The Lone Ranger

                           With celebrities Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Hans Zimmer, why was ‘The Lone Ranger’ so much of a box office ‘flop’?

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                        The Lone Ranger arrived in cinemas on July 3^rd 2013 in the UK, starring Johnny Depp as Tonto, a spirit warrior, and Armie Hammer as John Reid, the protagonist of the plot. Based on a children’s story in the early 50’s, Disney wanted to revive The Lone Ranger by creating a modern day motion picture equivalent. First appearing on radio in 1933, The Lone Ranger is now an icon of American Culture. Centred around a super-hero who catches ‘bad guys’ and with celebrities including Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, as well as the music being composed by Hans Zimmer, many avid film watchers were expecting an ‘all-round feel good’ film. However, this film was not at all what it made out to be, in fact, it was a ‘Box Office flop.’

      ‘Wallet Exhaustion’ was, in my view, the biggest problem for this failure. Too many box office hits were arriving on screen around the time of The Lone Ranger’s release, such as; Man of Steel, Despicable Me 2 and of course Monsters University. This meant that many film-goers had spent all their pocket money on these more enjoyable and more interesting films, therefore not feeling the need to spend even more money to watch something that wasn’t all that appealing.

      To initially find a film appealing, the trailer has to be informative, exciting and stimulating. This was not the case for ‘The Lone Ranger.’ The bland colour palette throughout the film is a sharp contrast to action films that the public are accustomed to nowadays. They are familiar with bright, strong and bold colours that depict so many action scenes today rather than the dull, cloudy and lifeless colour that The Lone Ranger portrays.

              

      Advertising plays a key role in the success of any film, if the movie is not advertised at all, the public will not hear about it consequently not going to see it. This is an exaggerated example of what could happen, however the rule still applies. The Lone Ranger’s trailer was vague and completely unfitting to the plot. It focused more on transport and inventions of trains than an actual hero who protects society. Yes, the overall preview looked professional and the narration was apt, but humans statistically remember twice the amount more when watching something rather than listening to a particular piece of information.  Similarly the main poster’s composition was careless. John Reid, the main character is positioned offset to the centre frame, and more weight is given over to Tonto, his sidekick. This was a poor move by the artists to try and get more people to watch the film by misleading them into thinking that Hollywood star, Johnny Depp is the protagonist. It made the film-crew look desperate from the very start.

             

                On the whole, The Lone Ranger as himself has been such a worldwide success it has even made itself a part of the American culture, immensely contrasted with The Lone Ranger motion picture. 

Avatar

“You are not in Kansas any more. You are on Pandora…”

 Avatar, the box office hit wonder which took on a whole new meaning of success. With both Academy Award winners’ director James Cameron and composer James Horner Avatar was said to be, just ‘a mediocre motion picture.’ How wrong they were...

It became the top-grossing movie of all time at the worldwide box office with almost $1.844 billion in ticket sales.

 Sam Worthington played the lead role of Jake Sully, a former marine who was paralysed in battle, whilst Zoe Saldana was casted to play Neytiri, the Na’vi who subsequently falls in love with Jake Sully. Director James Cameron intended to start the making of the film in 1997, the year Cameron’s Titanic was released. However the technology that Cameron needed to create Avatar was not available, so the script was put on hold.    

         
    To many, the storyline is extremely foreseeable and so once predicted, the film becomes uninteresting and dry. When looking ahead of this fact, I completely lose myself in an entirely different phenomenon. The language, culture and pure ingeniousness of James Cameron’s imagination are all contributing factors of why I put this motion picture so far above any other film that I have watched. The fact that the Na’vi language is an actual dialect and the culture is so similar to that of our own ancestors makes me imagine that such a world out there exists, consequently connecting me ever so more to the film.

The exceptionally believable aspects of everyday life on the planet of Pandora would not be possible or achievable without the incredible use of CGI and stunning imagery. The screenplay for Avatar also adds to the convincing and almost-lifelike qualities which the computer generated imagery has to offer.

When watching the film in IMAX cinema for the first time, the third dimension instantaneously brought me into Pandora itself. Instead of watching the film, I was experiencing it. This particular viewing obviously gave me a biased view of the film from the very start, as the whole experience, including the meal beforehand, premier seats and the whole 3D spectacle to it added to my liking of the film before it even started. Nonetheless, after watching it for the second time on DVD I began to appreciate the entirety of each frame. I noticed how no details in the background were forgotten, and with Avatar being an animated film, I realised at how difficult a job this must have been for the artists involved post production. This simple minuscule fact strengthened my appreciation of the film.

               

  With there being 3 more sequels, I cannot express my gratitude to James Cameron himself for that he has inspired me confirming that ‘the sky is not the limit’ and that for the whole 178 minutes of the film, I can lose myself in an entirely diverse, yet so natural, creation.