Rango premiered at Westwood on February 14, 2011, and was released in the United States on March 4, 2011. The film was both a major critical and commercial success, grossing $245.7 million against a budget of $135 million. At the 84th Academy Awards, the film won Best Animated Feature.
Plot
A theatrically-minded pet chameleon becomes stranded in the Mojave Desert of Nevada after his terrarium accidentally falls out of his owners' car. Seeking shelter, he learns from a nine-banded armadillo named Roadkill, who is seeking the mystical "Spirit of the West", and tells the chameleon of an Old West desert town called Dirt, where water comes in through a mysterious rite on Wednesdays.
Seeing no other options, the chameleon heads out into the desert. There, he narrowly avoids being eaten by a vicious red-tailed hawk before meeting Beans, a desert iguana rancher, who takes him to Dirt.
Asked about his identity, the chameleon presents himself to the townsfolk as a tough drifter named "Rango" and quickly runs afoul of Gila monster Bad Bill, who challenges him to a duel. The hawk interrupts the duel and chases Rango, who accidentally knocks over an empty water tower and crushes the hawk to death. Believing he did so intentionally, the townsfolk praise Rango, who is appointed as the new sheriff by Dirt's desert tortoise Mayor John. Meanwhile, the townsfolk worry that with the hawk dead, the infamous gunslinger Rattlesnake Jake will return.
With the town desperate for water during a drought, Beans demands that Rango investigates where the water has gone and in doing so, he inadvertently helps a gang of bank robbers, led by a mole named Balthazar, to steal the water supply. Rango organizes a posse that later finds the banker, Mr. Merrimack, dead in the middle of the desert. The posse tracks the robbers to their hideout, where they fight Balthazar's bat-riding clan over the stolen water bottle before discovering it to be empty. The robbers profess that they found it like that, but Rango still takes them into custody.
After being questioned by Rango about his buying of the land around Dirt, John brings in Rattlesnake Jake, who runs him out of town after forcing him to admit his lies to the townsfolk. Dejected, Rango returns to the highway, where he passes out after he crosses to the other side. He eventually meets the Spirit of the West, an elderly Man with No Name, who advises him to go back to Dirt and set things right, telling him that "No man can walk out on his own story".
With the aid of Roadkill and mystical moving yuccas, Rango discovers an emergency shut-off valve in a water pipeline to Las Vegas. John has been manipulating it to cause the water shortage so he could buy the land for himself.
With a single bullet, Rango returns to Dirt and challenges Jake to a duel, a diversion to allow the yuccas to restore the town's water and Rango to make his resolve clear to Jake. However, John and his men force Rango to surrender by threatening Beans' life before attempting to drown the duo inside the bank's vault.
John then tries to shoot Jake with Rango's gun – believing that both he and Rango represent too much of the old traditions – but finds Rango has taken the sole bullet, which he uses to shatter the vault's glass door, freeing himself and Beans. Impressed, Jake salutes Rango for proving his heroism before carrying John off into the desert to take his revenge for this act of betrayal. The citizens of Dirt celebrate the return of their water supply, and Rango, now a true hero.
The likeness of Benicio del Toro is briefly used to represent his character of Dr. Gonzo from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in a cameo appearance, alongside Johnny Depp as Raoul Duke.
