John Carter
Ahhh... John Carter, the movie that
Disney hoped would bust out and turn into a big franchise. They sunk
a bunch of money into this movie, both in production and into one of
the most inefficient advertising campaigns ever. But it fell very
flat at the box office and didn't get anywhere near the level of hype
they had hoped. The main reason, in my humble opinion, for this is
simply that Disney forgot one thing.
Nobody knows who the hell John Carter
is.
Okay so that should be most people.
Those of who enjoy old pulp stories knew full well who he was. But
slapping up just his name as the title was a huge mistake. I firmly
believe if they would have made it 'John Carter – Warlord of Mars'
it would have put more butts in the seats. But I digress... onwards
to the review.
The entire intro with Edgar Rice
Boroughs as his nephew, the letter summoning him, the locked vault
and all that. It feels out of place. Like something added to the
story that didn't need to be there at all. Even using it as an
expository device that wasn't even needed because it only ends up
explaining itself and nothing more. But finally it's over when Edgar
starts reading the journal and we get to part of the story that
actually matters. John Carter is currently a gold prospector and a
former cavalry man for the Confederacy that is now trying to be
recruited by the US Cavalry to help fight the Indians. Everything we
need to know is right there, zero need for that other introduction.
Everything progresses at a pretty good
pace after that, after an encounter with an evil bald dude John finds
himself transported someplace else with abilities that he didn't have
before. Strong and able to leap massive distances, not to mention a
bit faster on his feet to boot. Although they don't describe him as
immortal as they do in the original book.
There are lot of liberties taken with the source material, which is understandable, but they also stick closely to some. The Tharks are very well done as big, green, four armed fierce types. Technology is also upgraded to something more flashy than anything that was described in the books and I'll admit it looks really neat. Dejah Thoris is a large change, now she is a scientist who can fight tooth and nail with the best of any man, when in the books she never swung a sword, was pretty much a professional damsel in distress needing rescued every time you checked your watch and wore a LOT less clothing. Therns are introduced rather quickly and they didn't come along until later in publications, plus they are powered up with some super tech now. Plus they crammed a lot of story in here that was spread out between different stories before.
But Tars Tarkas is still a bad ass and
that is really something that they had to keep.
We get an attempt at a grand far
reaching story and they touch a lot of the notes that needed to be
hit. But it suffers from a few things like John Carters now super
human abilities seemingly change in power from scene to scene. One
time he's having a time with one or two soldiers and then in another
he is throwing down with a Thark army until he is waste deep in
bodies. So is he and a super bad ass or not? Well Mars may never
know.
After much running around, trust
building, fighting and flying it has a nice big throw down near the
end. We almost get that perfect happy ending. Then we get tossed back
to earth and that damned storyline we started with involving Edgar
Rice Burroughs. Which that entire set up could have been saved in
case there was a sequel and then you use that as the opening and how
he gets back to Mars. But no, we get fed it now.
But in the end it does provide us with
an enjoyable film with plenty of action, some characters you like,
great special effects and a setting that actually does leave you
wanting to know more.
Sadly we won't know anymore. Because
some dumbass at Disney had no idea how to market this movie and
failed so completely that most of America had no idea about this
movie. Even after a huge ad campaign nobody knew what the hell it was
about. So it stops here at one singular movie... the end.
To see a list of movies I have reviewed click the 'movie reviews' listing at the top of this blog.
If you want to pick my the next movie that gets reviewed I run a poll every week over on MeWe now. Click here to add me to your contact list.
"No, wait, Virginia I see one person who knows who the hell you are!"
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