The Lone Ranger

Welcome to your first glimpse of The Lone Ranger, Gore Verbinski's attempt to do for Westerns what he did for pirates, as well as see if $250-million-plus worth of technical razzle-dazzle is enough to distract from the fact that Johnny Depp is wearing a bird on his head. Fittingly, the trailer's mix of flashy stylization and grimy historical detail feels an awful lot like Pirates Of The Southwest, which means The Lone Ranger could very well escape the shadow of its bad pre-production buzz—including losing its supernatural coyotes, nearly being scrapped entirely, and even taking a crew member's life—if not the shadow of that bird, which is constantly on Johnny Depp's head. Here Depp, who has a bird on his head, encourages his white kemosabe (the Cherokee word for "Man With No Bird On Head") played by Armie Hammer to don a mask and, uh, fight a train? Or something. There's not much sense of plot in this first preview, but as Disney so often reminds us, story is so just the superfluous bird on the head of spectacle.