Quentin Tarantino Once Shared He Found This Critically Panned Johnny Depp Film Insensitive
Quentin Tarantino revealed that he’d seen one of Johnny Depp’s less praised films. The filmmaker didn’t believe the movie was as bad as critics made it out to be. However, he did note there was one section of the feature that he found particularly awful.
What Quentin Tarantino thought about this 2013 Johnny Depp film
In 2013, Depp starred in the Disney adventure film The Lone Ranger alongside Armie Hammer. Depp played Native American Tonto beside Hammer’s John Reid, and followed the two battling crime in western times. However, the movie didn’t fair very well commercially or critically after it hit theaters.
One of the film’s few supporters happened to be Quentin Tarantino. In a 2013 interview with Les Inrockuptibles (via IndieWire), Tarantino felt the movie started off very promising.
“The first forty-five minutes are excellent,” Tarantino said. “The next forty-five minutes are a little soporific. It was a bad idea to split the bad guys in two groups; it takes hours to explain and nobody cares. Then comes the train scene—incredible! When I saw it, I kept thinking, ‘What, that’s the film that everybody says is crap? Seriously?’”
But the film took a turn for the worst when focusing on Tonto’s backstory, which he found a bit insensitive.
“That being said, I still have a little problem with the film. I like Tonto’s backstory—the idea that his tribe got slaughtered because of him; that’s a real comic-book thing. But the slaughter of the tribe, by gunfire, from the cavalry, it left a bitter taste in my mouth,” Tarantino said. “The Indians have really been victims of a genocide. So slaughtering them again in an entertaining movie, Buster Keaton style… That ruined the fun a bit for me. I simply found it…ugly.”
Johnny Depp blamed the critics for ‘The Lone Ranger’s’ performance
Like Tarantino, Depp also believed The Lone Ranger was a solid feature. The actor couldn’t help feel that there was a slight bias among critics towards his movie.
“I think the reviews were written seven to eight months before we released the film,” Depp said in a 2013 interview with Variety.
Depp felt that critics discovered he was teaming up with a producer like Jerry Bruckheimer, and it affected critics’ expectations.
“I think the reviews were written when they heard Gore [Verbinski] and Jerry and me were going to do The Lone Ranger,” Depp said. “They had expectations that it must be a blockbuster. I didn’t have any expectations of that. I never do.”
Bruckheimer, who’s produced Depp’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, also believed there was some bias involved.
“I think they were reviewing the budget, not reviewing the movie,” Bruckheimer said. “The audience doesn’t care what the budget is — they pay the same amount if it costs a dollar or 20 million dollars. It’s unfortunate because the movie is a terrific movie, it’s a great epic film. It has lots of humor. Its one of those movies that whatever critics missed in it this time, they’ll review it in a few years and see that they made a mistake.”
Quentin Tarantino always wanted to work with Johnny Depp
Tarantino has worked alongside several A-List actors during his time as a filmmaker. But Depp has always been the one dream star he’s wanted to work with that’s constantly eluded him. However, it was all a matter of finding the perfect role for the Edward Scissorhands star.
“We would love to work together. We’ve talked about it for years,” Tarantino once told Charlie Rose (via IndieWire). “Not that we get together and talk about it for years, but from time to time. We’re obviously fans of each other. It just needs to be the right character. I just need to write the right character that I think Johnny would be the right guy to do it with. And if he agrees, then we’ll do it.”
