I have mixed feelings about anti-westerns. Do you know the type of film I'm talking about? The ones that debunk the myths of classical Western movies? The heyday of the anti-western was the early 1970s, when movies like Soldier Blue, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and The Wild Bunch blew the conventions of the Western into bloodstained gobbets. Some of the anti-Westerns are legitimately great movies, and I'm not even going to argue that point because it's self-evident. But anti-Westerns aren't usually much fun, either. The Wild Bunch is a lot of things, but "fun" ain't one of them. Even satirical anti-Westerns like Little Big Man tend to become bleak in the end. Plus, some of them tend to preach. I dunno, maybe it's not appropriate to make a "fun" western on themes like genocide, capitalist exploitation, and violence as the instrument of Manifest Destiny. But damned if the new version of The Lone Ranger (2013, directed by Gore Verbinski) doesn't try. The Lone Ranger as a character is the very embodiment of Hollywood myths about Western heroes, part Zorro, part Wyatt Earp, all corn, so the fact that the makers of this new film have used him to completely debunk not only Western movies, but American myths about ourselves, is downright subversive. That they've done it as a summer blockbuster is an act of smuggling so brazen that I can't believe they got away with it, especially given that this was made for Disney, of all people.
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