Johnny Depp as Tonto in The Lone Ranger

A movie that has a Native American character is the Disney movie The Lone Ranger. This movie takes place in the 1930sin San Francisco, an elderly Tonto is telling a young boy who is visiting the Wild West in a slide show, the tale of John Reid, the Lone Ranger. John Reid is a lawyer who is trying to capture the bad guy which is Butch Cavendish. They all die in the attempt to capture him but John Reid is saved by Tonto at the insistence of a mysterious white horse. After Tonto rescues him he offers him to help him bring Cavendish to justice. In this movie John Reid is the hero who is trying take revenge for the death of his brother and all the other rangers. Tonto is just his partner who will help him with the magical white horse that follows him everywhere. Later in the movie we learn that Tonto is seeking vengeance against Cavendish as well because he was banished from his tribe when he was younger. Tonto rescued some white guys from drowning and took care of them. He later showed them a river full silver and the white men killed many members of the Comanche tribe to keep the silver.

Tonto is described as the typical Native American with his horse. In this movie we see him as savage with the only purpose of seeking revenge against the whites. He also has his faced painted, long hair, and head band. He is also shirtless like many of the Native Americans that come out in movies, conforming the stereotypes about them. He is also helping the ranger which makes him in a way his server and the only hero in the movie is John Reid. In Reel Injun we learned that Native Americans are usually portrayed as spiritual, noble, supreme horse man, and free. Johnny Depp plays all this stereotypes when acting as Tonto. Many critics of this movie question whether or not this movie is racists against Native Americans due to the fact that a nonnative played the character of Tonto. His character resembles all the historical representations of Native Americans because of the way he is dressed, how he acts, and just because of the simple fact that a white man is playing the role of a Native American.

This representation works to justify the economic and social marginalization of Native Americans. In this movie we see how the character tonto is and it just reminds us of how we have seen Native Americans have been portrayed before. However this movie didn’t had a good rating since it only has 4.9 stars out of 10. Maybe it has a low rating because it is a Disney movie and many viewers thought it should be more like a Wild West movie. There is also a lot of humor which many viewers also thought was unnecessary but others really enjoyed the movie. I enjoyed the movie myself but I do believe that Johnny Depp character is conforming the stereotypes of Native Americans. I liked the ending because both of them were able to fulfill their vengeance against Cavendish and were able to find peace at last.