I disagree. I can't see a $250 million+ Lone Ranger film ever being allowed to enter production without an A-list star in one of the main roles (yet John Carter does exist). This was a deliberate attempt by Depp to confront some of the poor Indian iconography in Hollywood films, however ill-executed, so making complaints about Depp's dubious ancestry as if this is some kind of minstrel show is unfair. But then again, I'm not automatically against actors playing people of other races. Gary Oldman could almost certainly do a good anyone. Elements of hyperbolic parody, condescension, and mockery need to be there for censure to be justifiably potent, in my opinion, not just the appropriation of jobs from actors of the underrepresented race/background.
I've seen this argument to varying degrees made before. And it begs the question, why does a Lone Ranger film have to be 250+ million dollars?
Of course that price tag would make any movie company very skittish and conservative in their casting choices, which unfortunately in the case of this Lone Ranger film pushed aside any concerns the executives and filmmakers might have had regarding redface or whitewashed casting.
A smaller budgeted film wouldn't have had all that pressure on it, nor likely would the filmmakers felt the need to stuff it with all kinds of stuff in an attempt perhaps to appeal to every audience they could (I haven't seen the film, but that's a general sense that I get from all many of the reviews I've read).
This movie still could've had Depp in it, without him playing Tonto. He could've been the Lone Ranger, Cavendish, or Cole easy.
From what I've read of Depp's reasons for wanting to play Tonto, for helping to correct past stereotypical portrayals, of setting the record straight (my paraphrasing, not his actual words), I can see how that is coming from a noble place.
But the idea of a white man (albeit one with alleged and murky Native American ancestry) to take it upon himself to make this correction by playing Tonto reinforces how much Tonto was a white man's creation, a white person's idea of what a Native American was and perhaps to some, still is. White people can't tell everyone's story, and even if they could, they shouldn't. Some things are not for them to tell.
Perhaps Depp couldn't see that if he wanted to redeem the character of Tonto, to make him a more accurate representative of the 19th century Native American or Native American experience that the character should've been played by a Native American actor for starters, if possible one that was specific to the group the film's Tonto now derived from. Second, Depp could've worked hard to make sure the film depicted Tonto and other Native American characters in the film and whites reactions to them as historically accurate as possible.
I like the idea of subverting stereotypes but I think Depp choosing to be Tonto undercut the ideas he probably had in mind.
