Saturday Double Feature: The Lone Ranger (2013) and…

Saturday on the blog means Saturday Double Feature, right? Remember, the basic idea here is to take a movie that is out in theaters now, and pair it up with another movie from the 1980s or before.. Sometimes the connection will be obvious, and sometimes it’ll be a little less so, but that’s part of the fun.

I said when I was writing about The Lone Ranger a couple of days ago that if you took the title character and his “faithful companion” out of the flick. you might actually have a pretty good movie. What I didn’t mention at the time was that that movie has already been made. Okay, let’s start, as usual, with the trailer for the modern movie:

Now let’s take a look at the movie that I can’t help but think someone behind all of that really wanted to be remaking: from 1979, directed by Michael Crichton (who also adapted the screenplay from his book) and starring Sean Connery and Donald Sutherland, it’s The First Great Train Robbery (or, as it was known in the US, simply The Great Train Robbery)

Of course, there were plenty of other choices that could have been made that would have been more directly tied to the title character, but this one actually seems closer in spirit to what we wound up seeing than those do. So, shat do you think? Let me know in the comments below, along with any ideas you might have for other pairings with The Lone Ranger or for other upcoming movies you’d like to see “double featured”. Consider it, if you will, your chance to challenge me to come up with an interesting pair.

Until next time, Happy Viewing!