Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer and Jerry Bruckheimer have responded to reviews of The Lone Ranger in the following montage of interview clips with Depp saying “the reviews were written 7-8 months before we released the film.” Hammer adds, “[T]hey’ve been gunning for our movie since it was shut down the first time, that’s when most of the critics wrote their initial reviews.” Bruckheimer then says, “I think they were reviewing the budget, not reviewing the movie.”
The one thing I notice with most of the comments is the collective “they” rather than being specific. Granted, I don’t read many reviews and I’m pretty sure this trio isn’t sitting around a laptop reading my review.
I particularly found this following rant by Hammer to be particularly interesting:
“If you go back and read the negative reviews, most of them aren’t about the content of the movie, but more what’s behind it. It’s got to the point with American critics where if you’re not as smart as Plato, your stupid. That seems like a sad way to live your life.
“While we were making it we knew people were gunning for it. I think it was the popular thing when the movie hit rocky terrain they jumped on the bandwagon to try and bash it. They tried to do the same thing with to World War Z, it didn’t work, the movie was successful. Instead they decided to slit the jugular of our movie.”
Obviously he’s exaggerating with the Plato comparison, but I would be curious to hear Hammer’s opinion when it comes to what makes a smart movie and what makes a stupid one. Additionally, he mentions World War Z, which certainly was a film very well known for its budget and production issues, but if we were to use RottenTomatoes as a way to decide whether critics “tried the same thing” with that film as they apparently “tried” with Lone Ranger, what does it say when World War Z has a 67% RottenTomatoes rating compared to Lone Ranger‘s 28%. Were critics just trying harder when it comes to Lone Ranger?
I don’t blame these guys for defending their lousy movie, what are they going to say? “It sucked, we’re sorry!” No, that’s what you say once you’re making the sequel, at least if you’re Michael Bay.
Check out the interview montage below and if you’re interested in my review of the movie click here, but be warned, I wrote it after seeing the movie.
