Johnny Depp as Tonto?
I guess this is old news, as the announcement was made last November, but I just heard this and it’s kind of blowing my mind. Johnnty Depp, shown here as the Mad Hatter from the Movie T Shirts, has been cast as Tonto in the next remake in the “We are all out of creativity in Hollywood” tour, the Lone Ranger. Are Native American actors so hard to find? How about all the guys from Windtalkers? I mean, sure he did a decent job and looked kind of Ethnic as Captain Sparrow in Pirates of the Carribean, and according the the Interweb he is part Cherokee, but I think if you need makeup to look like an ethnicity maybe they should have cast someone more closely associated with that ethnicity.
However, this isn’t really what has my boxers in a knot. What does is the interview he did when they announced the roll. He apparently has said that he wants to remake Tonto into the star rather than the sidekick. While I appreciated the desire to maybe not play such a stereotype, Tonto is the ultimate sidekick, even more than Robin from Batman. If you look up “sidekick” on the Interlink the Wikipedia article about it lists him third on their short list of examples. In the show Tonto’s job was to get his ass kicked so the Lone Ranger would have an excuse to come into town and shoot some guys. Seems a pretty simple formula.
Jason
