Johnny Depp is best known for a multitude of roles in a varied variety of movies, and Rango, arguably one of his best films, has recently dropped on Netflix, with many people just now discovering it for the first time.
The CG animation sees the eponymous pet chameleon become stranded in the Mojave Desert, and finds himself in Dirt, a small town populated by anthropomorphic animals and beset by a drought. Through a series of coincidences, misunderstandings and Rango’s sense of showmanship getting out of hand, he becomes the town’s new sheriff and begins to investigate the cause of the water shortage.
The reactions to Netflix’s addition of the film have been overwhelmingly positive so far and more than a little excitable, and below, you can see what folks are saying:
https://twitter.com/jack8you/status/1346569263742660609
RANGO on Netflix? life rn real nice
— carlos r (@ciraiv31) January 6, 2021
https://twitter.com/urmomish0t/status/1346584073561538560
netflix just recommended me 2011's Rango with Johnny Depp, life is good.
— CeleryControl (@CeleryControl) January 5, 2021
https://twitter.com/iSnuggIeZayn/status/1346516930841161728
THEY FINALLY PUT RANGO ON NETFLIX LETS FUCKING GOOOOO
— nana (@moonitans) January 5, 2021
https://twitter.com/El_Garbagio/status/1346279902673190914
https://twitter.com/needy4yourlove/status/1346275338356219910
https://twitter.com/0zzyozz/status/1346233173936660486
RANGO IS ON NETFLIX
watch it watch it watch it watch it watch it watch it watch it watch it watch it watch it please watch it 1,000 times over this is my favorite film it's so good please watch it this is all I've ever needed in life
— Pimpeaux 🏳️⚧️ (@Pimpeaux) January 3, 2021
Yo Rango is on Netflix – the best film ever ever ever made
— I.O. Scheffer, Author Extraordinaire ❇ (@IOScheffer) January 3, 2021
As well as music and visual aesthetics, Rango invokes the tropes of the Spaghetti Westerns from the ‘60s – such as Django, A Fistful of Dollars and Once Upon a Time in the West – with which its young target demographic will likely be unfamiliar, specifically a lone stranger arriving in an isolated frontier settlement whose populace has been driven to desperation by outside forces they cannot battle alone. The difference is that Rango is a fraud whose love of acting places him in a spiral of exaggeration and self-mythmaking that he’s soon too deep within to find a way out, so must push through and ultimately become the true hero he begins as only pretending to be.
The bleak view of frontier life portrayed in such movies is toned down for the story’s light-hearted ambiance, but still captures the struggle of the individual against powers beyond them in a world where life is cheap and death a constant danger that made such films so popular. However, Rango tempers this nihilism with messages often woven into family-oriented affairs, such as that liars are always ultimately unmasked, and that being a hero comes from who you are and how you comport yourself rather than what you make others believe you to be.
