Exploring Further

At the beginning of Rango, our main protagonist doesn't even have a name. He is a chameleon- a shade shifter that exists- isolated and alone. He desperately wants to BE SOMEONE, but his life is fake and artificial. Then, one day, an accident leaves him in the desert. He meets an aardvark, who tells him about The Spirit of the West. This aardvark is on his way to find this Spirit and complete a quest he is on. He invites the chameleon into this adventure, calling him to enter a new unknown. Still, our protagonist is only interested in finding water- in surviving.

The aardvark points him toward a town called Dirt, where he meets Beans, a lizard who gives him a ride to town. When she asks the chameleon who he is, he answers obscurely, claiming to be known by many names. Desperate to make something of this opportunity to BE SOMEONE and have an identity, the shade shifter avoids giving her a straight answer, trying to build an imposter that Beans will like. It doesn't work, and she drops him like a hot potato when they arrive in town.

Left to wander the town alone, the chameleon tries to blend in, desperate for some kind of identity. He enters the town's saloon, where he concocts an imposter. He calls himself Rango and claims to be a legendary gunslinger. The townspeople are impressed, and as soon as he claims this imposter, he finds himself treading through the deep mud of his lie. Another slinger challenges him to a duel. Luckily, a hawk interrupts. While everyone runs away scared, Rango, unaware of the danger, stands his ground and accidentally kills the hawk. Enter the enemy without.

The mayor of Dirt, a dusty old tortoise, is funneling water away from the town to control the people. After Rango's successful blunder, the mayor is happy to support his delusion so he can exploit it. He makes Rango the Sheriff, knowing the chameleon is a phony. But he doesn't care. It gives him further control over the town to enact his plans.

Thrilled, Rango accepts the job but faced with the reality of his responsibilities, he struggles to reinforce his imposter as Rango. When the final water supply of the town is stolen because of him, he sets out with a posse to get it back. He will continue to live out this imposter if it gets him what he wants: to feel like he is a SOMEONE. The townspeople become magnets to his heart, driving him toward approval, and it makes him do anything short of making any REAL sacrifice for them. Beneath this facade, all his actions are self-centered and self-preserving, even the ones that SEEM self-sacrificial. All his actions are to reinforce the imposter he's built.

When Rango's posse closes in on the mayor's plot, the old tortoise hires a real gunslinger to call out Rango and expose him for the fraud he is. When Jake the Snake (another opposition from without) shows up in town, he does precisely that. He calls Rango out, claiming the sheriff is just pretending. He's no real hero. He really is a nobody- only a fraud who told the townspeople what they needed to hear so he could play act. Here, Rango comes face to face with the opposition from within for the first time. Fear and shame take control; he leaves the town to fend for itself against the corrupt mayor and snake. He wanders into the desert, exposed, alone, and defeated, believing he can never be anything- that he will never find his identity. The imposter he spent so much time building crumbled like a house built on sand. All it took was the truth to expose him.

He returns to the road, the same lizard that walked away from it at the beginning of the movie. He crosses the road, hoping it will end his misery. Instead, he makes it to the other side and encounters The Spirit of the West just like the aardvark said he would. The Spirit calls him up. He knows what Rango wants: to be someone- to have a real sense of identity. However, He tells Rango that the story is not about him; it's about the others- the people of Dirt and what he can do for their good. The Spirit calls Rango up and out of his imposter, searching for a self-centered end, into being a real hero. He calls him UP into being something more- someone who is for the good of others.

Rango knows he stands at a crossroads. He can either move on, continue to build imposters to be someone, or he can go back and maybe die trying to help the people of Dirt. Emboldened by who he could be, Rango devises a plan and returns to Dirt to expose the mayor's lies and defeat Jake the Snake. He does exactly that while also returning water to the people of Dirt. Ironically, the thing he desired all along was right in front of him. He became someone who found a true identity, not through self-centered actions but through doing good on behalf of others.

Our adventures are like Rango; when we wander in the wilderness, we do what we can to survive. Our imposters are that survival mechanism. We build them by aligning with the opposition from without to combat how we feel inside. We think we can make life work on our own terms to protect us from the pain of the world, but when we find ourselves naked in the wilderness, our fraud exposed, our imposter house of cards falls. We're left with nothing, like Rango and the things we tried to achieve through the imposter life dry up in the desert of our poor decisions. We're left more broken than we were before. But this doesn't have to be our story. Our True Source calls us into more. We can, like Rango, choose to listen to the Spirit of the West, overcome the opposition from without and within, and live from our True Identity.

Further Discussion:

1. After reading this, what other parallels do you see between your story and Rango's? Do you see some of the other ideas from the "Truth of the Month" video in the movie? Discuss them together.

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