The Lone Ranger Rides Into CinemaCon

Stars Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer were joined onstage by producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski at Wednesday's CinemaCon to present footage from Disney's The Lone Ranger to the audience of theater executives and press. Roughly 20 minutes of footage from the July 3 release was screened, all of it from the early portions of the movie. They also screened the new trailer (which can be seen below).

Beware of some spoilers ahead.

The film is an origin story about how John Reid (Hammer) became that masked man known as the Lone Ranger. John is returning to his hometown of Colby, Texas after studying law back east. He's a city slicker now, garbed in a dark suit and far more well-mannered than most of the other men in Colby. The first sequence shown was during John's train ride home to Texas after vicious outlaw Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner) has managed to escape from the train's heavily fortified prison car.

John tries to stop the runaway train from derailing. He is with Tonto (Depp), a Comanche who was a prisoner on the train and has his own reasons for hunting Cavendish. When the sequence begins both John and Tonto are shackled together and are on the roof of the train where they're eluding and defeating different henchmen as they try get to the front car and free the rest of the train before it crashes.

The influence of Depp, Verbinski and Bruckheimer's other big franchise -- Pirates of the Caribbean -- was evident in this action set-piece as John and Tonto swing onto yardarms and hang onto the sides of the train. Reid's heroic older brother Dan (James Badge Dale), a captain in the Texas Rangers, and his Rangers catch up to the runaway train. John, Tonto and Dan try to unlock the train cars, which involves Tonto climbing underneath the front car to dislodge the pin holding the cars together, a move that separates Tonto and John (who are still chained together) from Dan and the rest of the train. The front car then crashes through a railroad crew site, derailing and sending the duo flying through the air. They narrowly avoid being crushed by the crashing car, but are at least unchained in the process. It ends with John telling Dan that Tonto was a prisoner and should be arrested. When Dan asks Tonto what his crime was, he replies, "Indian."

The next set-piece takes place back in Colby and establishes that John's childhood sweetheart Rebecca (Ruth Wilson) is now Dan's wife. There is some interaction between Tonto and Dan's son, who is startled by Tonto's war paint and chanting. John joins Dan and the other Rangers on their fateful journey out to recapture Cavendish, which, as the trailer shows, ends in the ambush that slaughters the Rangers, including Dan. Before this happens, though, John gets his first glimpse at the white horse Silver, whom Dan describes as a "spirit horse" that roams free.

The next sequence showed John waking up on a makeshift structure atop a butte. He has had his chin painted and is up there as part of a healing ritual conducted by Tonto, who he is reunited with down below. Tonto explains to John that the Rangers were betrayed by one of their own. He advises John to embrace the fact that he's now a "dead" man, and to use the mask he has fashioned for him from his slain brother's vest to disguise his identity. They reluctantly team to hunt down their mutual enemy Cavendish, but John insists their mission is for justice not vengeance. Thus, the partnership between the Lone Ranger and Tonto is born.

Overall, The Lone Ranger looked very fun, not nearly as campy as some might expect given that it's the same team behind the far more cheeky Pirates franchise. Tonto definitely does have some oddball "Depp-isms" to him, but he's not simply Captain Jack Sparrow with warpaint and a bird headdress. Hammer brings a nobility and earnestness to the title role without being wooden or bland; he definitely exudes being a good guy. We also got to see a bit of Tom Wilkinson as railroad man Latham Cole, a role reminiscent of the one he played in The Ghost and the Darkness. This lifelong Western fan definitely liked what he saw from The Lone Ranger and can't wait to see more come July 3.

Source : ign[dot]com