Rango

Rango
Directed by	Gore Verbinski
Written by	John Logan (screenplay)
Produced by	Gore Verbinski Graham King John B. Carls Tim Headington (executive)
Starring	Johnny Depp Isla Fisher Abigail Breslin Alfred Molina Bill Nighy Harry Dean Stanton Ray Winstone Timothy Olyphant
Cinematography	Roger Deakins
Edited by	Craig Wood
Music by	Hans Zimmer
Production companies	Nickelodeon Movies GK Films Blind Wink Industrial Light and Magic
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date	March 4, 2011
Running time	107 minutes (theatrical version) 111 minutes (extended version)
Film rating
Preceded by	The Last Airbender
Followed by	The Adventures of Tintin
External links
Official website
IMDb

Rango is Nickelodeon Movies' third computer-animated film, released on March 4, 2011. It was directed by Gore Verbinski and produced by Graham King. Rango was a critical and commercial success, and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. It features the voices of actors Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Bill Nighy, Abigail Breslin, Alfred Molina, Harry Dean Stanton, Ray Winstone, Timothy Olyphant, and Ned Beatty.

It was Nickelodeon's second computer-animated film to be rated PG by the MPAA, after Barnyard. The film received widespread positive reviews and was a box office success, grossing $245 million worldwide against its $135 million budget.

Plot

A pet chameleon (Johnny Depp) becomes stranded in the Mojave Desert, where he is directed by an armadillo (Alfred Molina) to a town called Dirt. In the desert, he is pursued by a red-tailed hawk and hallucinates at length before meeting the desert iguana Beans (Isla Fisher), who takes the chameleon to Dirt, an Old West town populated by desert animals. There, the chameleon presents himself to the townsfolk as a heroic figure, under the name of 'Rango'. He soon runs afoul of Gila monster Bad Bill (Ray Winstone), but avoids a fight when Bill is scared off by the afore-seen hawk, and is himself pursued by the hawk until he accidentally crushes it beneath an empty water tower, whereupon the town's mayor (Ned Beatty) appoints Rango the sheriff. Meanwhile, the townsfolk worry that with the hawk dead, the gunslinger Rattlesnake Jake will return. After discovering Dirt's water reserves nearly empty, Beans demands that Rango investigate; but later, Rango inadvertently assists a trio of bank robbers, led by the mole Balthazar, mistaking them for prospectors; and upon finding the water stolen, organizes a posse, who discover bank manager Merrimack dead in the desert from drowning, and later fight the robbers for the stolen water bottle, before discovering the bottle to be empty. Despite the robbers professing they had found it empty, the posse brings them to town for trial.

Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy) arrives and tells Rango to leave for good, so he does. Night comes as the moon is starting to come out, and Rango makes his way through some cactus, who’s shadows were moving a little when the moon came, over the sand, arriving and at the road with Mr. Tims and the doll from the beginning. He was very sad and wished he hadn’t lied and was nobody. Rango arrived at the edge of the road. The cars and trucks sped by and he then crosses to the other side of the road. As Rango crossed the road, the cars and trucks zoomed and and whooshed over him while the wind and sand blew. And in no time, Rango made it to the other side and fainted and the bugs from the bug golf carried him along the rest of the way. And Rango confronts the mayor about his purchase of land around Dirt, who denies any wrongdoing and shows Rango that he is building a modern city with the purchased land. When Rango objects to this, the mayor summons Rattlesnake Jake, who humiliates Rango. Rango thence wanders from town until his encounter with a figure identified only as the 'Spirit of the West' or 'Man with No Name', who advises him that "No man can walk out on his own story". Guided by the armadillo and a set of mobile yucca schidigera, Rango learns that Dirt's water supply is controlled by an emergency valve in a water pipeline to Las Vegas Valley. Thereafter Rango challenges Jake to a duel while Balthazar's robbers and the yucca schidigera release the water-supply; but he and Beans are imprisoned by the mayor, who then attempts to kill Jake, having identified in him an aspect of the nearly-obsolete 'Old West', only to be foiled when Rango and Beans release themselves and the water-supply from his control. At this, Jake salutes Rango and departs, taking the mayor prisoner, while the other characters celebrate.

