John Carter Movie

[prince hal]

I'm pretty sure it was the prolific and insightful Scott Harris who posted several times about the eventual profitability of the John Carter movie, which was apparently predestined to fail and was also a bad movie to boot. (Those are not always common factors or two halves of a cause and effect relationship.)

Long story short, I caught it on On Demand last night. Worth repeated watchings? Mmmm, not necessarily, but execrable? No way!

I'm no expert on ERB (Read all the DC and Marvel Carter adaptations), but this was a decent adventure movie. The score was less triumphal than others of this genre, which may actually be a good thing; the acting was fine; there were a few holes in the plot that smacked of cuts; the effects were far less CGI-ish than you'd expect; the framing device was well done; and there were a few places in the script where you would notice a line for its cleverness. (I like to think those were the doing of Michael Chabon, who I did not realize until the credits rolled, was one of the writers.)

Mars looked bleak, the Tharks were individualized and imposing, the mechanics of the plot muddled at times, John Carter seemd a little too good a jumper, and some of the action was predictable, but Jeez Lou-eez, we're talking Edgar Rice, not William Burroughs.

Anyway, after all the brouhaha, I was pleasantly surprised and entertained.

[MadDog1981]

I thought it was a really good movie and recommended it to my parents who also really enjoyed it. I just think it was poorly marketed and that Disney didn't really know what to do with it. I would consider it to be the 2nd best movie that I saw from 2012.

[prince hal]

Agreed. The first placed they missed the boat was the title. Who'd want to see movie about the young doctor from the old ER show?

It's funny. At the end, the title reads "John Carter" and slowly "of Mars" appears beneath. That would be the end, not the beginning, or on the advertising.

[MadDog1981]

Princess of Mars would've been a better title for the movie.

[prince hal]

Exactly!

And i don'r recall if any of the ads mentioned ERB or Tarzan...

[Ed Love]

I found this to actually be one of the better action adventure movies, with a lot more depth than most blockbusters the last few years including the far more cliched Avatar and various Marvel and DC superhero movies. They may have made more money, but this was the better written, better executed movie. For one, the supporting characters had their own stories, their own issues and agendas, all of which would have made interesting P.O.V. and individual movies by themselves. You felt that they had full and complicated lives and relationships before the movie started. The fact that they could actually make me care and sympathize for Tars and his daughter and accept them as real characters and not just cgi puppets was a big accomplishment. Carter's growth into being a hero felt more natural, him coming to terms and accepting who he was and the job that needed doing.

[Pil]

I thought it was okay as an action movie. As a John Carter story I thought is was an almost complete failure. I was extremely annoyed by the skinny Tharks, and the various deviation from the original stories. The things that made the original stories interesting, like the societies and cultural clashes, the atmosphere plant, the fact that the Therns were not in any way more advanced that the other races, they were just opportunists, had been left out for a generic sci-fi plot with the focus on effects.

I have no problem with changing parts of the stories when adapting them to movies, as long as they retain the feeling from the source material. This however, felt nothing like John Carter to me.

[FanboyStranger]

I really enjoyed it. I'm surprised bombed as badly as it did. It was sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy, I guess, but it was a lot better than a lot of the action movies I've seen over the past few years.

[berk]

I hated it, myself, but I know that several fellow ERB fans here enjoyed it quite a bit. For me, they got everything wrong, left out all the things I liked best about the books, and emphasised all the things I disliked (e.g. John Carter's superBarsoomian abilities). They couldn't have done a worse job, as far as I'm concerned.

[An Ear In The Fireplace]

I loved it. Saw it twice in the theatres. Too bad too sad that there won't be a sequel. But them's the breaks.

[Slam_Bradley]

I thought it was a pretty good action film and a pretty good ERB adaptation with an absolutely abysmal marketing campaign.

[edhopper]

I just saw it last night on Stars for the first time. I liked the visuals and the actors but the story just seemed muddled and the over the top jumping lost me. Not an ERB reader myself, the names were hard to follow. Not a bad movie. but not a really good one either.
I believe Disney took Mars out of the title because Mars Needs Moms bombed. Which is stupid on so many levels.

[An Ear In The Fireplace]

I think Disney's reason for not calling it A Princess of Mars was that boys wouldn't want to go see a movie about a princess, and girls wouldn't want to go see a movie about Mars. They were hoping that, not scared away by the innocuous title, people would wander into the theatre not knowing what the movie was about and when they did realize what it was about, it would be too late to leave.

[thwhtGuardian]

I'll add my voice to the chorus and say I thought it was a really fun movie and I was really disappointed that it didn't do better at the box office.

[inferno]

I thought it was a really good movie and recommended it to my parents who also really enjoyed it. I just think it was poorly marketed and that Disney didn't really know what to do with it.

Coast To Coast had a guest on who claimed that the film was buried because the final product revealed too many truths about the lost civilizations of Mars that NASA has been covering up .