John Carter (2012)
A writer reads a friends journal, learning of his fantastic journey to planet of Mars, the warring factions therein and the beautiful princess he loved .hilarity ensues.
Low expectations are an underrated commodity. Given the extremely poor nature of the trailers and the bad press it received, my expectations couldn't have been lower for a flick I still kind of wanted to see.
Though thinking about it, most of the bad press was about the box office rather than the quality of the film, although some of the critic's reviews were very snippy. Seemed like some folks just had it in for Andrew Stanton, although quite why is puzzling. Previous credits being mainly Pixar based, screenplay/story credits on the Toy Story films and director of Finding Nemo and Wall-E. An odd hate figure, to say the least. Maybe he's a horrible person or maybe people just wanted a Pixar alum to fail.
Because, contrary to everything, I found John Carter to be thoroughly entertaining.
I'm not familiar with the Burroughs stories (do have recollections of the 70's Marvel Comics adaptation) so I can't really on its faithfulness to them but the tale is told quite cleverly with some verve.
Probably the biggest thing working against it is that most of Burroughs' best ideas have been filched by other storytellers. A beautiful princess needing to be rescued by a chosen one from a force trying to build an empire, assisted by the machinations of a shadowy figure. A battle on floating airships over a desert. Chained hero fighting large beasties in a rock arena. Any of this ring any bells?
Cripes. Even the energy weapon given to the main villain seems similar to the weapons fashioned from the Tesseract in Captain America and Loki's staff in The Avengers.
So, there's that. Burroughs' ideas have been "homaged" left, right and centre in the 100 years since the first story was written. Unfortunately and probably due to a desire to be faithful to the stories as written, it leaves some of its ideas feeling somewhat second hand.
There are a couple of longueurs where the film could have been tightened up and there are a number of moments where the green screen joins can be seen in the effects (potentially due to rushing to meet a release date) but these are quibbles.
Taylor Kitsch looks the part though a tad lacking in charisma but Lynn Collins gets lovelier the longer the film runs and there is strong support from Ciaran Hinds, Dominic West and the vocal talents of Willem Dafoe, Thomas Haden Church and Samantha Morton. Mark Strong seems to have the SF bald baddie axis tied up and one presumes casting directors come down to whoever's available between him and Hugo Weaving nowadays.
I'd recommend at least one viewing of John Carter for lovers of SF and Fantasy, even for academic purposes when if, like me, you're a Burroughs' virgin. It could be an eye opener how much stuff old Edgar dreamt up.
A writer reads a friends journal, learning of his fantastic journey to planet of Mars, the warring factions therein and the beautiful princess he loved .hilarity ensues.
Low expectations are an underrated commodity. Given the extremely poor nature of the trailers and the bad press it received, my expectations couldn't have been lower for a flick I still kind of wanted to see.
Though thinking about it, most of the bad press was about the box office rather than the quality of the film, although some of the critic's reviews were very snippy. Seemed like some folks just had it in for Andrew Stanton, although quite why is puzzling. Previous credits being mainly Pixar based, screenplay/story credits on the Toy Story films and director of Finding Nemo and Wall-E. An odd hate figure, to say the least. Maybe he's a horrible person or maybe people just wanted a Pixar alum to fail.
Because, contrary to everything, I found John Carter to be thoroughly entertaining.
I'm not familiar with the Burroughs stories (do have recollections of the 70's Marvel Comics adaptation) so I can't really on its faithfulness to them but the tale is told quite cleverly with some verve.
Probably the biggest thing working against it is that most of Burroughs' best ideas have been filched by other storytellers. A beautiful princess needing to be rescued by a chosen one from a force trying to build an empire, assisted by the machinations of a shadowy figure. A battle on floating airships over a desert. Chained hero fighting large beasties in a rock arena. Any of this ring any bells?
Cripes. Even the energy weapon given to the main villain seems similar to the weapons fashioned from the Tesseract in Captain America and Loki's staff in The Avengers.
So, there's that. Burroughs' ideas have been "homaged" left, right and centre in the 100 years since the first story was written. Unfortunately and probably due to a desire to be faithful to the stories as written, it leaves some of its ideas feeling somewhat second hand.
There are a couple of longueurs where the film could have been tightened up and there are a number of moments where the green screen joins can be seen in the effects (potentially due to rushing to meet a release date) but these are quibbles.
Taylor Kitsch looks the part though a tad lacking in charisma but Lynn Collins gets lovelier the longer the film runs and there is strong support from Ciaran Hinds, Dominic West and the vocal talents of Willem Dafoe, Thomas Haden Church and Samantha Morton. Mark Strong seems to have the SF bald baddie axis tied up and one presumes casting directors come down to whoever's available between him and Hugo Weaving nowadays.
I'd recommend at least one viewing of John Carter for lovers of SF and Fantasy, even for academic purposes when if, like me, you're a Burroughs' virgin. It could be an eye opener how much stuff old Edgar dreamt up.