Entertainment

Everyone Hates 'The Lone Ranger' This Week

by Rachel Simon

Poor Lone Ranger. The expensive Disney action movie, which took a beating from critics and bombed at the box office when it was released in June, has gotten nothing but negative press all week. First, star Johnny Depp told Yahoo UK/Ireland that he thinks critics' reviews are the reason the film failed so spectacularly, predictably causing those same critics to blast Depp for trying to pass blame onto reviewers, not the people actually involved in making the movie. The next day, it was announced that Disney will lose up to an astounding $190 million as a result of The Lone Ranger's poor box office. Then, it was revealed that the studio is planning on cutting producer Jerry Bruckheimer's budgets and privileges for his upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean 5, thanks again to Ranger's weak financial gross. Finally, today, Mark Wahlberg took aim at the film, for no reason other than someone asked him to, saying that "they’re spending $250 million for two dudes on a horse? Where’s the money going?"

He said: “They are spending so much money to pull the wool over the audience’s eyes with these effects-driven movies,” “It’s not like Jurassic Park, where you saw something groundbreaking and innovative and said Holy … I gotta see that. Every end-of-the-Earth movie kind of feels the same.”

The Lone Ranger is a western, not an apocalypse movie, but regardless, Wahlberg has a point. Still, his comments are just adding insult to injury. The Lone Ranger deserves criticism, but maybe not all in the span of a couple days. It's not the first big-budget movie to flop — remember John Carter, anyone? Or Battleship? Or Sahara? — and it certainly won't be the last. No one needs to rail on the movie almost two months after its release. Let's all go easy on Depp, Hammer, Bruckheimer and co. for a little while, okay?