RNS-Jeffery Weiss Review: Producers of the latest reboot of the “Superman” franchise famously marketed the movie to Christian audiences. Makers of the new “Lone Ranger” movie, not so much.
There’s a reason for that. If “Man of Steel” panders to Christians, in “The Lone Ranger,” Christians are portrayed as unattractive, ineffectual, hateful or flat-out hypocritically evil.
Lone Ranger movie photo courtesydisney.com
Like so much in this mess of a movie, it’s an ingredient that doesn’t make a ton of sense.
(Spoiler alert: I’m not going to give away much, but if you’re the type who wants to know nothing about a movie, come on back after you see it.)
Clocking in at two-and-a-half hours, “The Lone Ranger” can’t decide if it’s an homage to the graphically bloody Westerns of Sam Peckinpah or the slapstick of Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles.”
And yes, I get that it needs to restate the basic facts of the origin of the Ranger, but a previous Ranger movie handled that issue in a song that only took a bit more than two-and-a-half minutes (hi-yo! hi-yo!), including that stirring section from the William Tell Overture.
Religion and spirituality are wound through the plot of the new film. Some of it is about Christianity and a lot of it at least appears to be about American Indian beliefs.
The Indian stuff is tossed together as what seems to be pastiche or parody. Tonto is much more of an equal partner than sidekick here.
But from the dead bird on his head to never removing his war paint to some of the “religious” elements he tosses at the Ranger, he’s anything but authentic to anyone who knows even a smidge about real Comanche tribe beliefs and practices.
Halfway through the movie, however, we suddenly discover that Tonto is no-kidding crazy, left mentally unbalanced as a boy by the slaughter of his friends and family. Even the surviving members of his tribe laugh at him. Which I suppose gives us in the audience license to laugh, too. Ha ha.
Christianity doesn’t come off nearly as funny.
Click here to read more at Religious News Service: https://www.religionnews.com/2013/07/09/review-the-lone-ranger-remake-thrashes-christianity/
