There Come a Time, Kemosabe, When Johnny Depp Speak Like 'Indian' in Lone Ranger Trailer

Here it is, the trailer for the Disney/Gore Verbinski flick The Lone Ranger, which will hit theaters in 2013. Depp met with the president and other officials of the Navajo Nation in April, and was presented with blanket. Although the members of the Navajo Nation may not have a problem with Depp’s portrayal of Tonto, and we’ll have to wait for the movie’s release to decide whether or not it’s a nuanced character (rumor has it there’s a twist regarding Tonto’s true race/identity) or just plain old red face. But we do hear him speak pidgin English: “There come a time, kemosabe,” he says, “when good man must wear mask.” Sigh. A very stereotypical version of how Native Americans talk, despite the fact that when Europeans came to these shores, there were millions of indigenous people who spoke hundreds of distinctly different languages. Anyway, that phrase, “kemosabe,” is supposed to get us super psyched for this movie, since that’s what Tonto called the Lone Ranger — in lines written by white guy Fran Striker, who penned the series in the 1930s. As this headline puts it, “Johnny Depp Sounds Hilariously Racist as Tonto.” Trailer below.