Cast

• Johnny Depp as Rango, a chameleon who is the titular protagonist of the film.
• Isla Fisher as Beans, a desert iguana, the love interest of Rango, and also the deurtagonist.
• Abigail Breslin as Priscilla, a cactus mouse or aye-aye
• Ned Beatty as Tortoise John, Mayor of Dirt, a desert tortoisethe main antagonist of the film.
• Alfred Molina as Roadkill, a nine-banded armadillo
• Bill Nighy as Rattlesnake Jake, a rattlesnake, the secondary antagonist.
• Harry Dean Stanton as Balthazar, a mole, and the quaternary antagonist
• Ray Winstone as Bad Bill, a Gila monster the tertiary antagonist of the film.
• Timothy Olyphant as the Spirit of the West
• Stephen Root as: Doc, a rabbit; Mr. Johannes Merrimack III ("Fluffy Joe" - the banker); Mister Snuggles
• Maile Flanagan as Lucky
• Ian Abercrombie as Ambrose, a burrowing owl
• Gil Birmingham as Wounded Bird, a Chihuahuan raven
• James Ward Byrkit as: Waffles, a horned toad; Gordy; Papa Joad; Cousin Murt; Curlie knife attacker; Rodent Kid
• Claudia Black as Angélique, a fox
• Blake Clark as Buford, a Sonoran desert toad and a Gas Can Saloon bartender
• John Cothran, Jr. as Elgin
• Patrika Darbo as: Delilah; Maybelle
• George DelHoyo as Señor Flan, the accordion player
• Charles Fleischer as Elbows
• Beth Grant as Bonnie
• Ryan Hurst as Jedidiah
• Vincent Kartheiser as Ezekiel; Lasso rodent
• Hemky Madera as Chorizo
• Alex Manugian as Spoons
• Mark McCreery as Parsons
• Joe Nunez as Rock-Eye
• Chris Parson as: Hazel Moats, Kinski, Stump, Clinker, Lenny, Boseefus, Dirt Kid
• Lew Temple as: Furgus; Hitch
• Alanna Ubach as: Boo Cletus, a raccoon; Fresca; Miss Daisy
• Gore Verbinski as: Sergeant Turley, a wild turkey; Crevice; Slim, a turkey vulture; Lupe, the violin player
• Kym Whitley as Melonee
• Keith Campbell as Sod Buster

Production

The film was produced by Nickelodeon Movies, Gore Verbinski's production company Blind Wink, and Graham King's GK Films. The CGI animation was created by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), marking its first full-length animated feature. ILM usually does visual effects for live-action films. It is also the first animated film for Verbinski. During voice recording, the actors received costumes and sets 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. Verbinski said his attempt with Rango was to do a "small" film after the large-scale Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, but that he underestimated how painstaking and time-consuming animated filmmaking is.

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 [the director of such adult-oriented animated movies as 1972's Fritz the Cat] 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.”

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Release

Marketing

Rango's teaser trailer was released on June 9, 2010, along with the film's official site, RangoMovie.com. It shows an open desert highway and an orange, wind-up plastic fish floating slowly across the road. On June 28, 2010, the first poster was released, showing the character Rango. A two-minute trailer was released June 29, 2010. Another trailer was released December 14, 2010. A 30-second spot was made specifically to run during Super Bowl XLV on February 6, 2011.

Home video

The film was released on Blu-ray and DVD on July 15, 2011. 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.The extended version adds a final scene with the flooded town now a beach resort renamed Mud, and Rango riding out to deal with news that Bad Bill is causing trouble elsewhere.

The film received a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray on June 4, 2024.

DVD

Blu-ray

4K Ultra HD Blu-ray

2012 re-release

The film returned to theaters for a three-week engagement beginning January 27, 2012.

Reception

Critical response

Rango received positive reviews. It has an 88% rating on the film critics aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, based on 200 reviews, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The site's consensus says, "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." Another review-aggregation website, Metacritic, reported that the film had been given an average review of 75 out of 100 (or 3 out of 4).

Box office

Rango, which was distributed by Paramount Pictures, earned $123,477,607 in North America and $121,897,767 in other countries for a total $245,375,374. It was the 23rd highest-grossing film of 2011 worldwide.

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. On March 26, 2011 it became the first film of 2011 to cross the $100 million mark in North America.

In markets outside North America, during its first weekend, it earned $16,770,243 in 33 countries. It topped the overseas box office two times in March 2011.

With its distribution contract with DreamWorks Animation set to be concluded in 2012, Paramount Pictures, pleased by the performance of this film, announced plans to establish its own animation department.

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.

