijillionaire, but every time he fails I just want to ride circles around him on a dirtbike flipping him the bird with both hands.
[pic via Getty and The Lone Ranger Facebook page]