Production
The filming was described as "emotion capture" as the actors shot their scenes in live action for the animators to use as reference.[11][12] During production, the actors and actresses received costumes and sets in order to "give them the feel of the Wild West". Star Johnny Depp had 20 days in which to voice Rango, and the filmmakers scheduled the supporting actors to interact with him.[13] Verbinski said his attempt with Rango was to do a "small" film after the first three large-scale Pirates of the Caribbean movies, but that he underestimated how painstaking, time-consuming and expensive animated filmmaking is.[3][13] Paramount stepped in at the last possible minute as Verbinski's slim financing was about to run out.[14]
Unlike many studio animation projects produced since Avatar, Rango was rendered in 2D, not 3D, as the budget would not allow for it and Verbinski did not want to do a "half-assed 3D".[14]
In a discussion about the nature of contemporary animated features, Verbinski said in December 2011:
There are shackles with the budgets and the profit margins. You want to compete with what they're doing at Pixar and DreamWorks. There's a price tag with that just in terms of achieving that quality level. What happened to the Ralph Bakshis of the world? We're all sitting here talking about family entertainment. Does animation have to be family entertainment? I think at that cost, yes. There's the bull's-eye you have to hit, but when you miss it by a little bit and you do something interesting, the bull's-eye is going to move. Audiences want something new; they just can't articulate what.[18]
Release
Marketing
Rango's teaser trailer was released on June 9, 2010,[19] alongside the film's official site RangoMovie.com.[20] It depicted an open desert highway and Mr. Timms, Rango's orange, wind-up plastic fish floating slowly across the road.[21] On June 28, 2010, the first poster was released showing the main character Rango.[4] A two-minute film trailer was released June 29, 2010.[22][23] Another trailer was released December 14, 2010.[24] A 30-second spot was made specifically to run during Super Bowl XLV on February 6, 2011.[25]
Home media
The film was released on Blu-ray and DVD on July 15, 2011.[26][27] The release had been produced as a two-disc Blu-ray, DVD, and "Digital Copy" combo pack with both the theatrical and an extended version of the film, cast and crew commentary, deleted scenes, and featurettes.[28][29][30]
The extended version adds a final scene in which the flooded town is now a beach resort renamed Mud and Rango rides out to deal with news that Bad Bill is causing trouble elsewhere.
Reception
Box office
Rango earned $123,477,607 in North America and $122,246,996 in other countries for a total $245,724,603.[1] It is the 24th-highest-grossing film of 2011 worldwide.[31]
In North America, 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.[1] Even though the film dropped into second place behind Battle: Los Angeles the following week, it would go on to outgross the weaker opening of Disney's animated flop, Mars Needs Moms.[32] On March 26, 2011, it became the first film of 2011 to cross the $100 million mark in North America.[33]
In markets outside North America, during its first weekend, it earned $16,770,243 in 33 countries.[34] It topped the international box office two times in March 2011.[35][36] Although the film did not double its budget, it was declared a success by Paramount which subsequently announced the formation of its own animation department.[37]
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 88% of 228 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "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."[38]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 75 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[39] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.[40][41][42]
Richard Corliss of Time applauded the "savvy humor" and called the voice actors "flat-out flawless".[43] He later named it one of the 10 best movies of 2011, saying, "In a strong year for animation ... Rango was the coolest, funniest and dagnab-orneriest of the bunch."[44] 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."[5]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."[45]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."[46]
After praising "the brilliance of its visuals", Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal wrote, "The narrative isn't really dramatic, ... [but] more like a succession of picturesque notions that might have flowed from DreamWorks or Pixar while their story departments were out to lunch."[47]
In one of the more 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."[48]
Smoking controversy
The Sacramento, California-based anti-smoking organization Breathe California regards the film a "public health hazard"; it said there were at least 60 instances of smoking in the film.[49] Because of this, some anti-smoking organizations, including Breathe California, petitioned for the film to receive an R rating instead of the original PG rating received by the Motion Picture Association of America. However, no change was made to the smoking scenes and the film maintained its PG rating.[50]
The score was composed by Verbinski's frequent collaborator, Hans Zimmer and features contributions from songwriter and actor Rick Garcia, Latin rock band Los Lobos, and hardcore punk/industrial band Lard.[57][58]
During a Reddit AMA with Verbinski in February 2017, he said that he did not plan on making a sequel to Rango, but he would like to be involved in animation again and to try and come up with an original idea.[59]
^Donald Schultz, Gore Verbinski, "Real Creatures of Dirt", Rango DVD. Schultz: "She represents one of the strangest looking creatures on our planet. She's not from the desert or the United States at all..." Verbinski: "[Character designer] Crash [McCreery] went and did the research and found the aye-aye ... which doesn't really belong in this particular desert."
^McClintock, Pamela (March 4, 2011). "'Rango' Wins Friday Box Office With $9.8 Mil". The Hollywood Reporter. moviegoers gave the toon a C+ CinemaScore. Paramount insiders say the CinemaScore could reflect the fact that Rango is a notch more sophisticated than most toons, sparking debate among moviegoers.
