Amph John Carter (of Mars)

I'll just repeat what I said earlier...in essence, the jury is still out...until the weekend of March 9th.

I can tell you this much, Disney's not skimping on that poorly focused marketing campaign. In one 48 hour
period I saw at least a dozen commercials on the net, on cable TV and on broadcast TV. Because it's a
250 million dollar movie, they have to run a saturation campaign. I'm sure their main prayer is, "please
God, let this at least OPEN with a respectable first weekend."

 

[image=http://www.iwatchstuff.com/2012/02/22/john-carter-mondo-poster.jpg]

Anyone see the John Carter Mondo poster? It looks pretty cool!

I've heard from reviews that this movie is pretty good so I can't wait to see it.

 

Is it just me or do a lot of the arena scenes in the John Carter commercials and trailers
look a lot like the arena scenes in Attack of the Clones?

John Carter Featurette

 

Yes the resemblance is striking enough to look deliberate. But why would Disney want to draw parallels in its marketing (or in the movie itself) between John Carter and the least successful of all the Star Wars movies?

 

Personally I don't care how similar the imagery of one film is to another, esp. when the earlier film drew from the same source material as a newer film. AOTC is less than 10 years old; the Mars series was written in the early 20th century.

Moreover, the major question for me is not "has this image/idea been seen/done before?" but "is the final product any good or not?" The primacy placed on so-called "originality" (which in cinematic terms really only means "has an individual reviewer or audience member been exposed to this pre-existing property, idea, character or setting before?") is far overstated, IMO.

Quality, not originality which is an illusion anyway, is key.

 

Since I first posted in this thread, years ago, I've gotten back into the novels. They're fantastic and I reject any attempt by a studio as risk-averse as Disney, in a film that is not rated R for extreme violence, to capture anything of the spirit of the novels. The books are pulp orgasms of explosive violence, extreme energy and vibrancy. This movie looks like a kid's movie; the Green Men look stupid, Taylor Kitsch does not have the gravitas to play a thousand year old hero, the real nobility and honor of John Carter looks to be replaced with a campy kind of "aw-shucks" demeanor, and, while this is rather subjective, I'm going to go ahead and say that Dejah Thoris needs to be a heck of a lot more beautiful than the actress they picked. I mean, this is the most beautiful woman John Carter has ever seen and he's been alive for thousands of years. I've seen women prettier than that girl and I live in a small town in Oklahoma.

 

Wow, way to tear apart my hopes and dreams.

It's been over 20 years since I read the novels (I only read two of 'em) so the details aren't clear, but my memory comports pretty well with what I've seen in the trailers, and I like what I see. Gravitas and 1000-year-old wisdom may be difficult to achieve in a 20-something actor, but who knows? The dude may yet surprise us once we've seen his whole show.

And you know, even when Rodriguez was set to direct this thing I never expected it would be heavier than PG-13. Explosive gore-fests do not do well at cinemas unless they are horror films, and given the choice I'd rather see talent and craftsmanship on the screen than blood splatters and offal. That execrable Conan re-make had more bloodshed than a SAW sequel and it was all kinds of awful. Just give me a good damn movie.

 

AS a young kid I was a avid fan of these books and other ERB, as an aside to my horror just two years ago I lost (flood water damage) my collection of ERB paper back's, from the early 40 through 70's I had all but 4-5 of ERB's books in total, and three complete sets of John Carter, and two sets of Tarzan.

Any way I am excited about the movie just to relive a little of my teenage years, but agree with you that Taylor seems a little miscast to me, a little too much like Conan but I do think the action part might work okay depending upon the skill of the director in alluding to the levels of violence present with out actually showing it. It seems some of the Scify nature of the books is coming through, I loved the concept of the flying ships, complete with GPS and cruise control, as presented in the books, and brought out in some book art. Surprisingly though I have no problems with the actress playing Dejah, the image works for me. I also feel now is the right time for these movies as CGI is improved enough to bring all the alien species to life much as ERB wrote them.

Still I also find it strange, that no mention of the main names that associate with the books, Warlord of Mars would work much better in my mind the just plain John Carter? What also is interesting is that yes there are 11 books but John Carter only has a main role in a few of those, the first three and a couple more before the last one.

