John Carter

So originally, I was going to go into this review saying that this is a deeply flawed movie, but at the same time being very surprised that people have barely talked about it over the past 7 years at all. But then I looked at the movies that came out in 2012 and suddenly it made total sense that this movie got overshadowed. The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, The Hobbit, The Hunger Games, Argo, Django Unchained, Zero Dark Thirty, The Amazing Spider-man, that is quite a stacked year so yeah, I get it that a lot of people didn't check out what looks like Conan in space. That's not what the film is, but I get it.

I will not claim to know the backstory of John Carter of Mars and I'm not gonna lie to you and say I did a lot of research into the story. I know that it's based off old pulp magazine stories from the beginning of the century and those stories kind of inspired Flash Gordon which would eventually inspired Star Wars.

And on one hand, that's kind of interesting. Those early pulp magazine serials were early steps to take Greek Mythology and integrate it into science fiction and the pop culture zeitgeist and you can see it in the google images you find of the old magazines as well as in this movie. The costumes and Odyssey-like feel of the civilizations and mythology of Mars in the movie do reckon back to Greek Mythology and the natural interesting stories that came out of that pantheon of literature.

However, on the other hand, John Carter almost feels like a missing link rather than a form of science fiction fantasy evolution. It's awkward, it's campy, and especially in this film, it rides this weird line of trying to make the film epic in line with the Lord of the Rings and Marvel superheroes that were coming out at the time, as well as create an epic in line with The 10 Commandments or the great big production films of the 1930s and 40s.

It is clear that Disney wanted this to be their big blockbuster science fiction fantasy vehicle before they acquired Lucas Films. Disney had made failed attempts to launch franchises before like Prince of Persia and other films, but there was something about the music, the effects, the style, and even the story that I think if this movie came out today with some updates could actually be somewhat successful. I can really appreciate what this movie was trying to accomplish, but this movie is a little bit weird to say the least and I'm not really surprised it didn't blow up into something bigger like I know they wanted it to be.

 There is some exposition and story framing that is done at the beginning of this movie that I will talk about later, but essentially, John Carter follows the story of the titular character (played by Taylor Kitsch). He is a former military Captain in 1868 (or something like that) who just wants to be left alone to prospect for gold. Through circumstances, that 45 minutes in you'll honestly forget about, he ends up being beamed up to Mars and goes on a wacky space adventure.

I'll get to that in a second but I do want to talk about the character of John Carter because there is a lot to talk about here.

First off, I feel bad for Taylor Kitsch. This was around the same time that he and a couple of other generic white dudes (Sam Worthington, Jai Courtney, etc.) were really trying to make it big and star in their own franchise. For Kitsch, he was cast as Gambit, the superhero role of a life time... in probably the worst superhero film ever created. And in this movie, he's cast in the lead role of a major blockbuster hit sponsored by Disney... and nobody saw it. Years later he was in the follow up season of True Detective, a highly regarded HBO series... but it's considered the worst season...

But on top of that, John Carter is not really a likable guy...

Put aside the minor (largely insignificant but funny) fact that he's fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War and they just breeze past that (weird flex Disney), he's got a very familiar motivation that all he wants is money. Of course, he has a turn and ends up wanting to help people and become the generic white dude hero.

He's not... god awful in this movie. But he doesn't bring anything really outstanding to the role. You could switch him out for your Sam Worthington, Jai Courtney, and the role would be one hundred percent the same. He's not very compelling, he's just the generic hero shell that the audience can experience the space adventure through his eyes.

Putting the Title Character aside though, Mars starts off as a really interesting world.

Despite being just a desert wasteland, the first five minutes of the film had me interested because visually this movie is actually pretty good. Maybe its just the spaceships but the first exposition drop about warring factions of Mars actually fooled me into believing there was some interesting politics or warfare that could be going on. Then they introduce the villain in the guy who plays McNulty in the Wire (Dominic West) who is granted a weapon from these deity-like aliens called Therns (The lead one played by generic villain #1 Mark Strong).

But then we go to 1800s America and the movie slowed down... A LOT. Side note: Disney has never and probably never will be good at portraying Native Americans... I'm not sure why they keep on trying.

So much that when they get back into the politics and warfare, I didn't care anymore... possibly because they introduce the love interest and stereotypical female badass of the film played by that chick from Wolverine Origins (Lynn Collins).

Lynn Collins is... bad. Like real bad in this film.

Part of it is her script. She plays the stereotypical warrior Princess who isn't as elegant or feeble as society as led you to believe. She's kind of an example of how we're still bad at writing women in science fiction even though we try to be better. At the end of the day, she's arm candy and doesn't add a whole lot to the film. Also Lynn Collins isn't that great of an actor, at least not in this or Wolverine: Origins.

While on Mars, John Carter inserts himself into this interplanetary war and runs into the multiple factions to include the human-like people that Lynn Collins is in charge of, the bad guys who don't look very different from Lynn Collins faction, and then there's the green alien looking people, led by one who is voiced by Willem Defoe. The Tharks are desert dwellers who don't concern themselves with the wars and politics of the human-looking people of Mars.

Hands down, these were the most interesting parts of the movie. This was a display of how weird this world could get. The Tharks community follows different rules, cultural traditions, and have different motivations and customs. I was legitimately interested in learning about their culture and I wanted to know more.

The problem? Well there's a couple. The CGI for these guys does not hold up. They look fake, but whatever, I'm not a huge CGI stickler. The other issue though is that they live in the desert where everything is this beige color and it was just kind of boring after a while. I was still interested in how different the culture was. I didn't need an exposition drop, just things like throwing the babies on the ground and having the aliens fight for who takes care of them. The challenge system for who will be leader was kind of interesting, and Willem Defoe's character's interest in John Carter as he's able to jump really high and is granted super strength for... reasons?

They never really delve too much into why John Carter is this badass on Mars. I think they say something about gravitational properties or something, but he's really just a guy.

On one hand, if that's the case, I guess I could go to this version of Mars and be the hero. But on the other hand, if anybody can be that, they just have to be from Earth, then why am I supposed to connect with John Carter? What makes him important?

And that's the overall issue with this film, there's not enough to really care about. There are some intriguing ideas, concepts, visuals, and scenes in the film. I mentioned it before but I think they trying to make this a big 2012 block buster franchise (you can definitely tell it from the ending), but at the same time the camera angles, the music, and just the overall feel made it feel like an epic high production film from the 1950's like The 10 Commandments or Ben Hur. This movie had something that felt at least a little bit different than the block busters of the late 2000s to early 2010s.

Unfortunately it really doesn't back it up with a lot of substance. The politics and warfare don't carry the movie like I thought they might, John Carter and the main characters around him are pretty paper thin, and the visuals, while innovative and probably cost Disney a fortune, can't carry a film to success, it's no Avatar.

Also, Bryan Cranston was in this movie at like the height of Breaking Bad and you wasted him Disney.

It's comical how little impact Bryan Cranston had on this film. But he does bring up the comic elements of this movie that they don't really talk about. Bryan Cranston gets shot right before John Carter goes to Mars. John Carter leaves him wounded in a cave and the next time John Carter is in that cave all you see is Bryan Cranston's skeleton. I find that hilarious.

I'll also mention how funny it is that John Carter fought for the South and probably was going to go back to Mars to be king and instituted slavery or something. Again, this movie is weird to say the least.

But those are my thoughts on John Carter. What did you think? Did you see this movie in 2012? Does it hold up? Do you even know what movie I'm talking about? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for reading!