Review of The Legend of the Lone Ranger

This is just an awful movie. I love The Lone Ranger saga. I have the entire television series. And many episodes of the radio series. I have seen all of the movies from the fifties. This one had such promise. This was Bill Fraker's opportunity to direct. He wanted to direct so badly. And he did. What's bad about this movie is mostly his fault. I knew Bill personally and respected him immensely as a cinematographer. But he was no director. As a side note, Speilberg and Lucas had approached him at this time to do a new movie. He turned them down because he had always wanted to direct and this was his chance. They came back at him and offered him 5% of the movie if he would shoot it. This was, at the time, an unprecedented offer. No below the line personnel had every been offered a piece of the movie. He struggled with the decision but eventually turned them down cold. The movie he turned down a piece of was the Indiana Jones franchise.

The overuse of the William Tell overture finale was heartbreaking. It did a fair job of telling the "legend" but it skimmed over key parts while bogging down with more trivial matters. Very, very slow for an action movie. Klinton Spilsbury wasn't as bad as everybody says he was. Clayton Moore was no Laurence Olivier himself. But Clayton Moore did fit the part for a Saturday morning kid's show.

I could go on and on, but I'm just sad that Jason Robards and Christopher Lloyd were wasted in their parts. This may have been Lloyd's first "bad guy" role. He certainly didn't seen to know what to do with it. Cinematography was good. Fraker oversaw that part of it well. Overall, painful to watch. Sorry.