The character tried to migrate from the 1950s small screen to theaters in 1981 and failed, not just because the movie was weak, but because seven years after Watergate and six years after the fall of Saigon, the notion of a poor person of color devoting himself to a middle-class white male savior didn't make sense anymore, if indeed it ever did. Granted, this has been the Western's default worldview since the seventies, but it's still startling to see it applied to "The Lone Ranger." This myth is innately square, attuned to received wisdom about who runs the country and why it's okay.
The film portrays its setting as a PG-13 version of Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood's every-man-for-himself hellscape. Like the railroad baron ( Tom Wilkinson) that he secretly serves, Butch expresses the will of the majority, even though the kindlier members of the majority hate to think of themselves in such unflattering terms. Butch may be a leering, scar-faced sadist who eats human flesh - Tonto refers to him as "wendigo", says he's driven "life out of balance" a la the " Koyaanisqatsi" poster's catchphrase, and carries a silver bullet to put him down - but in time we see that the outlaw is an expression of the American id. Reid meets Tonto shackled on a train with the repulsive outlaw Butch Cavendish ( William Fichtner), who escapes, links up with his old outlaw gang, and wreaks havoc on Reid, Tonto and the territory - but not in a vacuum. The Ranger, whose birth name is John Reid, has gone west to join his Texas Ranger brother ( James Badge Dale, who's in every other blockbuster these days). He's a wandering spirit on his own mission of justice, disillusioned and driven mad by pain he endured decades ago.
This time out, Tonto doesn't live to serve the Masked Man.
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