“What was that you said? Pretty soon, no one will believe you even existed.”
In structuring this blog series, I happened upon an interesting thing: apart from the top three or so movies there really isn’t an order to these. These are, by and large, movies I am willing to watch anytime, can quote readily, and desire for different things. A lot of pressure goes into which one of them will lead the pack. It seems fitting, therefore, that we open with what might be the most absurd of the bunch—and considering that a deep love of the unapologetically absurd is one of my criteria for favorite movies, that’s saying something.
2011’s Rango is mesmerizingly absurd. In truth, I believe there’s a case that this movie can be classed as magical realism. But that’s a huge part of why I love this movie so. Betwixt gunslinging animals, ghostly moving cacti, brutally crisp animation, and overt adult themes is a story which strikes at the heart of, well, stories. Johnny Depp’s titular character, the misplaced chameleon Rango, finds himself lost in a world he does not understand but readily adapts (lies) his way through. What follows is a deep, occasionally funny, examination of not only why we tell stories, and how we remember them, but a complex narrative of resource control, corruption, progress, legend, and self-discovery.
There’s also a rattlesnake with a gatling gun for a tail so, you know, something for everyone.
I almost want to start there… and it’s worth noting that all of these posts will have supremely high spoiler content. Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy) is just fantastic. No notes. A hero is only as good as their villain, and Jake is thematically and practically one of the best villains ever put to screen—no small feat considering he is in only the last third, if that, of the movie and is not technically the main villain. He is also emblematic of the absurd nature of Rango: a rattlesnake outlaw with a gatling gun tail hired out to intimidate the town. His coming is foretold since Rango’s first hapless act of heroism (killing the hawk which keeps the snakes away (look at that worldbuilding, guys)) and from that moment he is like a storm on the horizon. When his lightning strikes, no one is safe.
Except, that is, in stories. Through the movie, Rango lies about his past, his connections to the legendary Spirit of the West, his heroism and even his name (I don’t think we ever get his real name). He is an actor by “training,” (give it up for the required, "Thespians? That’s illegal in twelve states!” joke), and as such quickly fools the town into thinking he is the sheriff they need. That’s something Jake is quick to point out, and the liar-revealed scene is done to shockingly heartbreaking effect. But when their common enemy reveals himself, and ties them both to eventually becoming fictions of a time and place that will never understand them, Jake and Rango come to a détente of understanding. It’s a beautiful moment that encapsulates the importance of a thematic villain and the journey of our protagonist through the film.
“One bullet. I tip my hat to you, one legend to another.”
It’s there too where Rango really shines—discussions of legends and stories and their place in something like the “modern world.” We see the clash of ages playing out before us, with a war of water and industrial development that reads far more applicable with every passing year, dressed up in this gunslinging, slow-paced, stunningly animated Western. Through it all, we know, alongside our protagonist, that this is a story. Cacti do not move every night in search of water, nor do they know how to operate machinery. None of these animals wield guns, and moles certainly do not ride on bats like biplanes (the chase scene in question is set to a folk/western cover of “Ride of the Valkyries” I am telling you this movie is absurd).
But, here’s the thing: the movie leans into whatever it believes is realism hard. It offers as excuse the legends we all tell ourselves. At its heart, Rango is a story about myth and the importance it holds in our history. The plot and the characters, were they not animals, would be believable if inserted into any one of the legends we tell ourselves about “The Wild West.” Think too on the ways in which our own history is mythologized, and that the United States is not even so old a country (George Washington and the cherry tree? Hamilton writing “the other 51!”? Bonnie and Clyde dying side by side and Andrew Jackson as an American Rockstar (that’s a deep musical nerd reference for y’all). Think too on how we define progress, and civilization, the cultures lost to the march of time and the connections destroyed as highways bisected cities and golf courses replaced farms.
(The movie talks about this too, I’m serious).
“What are you building out here?”
“The future, Mr. Rango. The future. One day soon all of this is going to fade into myth. The frontier town, the lawman, the gunslinger. There's just no place for them anymore. We're civilized now.”
Rango has its shortcomings, yes. While it has moments of being funny, it’s not particularly a comedy. It’s not particularly any one thing, and that makes it a hard sell. An animated movie with guns and smoking and drinking that has scenes of allegorical magical realism interwoven with jokes like “…and so the stranger basks in the adulation of his new friends. Sinking deeper into the guacamole of his own deception…” is hard to categorize effectively. It also suffers from a bit of a pacing problem, mainly through its attempts to evoke the same symbolic stretches of nothing that is the hallmark of the Western.
But what gets me the most is how the movie mourns the loss of myth with you. There’s a part of all of us, I think, that longs if not to be the hero of our own stories, then to at least imagine heroes exist, or existed. When the movie hones in on that point, on what it means to be a hero and a person and a role in society or a story, it does it well. It reminds you that there are always new stories being told, and that heroes are people who chose to rise to the challenges they faced, unexpected or otherwise. Sometimes the best heroes are the ones in stories, and their importance isn’t whether or not they are or were real, but that we believe in the things they do. It’s those things which give us strength in the times we find ourselves facing adversity. As Rango so wonderfully reminds us…
“No man can walk out on his own story.”