Rango (2011 film)

Rango
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Gore Verbinski
Screenplay by	John Logan
Story by	Gore Verbinski John Logan James Ward Byrkit
Produced by	Gore Verbinski Graham King John B. Carls
Starring	Johnny Depp Isla Fisher Abigail Breslin Alfred Molina Bill Nighy Harry Dean Stanton Ray Winstone Timothy Olyphant
Edited by	Craig Wood
Music by	Hans Zimmer
Production companies	Nickelodeon Movies Blind Wink GK Films
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date	March 4, 2011 (2011-03-04)
Running time	107 minutes (theatrical) 111 minutes (extended)
Country	Template:Film US
Language	English
Budget	$135 million
Box office	$242,587,932

Rango is a 2011 American computer-animated Western comedy film directed by Gore Verbinski and produced by Graham King. It features the voices of actors Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Bill Nighy, Abigail Breslin, Alfred Molina, Harry Dean Stanton, Ray Winstone and Timothy Olyphant.

Plot

A pet chameleon (Johnny Depp) becomes accidentally stranded in the Mojave Desert after his terrarium falls from his owner's car. After meeting an armadillo named Roadkill (Alfred Molina), who is seeking the mystical Spirit of the West, he narrowly avoids being eaten by a red-tailed hawk. The next day, after having a surreal nightmare, he meets desert iguana Beans (Isla Fisher), a rancher's daughter, who takes him to Dirt, an Old West town populated by desert animals.

Beans discovers that the water reserves, stored in a water-cooler bottle in the bank, are dangerously low. At the Gas Can Saloon, the chameleon, using bravado and improvisation to fit in, presents himself as Rango (after taking his name from the last part of the word Durango), a tough drifter. He quickly runs afoul of outlaw Bad Bill (Ray Winstone), narrowly avoiding a shootout when the hawk returns, scaring Bill. The hawk chases Rango until by luck Rango kills the predator by crushing it under an empty water tower that he accidentally caused to collapse. In response, the Mayor (Ned Beatty) appoints Rango the new sheriff. A skeptical Beans demands Rango investigate the water problem while the townsfolk worry that the hawk was the only thing keeping gunslinger Rattlesnake Jake from returning to terrorize them.

That night, Rango inadvertently gives some mole robbers the location of the bank and tools to break into the vault. When the townsfolk find their water stolen, Rango organizes a posse that finds the bank manager, Mr. Merrimack (Stephen Root), dead. They eventually track the robbers to their mountain hideout, only for their leader, Balthazar (Harry Dean Stanton), to reveal that his clan of moles, prairie dogs and other such subterranean animals greatly outnumbers the posse. Nabbing the covered wagon water-bottle, the posse flees, chased in a ground and air fight before discovering the bottle is empty. Despite the robbers professing that they'd discovered it empty, the posse returns them to town for trial.

After Rango and Beans deduce that the Mayor has been buying all the nearby land around, Rango recalls the mayor telling him how controlling water equals control of everything. He confronts the mayor, who denies he has done anything wrong and shows Rango that he is building a modern city on the old land. With no proof of the mayor's wrongdoing, Rango leaves, while the mayor, seeing that Rango is close to figuring out what his true plans are, orders one of his men to call Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy), who soon arrives, firing shots with his gatling gun tail. Recognizing that Rango is a fake, Jake runs him out of town after humiliating him and making him admit that everything he told the town about himself is a lie.

Ashamed and no longer knowing who he is, Rango wanders the desert and, in a daze, meets the Spirit of the West (Timothy Olyphant), a cowboy whom Rango calls the Man with No Name. The Spirit inspires Rango and tells him, "No man can walk out on his own story". With the aid of Roadkill and mystical moving cacti, Rango learns the source of Dirt's water is Las Vegas and that someone has shut off a water line. Realizing the mayor's hand in this, Rango recruits the hill clan in his plan.

