The Lone Ranger Teaser Trailer Drops

Trailer: The Lone Ranger

With this year’s summer movie season now a distant and semi-fond memory, it’s only natural that studios have begun the marketing push for next’s year batch of summer blockbusters. After a few eyebrow-raising stills were released recently, today brings us the first teaser trailer for Gore Verbinski’s film adaptation of The Lone Ranger:

Sporting a “kemosabe”-ing Tonto complete with questionable bird-on-head costume (and an actor, Johnny Depp, who receives top billing instead of Armie Hammer’s Ranger), the most surprising thing about the trailer is nonetheless its insistence on communicating that this is a serious film with serious action, much of it courtesy of Industrial Light & Magic.

Given how corny (and loveable) the original series was, and given the casting as Depp (and the bird on his head), is this somewhat… gnarly trailer a move to undercut the project’s more ridiculous elements? Or is The Lone Ranger actually going to be 2013’s serious, big budget action movie? Starring a guy with a bird on his head?

Find more of Sean Kelly's work on his excellent blog right here, and follow him on twitter by typing in @SKonMovies! He just ran a marathon called the Toronto International Film Festival, and boy are his eyeballs tired - check out his coverage here! More of his stuff for thesubstream is right over yonder