The Lone Ranger has become almost a legendary trainwreck at this point — but nobody's seen a single frame of it. Until today. Delayed until 2013 while the studio scrambles to salvage something from the mess, The Lone Ranger features Johnny Depp as Tonto (wearing crazy white makeup) and Armie Hammer as the titular Lone Ranger.
We saw a couple minutes of rough footage from this film at Comic Con this afternoon, and... well, it looked like a generic action movie.
The early trailer had a voiceover by Depp, talking about how in the past, a man could only move as fast as the horse he was riding. But now, everything is changing because of a new technology. And whoever controls this technology will control everything. (It becomes clear that he's talking about railroads.) During this, we see scenes of the Wild West that look almost post-apocalyptic, with women in outfits so slutty, they make Megan Fox in Jonah Hex look like a nun. Also, we see lots of freaky-looking rangers.
And then we get our first glimpse of Depp himself, wearing the white Native American makeup you've already seen pictures of. Depp's voiceover continues, but now we see the words coming from Depp's mouth. "There comes a time, Kemo Sabe, when good men must wear a mask." He's talking to the Lone Ranger, who's not yet masked.
And then there were lots of snippets of action scenes, mostly involving trains, that could have come from almost any Jerry Bruckheimer movie. There are people running on trains, people shooting each other on trains, heavily made up women dodging bullets on trains, and Johnny Depp clinging to the underside of a train that's going full tilt.
Basically, the takeaway message of this trailer was: trains. And Johnny Depp trying to be dreadfully serious in Native American clownface.
The thing we didn't see was, any hint of the supernatural. Supposedly there's a huge supernatural element in this film, which is the main reason we've been curious about it. But maybe they've tried to excise that element from the film, and the final cut will just be about people battling for control over the railroads? We'll find out on March, I guess.