What I liked about the new "Lone Ranger & Tonto" Disney movie

When I was a kid, I tried watching the older LR & T series.  It was pretty cool to see a Native American in a positive role on TV. 

But what always confused me was why they trusted each other.

In class we heard about how Custer died for our sins, Wounded Knee, the Trail of Tears, Cynthia Ann Parker, Kit Carson, Geronimo, and Philip Sheridan.

There's also the bit of Texas history that those outside of Texas might not know about the Texas Rangers. 

In the early days, the Texas Rangers were a bunch of racists thugs. One became a Texas Ranger through who one knew, rather than because one wanted to keep the public safe.  

In the new Disney movie, Dan Reid deputizes his brother, so brother John is now a Ranger.  Which is how becoming a Ranger often happened.  One didn't need any special training or psych eval to become a Ranger.

"Walker, Texas Ranger" they weren't. 

They were brutal to adversaries, often employing torture during interrogation.  Go do a google search and you'll find lots of info on the behavior of the Texas Rangers in the 1800s.

There was this wonderful investigation in 1919 of the Texas Rangers, which found that they were responsible for the deaths of nearly 5,000 Hispanics in the past decade.  The agency of the Texas Rangers was reformed, and a sort of Internal Affairs department instituted. (They didn't call it IA, and right now I don't remember what it was called.)

It's just that when I would attempt to watch it as a kid, I always wondered how Tonto could trust the Lone Ranger, or why the Ranger trusted Tonto.  Why would two men from opposing groups end up working together.  No one ever gave me an answer to that question as a kid. 

In the movie, Tonto and the Ranger definitely have their squabbles.  But by the last 15 minutes of the movie, they are working together in sync, keeping watch over each others' back, and just fantastic together.

What I liked about the new movie was that it answered the question my kid self had years ago.  John Reid (the Lone Ranger) and Tonto  ended up together due to need and circumstances, and somewhere along the way they became best of friends.  

I so want Disney to do a new TV series now, except without all the fancy special effects they used in this movie.  There were a few times I was thinking that they would have been seriously hurt in that stunt in RL.  Especially with that rolling train.