Disney’s The Lone Ranger has been in theaters for about three weeks. In that time, it’s managed to take in $141 million on a $250 million budget. Hollywood analysts agree that, at this point, it’s unlikely that the film will break even, much less turn a profit. So, rather than talk about the film itself (which gets a measly two stars in my book), let’s discuss why the film failed and why Disney thought it would succeed.

Who cares about the Lone Ranger? I mean that. He’s not a hot new character like Harry Potter or Bella Swan. He’s not an icon like James Bond or Superman. Nor is he a classic figure like Macbeth or Dracula. He’s a has been. Sure, he had a hit TV show, but that was 50 years ago! The last movie to star the character (1981’s The Legend of the Lone Ranger) was also a box-office bomb, and a 2003 pilot for a new TV series wasn’t picked up.

If anyone’s interested in the fella, they’re probably older. There’s nothing wrong with that, but Hollywood generally caters to the under 25 demographic, as they go to the movies most often. If you’re going to make a movie for senior citizens, it probably shouldn’t cost a quarter of a billion dollars.

And The Lone Ranger doesn’t even do that right. It may be rated PG-13, but it’s a hard PG-13. The film includes a scene where a man’s finger is nailed to the floor, a scene where a man is stabbed in the heart as blood oozes out of his mouth, and an extended sequence in a brothel where Helena Bonham Carter plays a prostitute with an ivory shotgun for a leg. I don’t know how many grandparents out there want to see that. Plus, I don’t know if anyone, regardless of age, wants to see Johnny Depp play a Native American.

So, why did The Lone Ranger get made? Ten years ago, producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop) made a little movie called Pirates of the Caribbean. Like The Lone Ranger, the film featured Johnny Depp as a wacky side character and was directed by Gore Verbinski. Also like The Lone Ranger, it was a PG-13 Disney movie based on something that was once popular (in this case a theme-park ride). And also like The Lone Ranger, every analyst in Hollywood predicted it would fail. However, it went on to gross $654 million and spawn four sequels.

When it comes to movies, the public can only take so much of the same thing. Sometimes you should fix it even if it ain’t broken. As William Goldman once said about Hollywood, “Nobody knows anything. Nobody learns anything.”