Johnny Depp's 'The Mummy' Replacement Is Ready to Be Rediscovered on Streaming

Published Oct 23, 2026, 7:07 AM EDT

Erik Hawkins is an award-winning writer and editor who's been obsessed with cinema since he was old enough to hold Roger Ebert's Video Home Companion in his hands. He lives in NYC, where he rabidly watches everything from the newest releases to the more odd and obscure, and regularly shares his thoughts on Letterboxd. From ghost-writing fiction and webisodes in South America to local news, trial coverage, and politics in NYC, he's rarely put down his laptop over the past 15 years.

Disney's The Lone Ranger was the last time genre auteur Gore Verbinski would be handed a tremendous budget, and it seemed doomed from the start to never make back the small country-sized costs that were sunk into it. Although it re-paired original Pirates of the Caribbean director Verbinski with original star Johnny Depp, audiences just didn't take to this particular style of Old West revival adventure, and it resulted in an even bigger box office disaster than the studio's infamous money pit John Carter the year before.

And it's a shame, because the film is, frankly, a masterpiece of action, special effects, and design. Verbinski even, miraculously, found a way to deploy the property's most problematic character (Tonto) in an organic and largely inoffensive way. If half of the tentpole blockbusters each year were made with anything approaching the craft, enthusiasm, and visual wit Verbinski is so generous with in The Lone Ranger, the culture would be "eating good."

What Is 'The Lone Ranger' About?

Image via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

The Lone Ranger's first adventures were broadcast on the radio in 1933. His black mask, commitment to justice, and faithful Indigenous sidekick Tonto proved so enthralling to audiences that he made the transition to television in 1949, per the Museum of Broadcast Communications. While the hero (a Texas Ranger formerly known as John Reid) embodied an all-American approach to justice and non-lethal means of dispatching bandits and the like, the series' theme song (an adapted version of Rossini's "William Tell Overture") became a ubiquitous sound signifying pure heroism and adventure for almost a century to come.

Verbinski adapts the origins of the Ranger faithfully, and Hans Zimmer works the original theme masterfully into the score, especially as the action escalates in the third act and the whole thing ascends into adventure film heaven. He also inserts a framing device featuring an impossibly aged Depp as Tonto in a museum-style exhibition decades later, recounting his adventures with Reid to an awestruck young boy. Also new is a grisly take on the series' longtime antagonist, Butch Cavendish (played with perfect loathsomeness by William Fichtner here), who has now become a literal heart-devouring wendigo — and helps set the tone for what's likely the most violent film ever released under the Disney label; Business Insider even warned parents about taking their kids to the film, noting the surprising amount of brutality onscreen.

'The Lone Ranger' Is Still a Near-Perfect Thrill Ride In 2026

While The Lone Ranger suffered a similar fate to John Carter with audiences in 2013, it's still one of the crown jewels in Verbinski's impressive filmography — and at least as perfect an adventure film as his first Pirates of the Caribbean installment. Despite its 150-minute runtime, the thing just moves. Nary a scene goes by without a fun character beat or creative bit of action or comedy; it all just clicks, and it does so smoothly. But it's the film's extended climax, in particular, that's an utterly perfect, mind-blowingly complex and largely practical chase featuring not one but two trains, horses, dynamite, stunts, and choreography that recall the best of Buster Keaton and even George Miller, with the insane action he achieved in the Mad Max series. It's a jaw-dropping feat for a Disney film.

Verbinski and his effects wizards on loan from Industrial Light & Magic worked with a self-imposed "50 percent rule," per FX Guide — meaning that at least half of the effects in any given shot were accomplished completely in-camera.

“We tried to base ourselves in live action and reality. Obviously, we couldn’t do that for every shot, but it was the basis we came from," said VFX supervisor Tim Alexander. Real train cars were transported via flatbed trucks into the deserts of New Mexico, and a massive "circus tent" was even built to allow the other 50 percent of digital trickery to clone the practical effect. In the end, it's astonishing to behold, and downright musical in its pacing, cutting, and unabashed look-at-this-shit spectacle.

Verbinski's entire filmography is redolent with studio jobs that he turned into genre masterpieces, from the Pirates films he directed to his oily, uniquely frightening take on the Japanese horror film The Ring. But The Lone Ranger deserves a fresh audience, especially after being starved for years of the feel-good, awe-inspiring, analog spectacle that the original Indiana Jones films used to provide.