Returning to town, he calls out Jake for a duel—a diversion so that the hill folk and the cacti can flood the town with water. The mayor threatens Beans' life, forcing Rango to surrender. The two are put into the glass-bottle bank vault to drown and Beans kisses Rango, while the mayor prepares to shoot Jake, whom he calls a relic. However, Rango manages to take the only bullet from the gun (Remington-Peters .45 Long Colt) and uses it to break the glass, flooding the room and taking out the mayor and his men. Jake, acknowledging Rango as a worthy opponent, grabs the mayor and drags him into the desert. The citizens of Dirt celebrate the return of the water and acknowledge Rango as their hero.

Cast

Source:

• Johnny Depp as Rango, a chameleon
• Isla Fisher as Beans, a desert iguana
• Abigail Breslin as Priscilla, a cactus mouse
• Alfred Molina as Roadkill, a nine-banded armadillo
• Bill Nighy as Rattlesnake Jake, a Western diamondback rattlesnake
• Harry Dean Stanton as Balthazar, a mole
• Ray Winstone as Bad Bill, a gila monster
• Timothy Olyphant as the Spirit of the West, a human
• Ned Beatty as Tortoise John, Mayor of Dirt, a desert tortoise
• Stephen Root as: Doc, a rabbit; Mr. Merrimack; Mister Snuggles
• Maile Flanagan as Lucky
• Ian Abercrombie as Ambrose, an owl
• Gil Birmingham as Wounded Bird, a Chihuahuan raven
• James Ward Byrkit as: Waffles, a horned toad; Gordy Papa; Joad; Cousin Murt; Curlie knife attacker; Rodent Kid
• Claudia Black as Angelique, a fox
• Blake Clark as Buford, a toad, Gas Can Saloon bartender
• John Cothran, Jr. as Elgin, a bobcat
• Patrika Darbo as: Delilah; Maybelle
• George DelHoyo as Señor Flan, the accordion player
• Charles Fleischer as Elbows, a bobcat
• Beth Grant as Bonnie
• Ryan Hurst as Jedidiah
• Vincent Kartheiser as: Ezekiel; Lasso rodent
• Hemky Madera as Chorizo, a rat
• Alex Manugian as Spoons, a mouse
• Mark McCreery as Parsons
• Joe Nunez as Rock-Eye
• Chris Parson as: Hazel Moats, a prairie dog; Kinski, a jackrabbit; Stump, a jackrabbit; Clinker; Lenny; Boseefus; Dirt Kid
• Lew Temple as: Furgus; Hitch
• Alanna Ubach as: Boo Cletus; Fresca; Miss Daisy
• Gore Verbinski as: Sergeant Turley; Crevice; Slim; Lupe, the violin player
• Kym Whitley as Melonee
• Keith Campbell as Sod Buster
• Jared Lavette as Jared, a newt
• Micah Lavette as Micah, a fox

Crew

Source:

Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies present a Blind Wink / GK Films Production

• Director: Gore Verbinski
• Screenplay: John Logan
• Story: John Logan, Gore Verbinski, James Ward Byrkit
• Executive producer: Tim Headington
• Producers: Gore Verbinski, Graham King, John B. Carls
• Co-producers: Shari Hanson, Adam Cramer, David Shannon
• Editor: Craig Wood
• Music: Hans Zimmer
• Production designer: Mark "Crash" McCreery
• Animation: Industrial Light & Magic

Development

The film was distributed by Paramount Pictures and produced by Nickelodeon Movies, Gore Verbinski's production company Blind Wink, and Graham King's GK Films. The CGI animation was created by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), marking the first feature animation done by ILM, generally a special effects company. During voice recording, the actors were given costumes and sets to "help give them the feel of the Wild West". Star Johnny Depp had a 20-day window in which he could voice his role as Rango, and the filmmakers scheduled the supporting actors so as they could do their scenes with Depp and interact with him. Verbinski said his attempt with Rango was to do a "small" film after the large-scale Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, but that he underestimated how painstaking and time-consuming animated filmmaking is.