Accolades

Award	Category	Winner/Nominee	Result
Academy Awards	Best Animated Feature Film	Gore Verbinski	Won
Alliance of Women Film Journalists	Best Animated Film		Won
	Best Animated Female:	Isla Fisher	Won
American Cinema Editors	Best Edited Animated Feature Film	Craig Wood	Won
Annie Awards	Best Animated Feature		Won
	Animated Effects in an Animated Production	Chase Cooper	Nominated
	Animated Effects in an Animated Production	Willi Geiger	Nominated
	Character Design in a Feature Production	Mark “Crash” McCreery	Won
	Directing in a Feature Production	Gore Verbinski	Nominated
	Storyboarding in a Feature Production	Delia Gosman	Nominated
	Storyboarding in a Feature Production	Josh Hayes	Nominated
	Writing in a Feature Production	John Logan, Gore Verbinski and James Byrkit	Won
	Editing in a Feature Production	Craig Wood	Won
BAFTA	Best Animated Film		Won
Boston Society of Film Critics Awards	Best Animated Film		Won
Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards	Best Animated Feature		Won
Chicago Film Critics Association Awards	Animated Feature		Won
Golden Globes Awards	Best Animated Feature Film		Nominated
Hollywood Film Festival	Best Animated		Won
IGN Best of 2011	Best Animated Movie		Won
International Film Music Critics Association	Best Original Score for an Animated Feature	Hans Zimmer	Nominated
Kids Choice Awards	Favorite Voice From an Animated Movie	Johnny Depp	Nominated
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards	Best Animation		Won
Motion Picture Sound Editors	Best Sound Editing. Sound Effects, in an Animation Feature Film		Nominated
83rd National Board of Review Awards}}	Best Animated Feature		Won
Online Film Critics Society Awards	Best Animated Feature		Won
Producers Guild of America Awards	Best Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures	John B. Carls, Gore Verbinski	Nominated
San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards	Best Animated Feature		Won
Satellite Awards	Motion Picture, Animated or Mixed Media		Nominated
Saturn Awards	Best Animated Film		Nominated
2011 Teen Choice Awards	Choice Movie Animated Voice	Johnny Depp	Won
Toronto Film Critics Association Awards	Best Animated Feature		Nominated
Visual Effects Society	Outstanding Visual Effects in an Animated Feature Motion Picture	Tim Alexander, Hal Hickel, Jacqui Lopez, Katie Lynch	Won
	Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Feature Motion Picture	Frank Gravatt, Kevin Martel, Brian Paik, Steve Walton	Won
	Outstanding Created Environment in an Animated Feature Motion Picture	John Bell, Polly Ing, Martin Murphy, Russell Paul	Won
	Outstanding Virtual Cinematography in an Animated Feature Motion Picture	Colin Benoit, Philippe Rebours, Nelson Sepulveda, Nick Walker	Won
2012 People's Choice Awards	Favorite Movie Animated Voice	Johnny Depp	Won

Video games

Console games

Electronic Arts released a video game based on the film. It was rated E10+ and was released for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, and Wii.

Online games

Funtactix launched Rango: The World, a browser-based virtual world set in the Rango universe, on March 4, 2011, the day of the film's release.

Trivia

• This was the first Nickelodeon movie to win the Academy Award for Animated Feature Film, and the first Nickelodeon movie to be nominated since Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius. It was also the first animated film not produced by Pixar film to win the award since 2007.
• Throught the entire film, it contains a number of references to various Western and other films, including The Shakiest Gun in the West, A Fistful of Dollars, Chinatown, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, Cat Ballou, Raising Arizona, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; and references to earlier ILM work, including the dogfight in the Death Star trench in Star Wars: A New Hope.
• In addition to winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, this film was also nominated for the same category at the Golden Globe Awards, which lost to fellow Nickelodeon film The Adventures of Tintin.
• The song that plays when Rango becomes an Outcast was actually used in another film called The Kingdom, composed by Danny Elfman.
• Despite being a Nickelodeon film, it initially did not air on the main flagship channel following the controversy, after two years of its original release. However, it did air on a number of non-Viacom-owned TV channels, such as FXM, Cartoon Network, and Discovery Family. Nickelodeon eventually aired the film on January 1, 2018.
• This is the first animated Nickelodeon film not to use cartoon sound effects, due to having a more realistic theme.

Videos

Clips

Rango - Rolling Bottle

Clip #1

You ain't from around here - Clip from Rango

Clip #2

Rango - That means we ride

Clip #3

Clip from Rango - Welcome to Dirt

Clip #4

Extended clip from 'Rango' starring Johnny Depp - One last chance to reconsider

Clip #5

Gallery

Teaser poster #1

Teaser poster #2

Theatrical release poster #1

Ciara Bravo at the film's premiere.