Strap in, kids, we’ve got an abundance of posters to savor this week. First up, Iron Man 3. I’ll be honest, it sort of bums me out how excited grown adults get every time a comic book character so much as farts on celluloid. I mean, I like plenty of comic book movies (possibly more than half, even) it’s just the automatic excitement of it. It seems like a weird form of brand loyalty. Anyway, I like this poster fine, I’m just not that into the idea of a third Iron Man after the last one. Is this one just going to be Robert Downey flexing at the camera shouting “I’m Robert Downey, bitch!” while he bangs supermodels? The first one was fun, but let’s face it, Iron Man is kind of like the Entourage of superhero movies.

I call this pose the Angry Upside-Down Jesus. My girlfriend and I tried the Angry Upside-Down Jesus once, but we didn’t have the right sized railroad spikes.

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Whether he’s playing a Comanche medicine man or a 200-year-old aristocratic vampire, one thing is for certain, Johnny Depp will be wearing fewer accessories than on an average day. Recently, he spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the origins of his bird-hat costume from Jerry Bruckheimer’s upcoming Lone Ranger movie:

“I’d actually seen a painting by an artist named Kirby Sattler, and looked at the face of this warrior and thought: That’s it,” Depp said in a recent interview. “The stripes down the face and across the eyes … it seemed to me like you could almost see the separate sections of the individual, if you know what I mean.”

I think I do know what you mean. I translated it as “I’m so handsome and famous I can say things like this without being laughed out of the room.”

Depp explained that the lines of paint on the Native American’s face looked to him like a cross-section of the man’s emotional life. “There’s this very wise quarter, a very tortured and hurt section, an angry and rageful section, and a very understanding and unique side. I saw these parts, almost like dissecting a brain, these slivers of the individual,” he said.”That makeup inspired me.”

Oh sure, I often point to the two-inch sliver of skin to the left of my cheek and say “this is my rageful section.” My mailbox seemed nonplussed about it, but he’s been spreading secrets about me.

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Back in August, I brought you the news that Disney had dropped plans to make a Jerry Bruckheimer-produced Lone Ranger movie starring Armie Hammer with Johnny Depp as Tonto. The reason? It was going to cost between $250 and $275 million, which seems slightly expensive for a western. Well now, the principals have reportedly come to a deal, agreeing to make the film for a paltry $215 million, reteaming Johnny Depp with Gore Verbinski and the team behind the first three Pirates movies. HEROES! It’s so nice when people can put aside petty greed for a soulless cash grab.

Last we heard, the project was so expensive partly because it had frickin’ werewolves in it. But according to THR, those got dropped before the current incarnation. WHAT?! BUT YOU CAN’T MAKE A LONE RANGER MOVIE WITHOUT WEREWOLVES!

The original script included werewolves and other supernatural creatures from Native American myths [WENDINGO!!! -Ed.]. Those bells and whistles have been jettisoned, but according to sources who have read recent drafts, three massive action set pieces involving trains remain, including one described as the biggest train sequence in film history. [THR]

Ooh, trains, we’ll need an experience injun tracker to find one of those. Meanwhile, here’s what Terry Rossio had to say about the draft of the script he co-wrote and Johnny Depp’s interest in the project:

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It shows how jaded I am that when I reported on Disney shitcanning Jerry Bruckheimer’s Lone Ranger movie yesterday, it didn’t even occur to me to ask why a movie that was presumably a traditional western had a $250 million budget. (As Brendon at Durden wrote, “It’s a lot of money, but try to think of even one western that cost less that 200 million. You can’t name even one can you? If you wan’t to film two guys on horses, it’s gonna cost you.”) Well now we have the answer to that question, and it’s werewolves. That’s right, we almost got a $250 million movie called Lone Ranger that was about werewolves.

Co-screenwriter Ted Elliott posted some Lone Ranger plot details on a private writer‘s website, and the writer shared them with Hollywood-Elsewhere:

“It was always going to be a big Bruckheimer CG movie with traditional Bruckheimer elements [and] an eye toward being a tentpole –totally Pirates-style. It was going to be a Tonto show mainly. Tonto as the top dog and more dominant than the Lone Ranger. Tonto and the Indian spirits like Obi Wan Kenobi and the force. The driving engine was going to be Native American occult aspects worked in with werewolves and special effects, [b]ut flavored with doses of Native American spirituality in a serious way.” [hat tip: Screenrant]

Indeed, because what better way to honor Native American mysticism than through a European myth recently repopularized by a kid with washboard abs in a movie about sparkly white vampires based on a book written by a Mormon? Jesus, my head hurts. This is why I hate Bruckheimer movies. You can see an excerpt from the screenplay to the right.

“But then Cowboys & Aliens came along and tanked and Disney got cold tenderfeet, spooked by the idea of a pricey mashup. If Cowboys & Aliens had made $200 million, this wouldn’t be happening. A Bruckheimer-style western in the wake of Cowboys & Aliens is nothing anyone is feeling secure about at this stage. Trust me, the writers of tentpole garbage are all scared now.”
“Depp’s interest in playing Tonto is about fulfilling his Marlon Brando legacy,” the director-writer believes. “Depp is partly Native American himself and he was partly mentored by Brando, who was a big Indians’ rights advocate. So he didn’t want to do any kind of jaunty performance that plays it light and spoofy with the Native American thing. No Captain Jack crap this time around.”

Man, someone at Cowboys & Aliens deserves a gift basket for killing this project. I also like how the writer throws around Indian-related terms like “tenderfoot,” like the dude who spent two weeks in London who now calls everyone “mate.” “Haha, sorry for the confusion there, kemosabe. You see I picked up all this ‘injun’ slang (as they call it) when I was studying Native American culture to write a film in which Johnny Depp fights werewolves.”

The poster for Jerry Bruckheimer’s Prince of Persia will appear inside Jerry Bruckheimer’s Confessions of a Shopaholic as background ads in Time Square, alongside ads for Jerry Bruckheimer’s G-Force, Jerry Bruckheimer brand colostomy bags and Jerry Bruckheimer douche nozzles.  Okay, I may have made up those last two.

“It’s funny because I was watching the movie and we had ads for other films and I said, ‘Why don’t we put our own movies in here.’ It’s kind of silly to promote someone else’s movies.” [LatinoReview]

Touché, Jerry, touché. Bruckheimer went on to say:

* Prince of Persia (adapted from the video game) will definitely have parkour (seriously)
* He’s making a third National Treasure,
* He’s excited about The Sorcerer’s Apprentice with Jay Baruchel and Nic Cage
* Johnny Depp will play Tonto in a Lone Ranger movie, which will definitely have “a supernatural element to it”
* G-Force will be about talking guinea pigs but will have “something for everybody”

The interviewer was about to ask him about Pirates IV, when a slimy, morey eel-like creature sprang from Bruckheimer’s mouth and devoured the interviewer whole.  He vomited up a puddle of foul-smelling black sludge before heading to a script meeting for CSI: Miami.