Tarantino Explains Why LONE RANGER Is On His ‘Top Ten Of 2013 So Far’ List

Over this past weekend there was a lot of head scratching when it was revealed that this past summer’s flop The Lone Ranger was on director Quentin Tarantino’s list of top his top ten films of the year so far. Was there some unique point that the director saw that made him place it on his “Best Of” list while so many others were planning on placing it on their “Worst Of” lists.

The director explained his choice to Les Inrockuptibles (via The Playlist) and it turns out it wasn’t some great or unusual insight into the film that lead to his placement of the film on his list. He just kind of liked it.

The first forty-five minutes are excellent…the next forty-five minutes are a little soporific. It was a bad idea to split the bad guys in two groups; it takes hours to explain and nobody cares. Then comes the train scene—incredible! When I saw it, I kept thinking, ‘What, that’s the film that everybody says is crap? Seriously?’

That being said, I still have a little problem with the film. I like Tonto’s backstory—the idea that his tribe got slaughtered because of him; that’s a real comic-book thing. But the slaughter of the tribe, by gunfire, from the cavalry, it left a bitter taste in my mouth. The Indians have really been victims of a genocide. So slaughtering them again in an entertaining movie, Buster Keaton style… That ruined the fun a bit for me. I simply found it…ugly. Making fun of this, when America really did it, it bothered me…That doesn’t stop it from being a good film but they could have done without that.

Before you jump to point it out, Tarantino is well aware that he himself has recently taken something ugly from American history and used it in his own film, Django Unchained.

I didn’t make Lone Ranger…that’s two different things. I did an examination of America. I tried to juggle with different things and, frankly, I think I did it better than them,” he said. “I don’t know, let’s just say that it was ugly. And violent. And boring. And it happens right in the middle of the film’s bad part, anyway. [laughs]