When discussing why Lone Ranger is a bad film, I think it’s important to not let the problems with the film overshadow the biggest problem – a single casting choice. Tonto.I understand Johnny Depp has stated his great-grandmother is Cherokee, I do. But to cast him as Tonto says, really, there was no one of Native American heritage that the film could ever have possibly found to play the role, and instead they chose to white wash it – literally with all the make-up he was under.”But, Adam, what about his performance? Didn’t it justify —“Shut up. No. It didn’t. You know why it didn’t? For the same reason that Khan shouldn’t have been played buy a white guy. For the same reason The Last Airbender was a giant failure of race. Yeah, I get it, lots of great white men act. And they can have every other role in creation, it seems. See, when you have 98% of all movie roles, it’s a problem if you grasp longingly at that last 2% claiming some level of wanting fairness, or justice, in the scheme of things.And look, I didn’t go into this knowing how I’d feel on the way out. I thought of a few scenarios where they could have at least tried to make me buy White Man Tonto as a logical and legitimate character choice. But when they cast a little a Native American boy to play young Tonto I wanted to laugh or cry or… really anything but keep perpetuating this myth that this casting logic is somehow all right.
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