I also would love a more faithful Tarzan but frankly there are other ERB works that would be great now, Beyond the Farthest Star comes to mind.

 

John Carter vignettes from Disney:

Canyon Escape

Virginia

Mar's Best Friend

I'm on Mars

 

I'm sure there was a valid and strategic marketing though process that went into choosing "John Carter." They want to establish John Carter as the franchise the way Lucas established the Indiana Jones franchise. It's a direct analogy.

John Carter ... and the Warlords of Mars or John Carter and the Swords of Mars, etc.

Of course we shouldn't forget that in true Lucas fashion he went back and renamed "Raiders" long after he had firmly established Indiana Jones as an iconic franchise anchor.

So, although it was likely a well-considered marketing decision, it was the probably the wrong one.

 

Yeah, I think that makes sense. A simple name for the initial branding.

The vignettes look pretty good to me. I wasn't as impressed with the trailers,
but the brief scene clips make me think the director understands this material and
knows what to do with it.

 

The music sounds great. And Woola looks pretty good. I mean, Woola is supposed to be the Martian equivalent of a dog in personality and yet also be totally hideous and I think they did a good job with the design. I was afraid he'd look too cute, but he actually is pretty ugly, but his movements look great, very doglike. I particularly liked the way he flopped down on his entrance. I don't think Tars Tarkas looks right, though, and Kitsch doesn't either. It's a tossup whether he looks more ridiculous with the beard or without. On second thought, however, Dejah Thoris is growing on me. I suppose it makes sense that she isn't classically beautiful, on second thought; there is something a little odd about her looks, which I initially didn't really like, but on longer thought, she does need to appear at least somewhat otherworldly and she kind of does. Also, I recognized Mark Strong as the Thern from his voice alone. I didn't know he was going to be in this.

 

That close-up of Mark Strong looks odd to me - almost like a dutch angle. But that's minor.

 

It still superficially looks like a Conan the Barbarian sequel. It's the same actor, right? Only last year's Conan was a $90 million movie that flopped at $49 million worldwide and John Carter is a $250 million movie that could potentially flop at around $49 million worldwide. And then we'll have to wait another generation before Disney tries another all out assault on science fiction.

 

30 year old kid?

This is the last vestige of the Hollywood trend of "Villain must be Mark Strong," no? It was shot years ago, so it makes sense.

 

Does anyone know if its 250 million dollars worth of cinematography and f/x shots or is 250 million dollars because of post production nightmares?

 

There was an allegation going about that Stanton didn't try to approach it as live action and would just keep shooting stuff anew as they went along or some such. Not with the actors I'm guessing, but the visual effects stuff. That could be baloney, though.

 

There's a lengthy interview with Stanton here in which he discusses, among other things, his process; the transition from animation to live action and how his experience with the former shaped how he handled the latter; how he approached the adaptation of the books. . . anyway, it's long but worth a read if you're interested in the film.

 

Great article - Thanks for the post. I've never been more than a casual fan of the ERB Mars books after having read several of them years ago. However, now that the new film is looming, I've gotten re-interested in the franchise, and have re-read the first novel (Princess of Mars), and I also got the new Marvel Omnibus reprinting the entire excellent & underrated late '70's John Carter of Mars comic series.

Just to address the questions re: the title "John Carter", instead of, for example, "Johh Carter of Mars", I read somewhere online that this may have been done because the string of "Mars"-related films that came out around ten-twelve years ago (i.e. Ghosts of Mars, Mission to Mars, Red Planet) may not have done well in the box office, so leaving out "Mars" from the title of this new John Carter film may have been because of that - however, as far as I can tell, this is pure speculation.

Here's my big question: Why is a big budget film like this not getting a cool action figure line? This seems strange, unless no toy company wanted to invest in a line promoting the film because they're afraid the movie won't do well.

The only time we've ever gotten ERB Mars action figures was back in the '90's, when some characters came out as small sub-line within a series of Tarzan action figures (from Trendmasters). These figures were interesting - though, it would be nice to see a line of good quality figures based either on the characters from the new film, the novels, or both.