The early warning sign of a bad movie is when the star, usually reclusive, mono-syllabic or just plain idiot-savant, actually has to start making talk show promotional appearances. Johnny Depp, who rarely does them, and is the type to shoe-gaze, answer with Dylanesque cryptic one-liners, or just smirk...seems to have been carefully scripted and rehearsed. On Jimmy Kimmel's show, he kissed (YES, KISSED) the host to start the proceedings, and puckishly puckered up several more times. With Letterman, he was fed fanboy questions so he could reply with amusing anecdotes about how scenes were done, how some stunts were SO dangerous, and how Native Americans on location befriended him.
Which might make you like Johnny Depp enough to "support the artist" and drop nearly $20 to see his bad movie.
It's the July 4th Weekend. Disney wisely picked a time when giant swarming families will need to get out of the record heat and into the Multi-Pest Cinema so they can CHILL, and shout over the action and chew on incredibly smelly popcorn and guzzle caffeinated drinks till they wet themselves.
This "Lone Ranger" movie won't break any box office records but despite bad reviews, it's an action movie and everyone knows who the Lone Ranger is, so that'll do pigs, that'll do.
What else is out there? It's rare when there's much CHOICE of what to see. So often burned, and unable to afford to spend hundreds of MILLIONS on new special effects films every week, the movie studios have cut back on new releases, forcing people who need to leave the house to just...go and see virtually the same action movie they saw a week ago. If it's some shit from Vin Diesel or Stallone, all they have to do is remember the number at the end of the film title. Most morons can't count as high as 6 or 7, but by that time, even the most brain-dead fool has had enough of Vin Diesel or Stallone. But hey, "Scary Movie 5" is sure to be coming along....
Same old same old. Go see the latest Iron Man, Superman, Batman, Lone Ranger, Sherlock Holmes, Star Trek…let's find a character that was created back when people knew how to create characters…and let's just flog it with special effects and more special effects. Instead of trained actors with personality, get some chick with tattoos, get some guy with stubble, and that's good enough.
William Shatner is a great personality. Nobody helming any "Star Trek" movie comes close. George Reeves was a Superman you loved and wanted to meet. Even with a mask on, Clayton Moore was The Lone Ranger and had great charisma. Jay Silverheels played Tonto with great dignity. Tell me that you wouldn't rather spend time with Adam West than whatever the current Bat-shit guy is. Tell me Basil Rathbone is NOT Sherlock Holmes but somehow Robert Downey is (when he's not being canned in an Iron Man suit).
Downey, and now Depp, have been around a long time, worked hard, and are emerging as humans who can hold a conversation on a talk show couch and show flashes of personality (as opposed to mere make-up) on the screen. No wonder studios are hot to get them to enhance bad scripts and cliche directing. But come on. They can't shine shit. Depp showed a scene from the new movie. Yeah, Johnny, I sort of was amused when I first saw it...in the re-make of "Wild Wild West" with Will Smith! What did you do, just re-make the attitude? Two guys out west deadpanning jokes and doing improbable physical stunts beyond any human's capacity? (PS, and yes, "Wild Wild West" was just a theft of an original, and better-acted TV series.)
How about this: The Lone Ranger and Tonto racing along the top of a train. Gosh, never saw THAT before. The bad guys shout humorous grumbles about how these lawmen just won't go away. Wow, how original. Our heroes strike confident, if bored poses as, ho-hum, they have to get to work now and dispatch these foolish evildoers. Didn't that get stale when the men from U.N.C.L.E. did it episode after episode?
The Lone Ranger and Tonto are supposedly chained up and can't possibly win the fight.
You figure what happens next. They break the chains thanks to gunpowder or a convenient blast of heat from the train's engine. No? How about the chains hook onto a convenient pole and they twang off the train and lightly land safely with not a even a black and blue mark on their wrists. How about they simply do a dozen somersaults and acrobatic leaps that choke the bad guys with the chains and one of them smirks and takes the key out of a dead man's pocket and off they go to the next adventure?
The answer? Do you care?
One of those things happened, or something close to it. And that's the problem with these shitty "action" movies. It's all gimmicks; insane fast-motion fight scenes that are totally improbable, a reliance on special effects, the use of unimaginative and imitative ways of the hero to get into and out of trouble, and empty costumed characters reciting trite dialogue written by 20-somethings who just parrot the drivel from some back issues of some super hero graphic novel downloaded off a Steal-the-Comic-Book forum site. What's the deal with Superman or the Green Lantern now? Still bothered by Kryptonite or not? Gay or straight? How can we fuck up the character for short-attention-span morons THIS year?
No wonder people don't go to the movies if they really don't have to. They like FREE and even the most simian moron gets tired of the same banana-mush all the time. Wait a week and you can download a bootleg. Wait another few weeks and it's streaming on Netflix or available for DVD rental. Just sit closer to your giant HD TV screen, stick stinky popcorn in the microwave, and, oh yeah, listen to your neighbors shouting next door or out on the street and it's JUST like a distracting disappointing evening at the Multi-Pest.
So we're looking at movie theaters disappearing at the rate of record stores and bookstores. Might as well if the best the studios can do is Shrek 4 or a "franchise" based on The Lone Ranger same as the tired ones for Batman and Superman.
I'd rather catch up with the classic movies that featured great movie stars, directors and writers, than waste my time on pin-head comedies, chick flick atrocities, Pixar cartoons or Depp-bombs about a weird-looking pirate or a freakishly made up Indian. Yeah, INDIAN. Jay Silverheels played a Native American. I don't know what the fuck Depp is playing...an Indian that fell face first into a toilet where somebody threw a burnt Thanksgiving turkey? I said it and it's the truth. Come and get me with a Tomahawk Chop.
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