Why The Lone Ranger was seen as a box-office flop.

The Lone Ranger was considered to be a box-office failure for a plentiful amount of reasons, most of which are pointing to the length of the movie and plot. I’m going to jump straight into it and start handing out reasons and quotes as to why it flopped.

Straight off the bat, the film-critic aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, based on 210 reviews rated the movie 30%, 100% being the highest rating and 0% being the lowest. Already it’s not looking good but as you begin to read the reviews the reasoning to the abundance of unfavorable reviews become clear. “Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp make for an appealing pair of leads, but they’re not enough to make up for The Lone Ranger’s bland script, bloated length and blaring action overkill.” seems to be the general consensus of Rotten Tomatoes, one person even scoffs “Somewhere, around the hour-and-a-half mark, The Lone Ranger makes the fateful decision not to end. Worse, the movie keeps not-ending for another full hour.”

Already people are saying that a run time of 2 hours and 29 minutes is too long for a movie, which in my opinion is completely true. Nobody wants to associate with a bad plot for more than an hour and even a good movie can’t keep me comfortable in my seat for longer than 2 hours.

Now statistically they made $48.9 million over a 5 day frame and expected $60-70 million on the debut. The movie itself received a high amount of bad publicity after with many people comparing to “John Carter” a big budget Disney movie made just the year before. With a reputation like that ratings dropped even more recieving a whole load of critique. Not only could it be comparable to John Carter but also the 1999 movie “Wild Wild West” both sharing a few similarities. Both rating very low, both not being able to hold a plot.

“Basically this $250 million reboot is overlong, over indulgent and uneven, but it’s also stuffed full of deadpan comedy, breakneck thrills and breathtaking visual spectacle.” - Jason Best

I feel this quote says it all. It’s hard to follow the plot and the run time is way too long but it’s also visually stunning. It must be said that Johnny Depp told the media “I think the reviews were written seven to eight months before we released the films and the critics had expectations that it must be a blockbuster. I don’t have any expectations of that. I never do” Whilst also suggesting that the movies performance was hobbled by unfair expectations and bad reviews. Respectfully this could have been the case, even Jerry Bruckheimer and others in the film said “I think they were reviewing the budget, not reviewing the movie and it’s unfortunate because the movie is a terrific one, an epic movie with a lot of humour”

“It's no sort of masterpiece. But The Lone Ranger is a good deal less dreadful than advance word has suggested”. - Donald Clarke

Ashley Price