The film contains a number of references to movie Westerns and other film including The Shakiest Gun in the West, A Fistful of Dollars, Chinatown, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, Cat Ballou, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Marketing

Rango's teaser trailer was released on June 9, 2010, along with the film's official site, RangoMovie.com. It shows an open desert highway and a orange, wind-up plastic fish floating slowly across the road. On June 28, 2010, the first poster was released, showing the character Rango. A two-minute film trailer was released June 29, 2010. Another trailer was released December 14, 2010. A 30-second spot was made specifically to run during Superbowl XLV on February 6, 2011.

Reception

Critical

Rango received critical acclaim. As of July 7, 2011, it has an 89% rating on the film critics aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, based on 190 reviews. The site's consensus says, "Rango is a smart, giddily creative burst of beautifully animated entertainment, and Johnny Depp gives a colorful vocal performance as a household pet in an unfamiliar world." Another review-aggregation website, Metacritic, reported that the film had been given an average review of 75 out of 100 (or 3 out of 4). Richard Corliss of Time applauded the "savvy humor" and called the voice actors "flat-out flawless." Bob Mondello of National Public Radio observed that "Rango's not just a kiddie-flick (though it has enough silly slapstick to qualify as a pretty good one). It's a real movie lover's movie, conceived as a Blazing Saddles-like comic commentary on genre that's as back-lot savvy as it is light in the saddle." Frank Lovece of Film Journal International, noting the nervous but improvising hero's resemblance to the Don Knotts character in The Shakiest Gun in the West, echoed this, saying that "with healthy doses of Carlos Castaneda, Sergio Leone, Chuck Jones and Chinatown ... this [is] the kid-movie equivalent of a Quentin Tarantino picture. There's no gory violence or swearing, of course, but there sure is a film buff's parade of great movie moments." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four out of four stars calling the film "some kind of a miracle: An animated comedy for smart moviegoers, wonderfully made, great to look at, wickedly satirical.... The movie respects the tradition of painstakingly drawn animated classics, and does interesting things with space and perspective with its wild action sequences."

In one of the few negative reviews, Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune acknowledged its "considerable care and craft" but called it "completely soulless" and that watching it "with a big suburban preview audience was instructive. Not much laughter. Moans and sobs of pre-teen fright whenever Rattlesnake Jake slithered into view, threatening murder."

Box-office performance

As of April 17, 2011, Rango has earned $119,991,859 in North America and $118,543,806 in other territories for a total $238,535,665. It is the fourth highest-grossing film of 2011. Between March and April 2011 it was the highest grossing film of 2011 but was placed second, beaten by Rio.

In the USA and Canada, Rango debuted in 3,917 theaters, grossing $9,608,091 on its first day and $38,079,323 during its opening weekend, ranking number one at the box office. Overseas during its first weekend it earned $16,770,243 in 33 countries. On March 26, 2011 it became the first film of 2011 to cross the $100 million mark in the United States and Canada.

Outside Northern America, territories where it earned more than $10 million were Russia and CIS ($11,727,303), the UK, Ireland and Malta ($10,961,272), France and the Maghreb region ($10,563,989), Australia ($10,532,753) and Mexico ($10,466,177).

Paramount Pictures was so pleased by the performance of this film, and with their distribution contract with DreamWorks Animation set to be concluded in 2012, that they announced plans to establish their own animation department.

Awards and nominations

• 2011 Teen Choice Awards
• Choice Movie: animation voice (Johnny Depp) (pending)
• Choice movie: animation (pending)

Video games

Console games

Electronic Arts released a video game based on the film. It is rated E10+ and was released for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, and Wii.

Online games

Funtactix launched Rango: The World, a browser-based virtual world set in the Rango universe, on March 4, 2011, the day of the film's release.

Home video

The film was released on Blu-ray and DVD on July 15, 2011. The release had been produced as a 2-disc Blu-ray, DVD, and "Digital Copy" combo pack, and it will include both the theatrical and extended versions of the film, cast and crew commentary, deleted scenes, and the "Breaking the Rules: Making Animation History," "Real Creatures of the Dirt," "Storyboard Reel Picture-In-Picture," and "A Field Trip to Dirt" bonus features.

External links

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• Official website. WebCitation archive. (Archived site's opening page requires clicking on onscreen URL for entry.)
• Rango at AllMovie
• Rango at IMDb
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