The Lone Ranger and Deconstructing the American Myth

The Lone Ranger is being released to Disney Blu-Ray and DVD in a mere five days, so we thought it would be worth revisiting one of the most unfairly maligned - and misunderstood - films of the year. It was also my favourite of the year, and one of Quentin Tarantino's top 10, and if we agree then you know it's a great movie!

Despite poor critical reviews, Disney's The Lone Ranger was unexpectedly one of the most intelligent and adventuresome films of 2013. The histrionics of professional critics was almost in direct inverse proportion to how intelligent and adventuresome. Gilbert Cruz of The Vulture decreed that it "Represents Everything That's Wrong With Hollywood Blockbusters," San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle called it "the biggest stinker of 2013" and Lou Lumenick of the New York Post audaciously declared it "the worst [Western] — and then some." Such immoderate complaints are pure nonsense: The Lone Ranger is nowhere near the worst movie of the year or the worst Western ever made. It's not even the worst Disney movie of the year, nor the worst version of the Lone Ranger ever made. Mark Hughes of Forbes was right to decry the media as "flop-hungry," overwhelmed by the sheer momentum of their own self-important negativity.

A great irony of critics complaining that The Lone Ranger  was  big, dumb and banal - a complaint better befitting most other summer flicks, including critical darlings like Pacific Rim -  is that it actually outsmarted them. It is a common habit of ignorance to think that something is stupid because one does not understand it, and I suspect that habit came into play with The Lone Ranger. Some complaints were simply frivolous, like how it was a comedy or that it was "overlong" (sorry, at only six minutes longer that the first Pirates of the Caribbean, I didn't notice), but I can at least sympathize a little bit with the fact that maximizing one's experience with the film requires a functional knowledge of historical American Western settlement and the American Western as a genre.

The Lone Ranger, drafted by the same creative team as Pirates of the Caribbean, pokes at the corniness of the original radio and television versions while genuinely attempting to reach out to the tastes of modern audiences. In doing so, it can become corny in its own right, with a wink and a nod, proving that it isn't poking at the original Ranger in a mean way. On the contrary, knowledge of the original is required to understand the film's subtexts. Our story opens in a carnival in San Francisco in 1933, the same year that The Lone Ranger debuted on radio. A young boy, clad in Hollywood cowboy style complete with Lone Ranger mask, enters a Wild West show, out of which pours the music of celebrity singing cowboy Gene Autry. The carnival barker promises that the exhibit will take visitors back to "the thrilling days of yesteryear" - a quote from the radio show's opening - though inside are mostly static displays of buffalo and grizzly bears. One display, however, features a living "Noble Savage"... An aged and decrepit Tonto, who proceeds to tell the boy the true story of the Lone Ranger.

The Lone Ranger Animated Series

Of all the versions of the Lone Ranger ever committed to media, my favourite is not the Disney movie, nor the original radio show, nor the iconic television series. It is the off-the-wall animated series that ran for 26 episodes from 1966 to 1969 on CBS.

The radio show ended its astonishing run of nearly 3,000 episodes in 1956, and the television show with Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels likewise came to an end a year later. During the intervening decade, a new TV Western arrived - The Wild, Wild West - which transfused the old genre with the sensibilities of the "Spy-Fi" shows that were becoming a rage in the Sixties. Following in the footsteps of James Bond and The Avengers (the real, British ones), James West and Artemus Gordon launched their mission for the US Secret Service in 1965. A new Lone Ranger animated series was quickly placed in production that pitted our masked hero against monsters and mad scientists.

Each episode was divided into three segments: two tandem adventures and one solo Tonto story. These adventures were, for the most part, utterly, enjoyably daft, which is why I love it so much. My favourite is a story called "The Monster of Scavenger Crossing" in which the Lone Ranger and Tonto investigate a series of riverboat sinkings along the Mississippi. The guilty party turns out to be a salty pirate with a peg leg and a hook who is scuttling them with his own version of the Nautilus. Unfortunately, it is difficult to find clips online, including that one.

I have gathered a pair of clips here to give you a taste of the Lone Ranger's most bizarre adventures. As you watch, also make note of the show's visual style. Though not the best quality animation by any means, the style is fantastically graphic and texturally rich.


The series introduction and The Ghost Riders episode.

The Cult of the Black Widow.

The Original Origin of the Lone Ranger

The incomparable website Kiddie Records Weekly has provided a download of the 1951 Decca Records album The Adventures of the Lone Ranger. This album includes several key episodes of the original Lone Ranger radio show that ran from 1933 to 1956, through which one can hear how closely Disney hewed to the Lone Ranger's origin but diverted considerably from Silver's. Click on the album cover below to check it out...

The William Tell Overture

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There is a joke which says that an intellectual is someone "who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger." One of the most popular pieces of classical music ever written, Gioachino Rossini's William Tell Overture is instantly recognizable and has been used, reused, parodied and abused for countless purposes, not the least significant being The Lone Ranger and Disney's The Band Concert.

This 12 minute piece, the overture to Rossini's 1829 opera William Tell based on the Swiss legend and  play by Friedrich Schiller, has four movements. The first, "Prelude (Dawn)," sets the stage of the Swiss Alps that serve as the opera's backdrop. This is followed by "Storm," which is self-explanatory. The calm after the storm is the "Ranz des Vaches" or "Call to the the Cows," which has been employed over, and over, and over again as aural shorthand for both the arrival of Spring and of the dawn. The William Tell Overture ends in hyperdrive with the "Finale (March Of The Swiss Soldiers)," otherwise known as the theme from The Lone Ranger. This "cavalry charge" recapitulates the scene from the final act of the opera in which the Swiss soldiers arrive to liberate the nation from Austrian oppression. As a form of music called a "galop," the "Finale" lends itself very well to any scene of horses galloping, or anything moving at a quickened pace, including the hearts of anyone listening. For the finale of Disney's film, Hans Zimmer goosed just this one movement to almost the same length as the whole overture, but the payoff was fantastic!

The following video clip presents the Neponset Valley Philharmonic Orchestra recording the complete William Tell Overture for their Pops in Love concert of February 13, 2011.