Pirates of the Caribbean Director’s Western Masterpiece Officially Finds a New Streamer

He has covered everything from Marvel to the Oscars, and Marvel at the Oscars. He also writes obsessively about the box office, charting the many hits and misses that are released weekly, and how their commercial performance shapes public perception. In his time at Collider, he has also helped drive diversity by writing stories about the multiple Indian film industries, with a goal of introducing audiences to a whole new world of cinema. 

With two upcoming movies vying for the title of Johnny Depp‘s comeback vehicle — the holiday release Ebenezer will precede the action thriller Day Drinker — younger audiences may be interested in revisiting his past work. While the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise remains as popular as ever — Depp is being courted to return — one of the star’s most overlooked movies is coming to Peacock. To describe the film as underrated feels odd, because it was a major critical and commercial hit. In fact, it even won an Oscar. The movie in question remains a key entry in Depp’s long list of bizarre feature films, and although it was mainly aimed at children, it drew inspiration from several classics from the ’60s and ’70s.

Among the biggest inspirations behind the film was the spaghetti Western classic The Good, the Bad & the Ugly. It drew its name from another classic of the genre, Django. The plot, on the other hand, drank from the well of Chinatown. Depp’s character was a throwback to his own cult classic, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. With such decidedly adult influences, the film’s appeal for children was questioned. The late critic Roger Ebert wondered in his four-star review, “The more movies you’ve seen, the more you may like it… But let’s say you haven’t seen lots of movies. Let’s say you’re a kid. (The movie) may surprise you because it’s an animated film that plays like a real movie and really gets you involved.”

Four icons and four completely different ways of walking into trouble.
This is the one you would have been out there, why it fits, and what it would have cost you.

You have never explained yourself and you have never needed to,
because people work out fairly quickly that you are the most capable person in the room
without you ever having to mention it.

• Eastwood built the character out of everything he refused to do, stripping away the
  backstory, the speeches and every bit of reassurance until only the competence was left.
• You keep your own counsel, and while other people occasionally find that unnerving, you
  have never felt any real need to fix it for them.
• The Dollars films work because he genuinely is in it for himself right up until the
  moment he is not, and he never explains that part either.
• You would be gone before anybody got a chance to thank you.

You are the funniest person in most rooms and the most loyal
person in all of them, and you would be genuinely insulted if somebody suggested those two
things were in any tension.

• Doc has no real reason to be in this fight beyond the fact that his friend is in it,
  which is the only reason he has ever needed for anything.
• You lead with wit, and it does a very effective job of hiding how seriously you take the
  handful of people you actually care about.
• Val Kilmer’s performance is the most quoted in the entire genre because the jokes keep
  getting sharper as the situation gets worse.
• You would spend everything you had on this and still describe it as a good week.

You never wanted this job, and you took it anyway because the
alternative was standing there watching somebody less careful do it badly, which is the most
Western reason there has ever been.

• Earp is the reluctant authority figure, a man who came to town specifically to be left
  alone and somehow ended up answerable for all of it.
• You are protective by instinct, so when something goes wrong your first thought is who
  is exposed rather than who is to blame.
• These films understand that keeping order costs far more than breaking it, and that the
  person holding the line almost never gets thanked.
• You would do the whole thing again, and you would complain about it the entire time.

Nobody has ever successfully talked you out of something you had
already decided was right, and a long line of grown adults has found that out the hard way.

• Mattie is the most relentless character in the Western canon and she manages it through
  argument, paperwork and flat refusal rather than a fast draw.
• You have no patience for being managed, so you negotiate, you check the details and you
  turn up exactly when you said you would.
• True Grit is the rare Western where the moral centre is the youngest person on screen
  and every adult around her has to catch up.
• You would get what you came for, and the film is honest about what that takes out of
  you.

The Movie Received Widespread Acclaim

• Image via Paramount Pictures

• Image via Paramount Pictures

• Image via Paramount Pictures

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Image via Paramount Pictures

Image via Paramount Pictures

Image via Paramount Pictures

Image via Paramount 

Image via Paramount Studios

• Image via Paramount Pictures

• Image via Paramount Pictures

• Image via Paramount Pictures

• Image via Paramount 

• Image via Paramount Studios

Image via Paramount Pictures

Image via Paramount Pictures

Image via Paramount Pictures

Image via Paramount 

Image via Paramount Studios

We’re talking, of course, about Rango. Released in 2011, the movie grossed $245 million worldwide against a reported budget of $125 million. The movie won the Best Animated Feature honor at the Oscars, and is now sitting at a “Certified Fresh” 88% on Rotten Tomatoes. The aggregator website’s consensus reads, “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.” With an eclectic voice cast including Abigail Breslin, Isla Fisher, Alfred Molina, Bill Nighy, among others, the film will be added to the Peacock library this November. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.