For those of us who are fans — and always will be fans — of the marvelous Edgar Rice Burroughs series John Carter of Mars, the news that the film version will lose somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 million is depressing. The BBC critic Mark Kermode summed up the movie’s major problem:
The storytelling is incomprehensible, the characterization is ludicrous, the story is two and a quarter hours long and it’s a boring, boring, boring two and a quarter hours long.
The film cost a staggering $250 million to make and another $100 million to promote. A Disney spokesman confirmed to the Daily Mail the bad news, saying, “In light of the theatrical performance of John Carter, we expect the film to generate an operating loss of approximately $200 million.”
What went wrong? One of the most beloved sci-fi series of all time is set to become the biggest financial flop in Hollywood history.
Some critics point to the director and producers as being in over their heads. That’s one of those criticisms that is impossible to prove, but sounds like the critic knows something about making movies. In fact, the director, Andrew Stanton, was no stranger to blockbuster projects, and treated the source material with respect — even reverence.
But I agree with this notion from Rick Liebling,the Creative Culturalist at Y&R New York:
Indiana Jones on Mars? Sequels and theme park attractions? That’s why movies like this (or just about any other “blockbuster”) suck. They are viewed as franchise vehicles or cross-promotional, money-spinning opportunities. I’m not opposed to those things by the way, but when they are the raison d’etre, well all you’re going to get is a steaming turd.
Beyond the Hollywoodisms and other inside-industry explanations, there is the cultural chasm between the world in which John Carter was originally created by Burroughs and the less literate, less imaginative, more realistic world into which the film was released.
Chris Queen did an excellent job of fleshing out the history and background of the John Carter novels for PJ Media prior to the film’s release. In 1911 when the first story appeared in in the pulp magazine The All Story, the Civil War had been over less than 50 years. Almost everyone knew a veteran from that war, or saw them during parades and other patriotic events. The war was still alive for kids and young adults at that time, making the character John Carter live in ways that we can’t even imagine.
While Burroughs’ time was more literate, it was the imagination that forged a connection to the stories and characters and created such a powerful hold on our affections. In an age before film, before TV, before radio, there was only the reader, the written word, and however we imagined the world being created by the author. Burroughs’ prose could be turgid at times — to our ears anyway – but the compelling way in which he described his world of Barsoom far surpassed any attempts we might make today to translate the author’s imagined adventures to the screen. There are simply no cultural touchstones that connect the world of Burroughs with our world today. A young boy living in pre-World War I America imagined Barsoom far differently that I did in the 1960s. And it is likely that most kids today hadn’t even read the books, waiting instead for the video game.
When the first trailer came out, my curiosity was intense. What was the filmaker’s vision of what the 4-armed, betusked Green Men looked like? Did they come close to the picture in my mind’s eye of a thoat? What would Dejah Thoris be wearing? Ultimately, it was a disappointment — had to be a disappointment. That’s the sticking point: even for fans of the series, everyone had their own private and intensely personal vision of what the characters should look like. For that, we can’t blame the film makers. They actually did an amazing job in bringing Tars Tarkas and the thoat to life:
Besides, everyone today knows that there is no life on Mars, could never be life on Mars, thus destroying the premise of the movie from the outset. And since most of the potential movie-going audience had no preconceived notions of the source material, and had no treasured memories of being swept up by the narrative, most of the audience ended up at sea — caught between wanting to suspend belief and their own realistic assumptions about Mars. In the end, how could you ignore what your own eyes have shown you about the Red Planet? We’ve had rovers exploring the surface of Mars for more than a decade. Those spectacular images of utter desolation were, in their own way, far more interesting than the world that Stanton tried to create on a Hollywood sound stage.
It’s a shame that John Carter was a flop. There will be no sequels. Nor will there be any lunch boxes, action figures, kids’ pajamas, battery operated thoats, and almost certainly no talking Tars Tarkas dolls.
But we’ll always have John Carter as Edgar Rice Burroughs imagined him in his wonderful series of books. For that, they can keep their $200 million and leave me dreaming about dating Dejah Thoris’ sister while saving Barsoom from the evil designs of evil men.
Our family, which includes three gifted children, absolutely loved it.
Without Romance and imagination,and an appreciation for exquisite art direction, along with a passing knowledge of history, the movie might leave you unimpressed.
The majority is nearly always wrong when it comes to the true merit of films.
Most people loved Forest Gump and Saving Private Ryan. Go figure.
LOTR stands out as being a wild commercial success as well as a cinematic triumph. The exception that proves the rule.
The Lord of the Rings could have easily been a major flop had it not been handled as expertly as it was. I don’t know what exactly it was, probably a combination of various things but it wasn’t good on special effects alone. Jackson captured the heart of the tale and extracted the meat of the story without getting lost in prose, which is voluminous (literally).
Are you saying you hated Forrest Gump and Saving Private Ryan?
The majority is nearly always wrong when it comes to the true merit of films
That’s probably true, but John Carter looked like a typical Hollywood popcorn blockbuster designed to put asses in seats to me. I won’t pay money to see in the theater, because I’m tired of modern filmakers messing with classic Science Fiction, but the trailers screemed movie for the masses.
The Lord of Rings was a masterpiece of storytelling. The Fellowship of the Ring had 16 major characters of 9 separate races with 3000 years of backstory, yet not a single reviewer (at least that I saw) complained about it being incomprehensible.
Incredibly sad. I liked the movie, and I’m digesting it well.
I blame the youth. They don’t want any tired old history. They don’t want something made out of a book that isn’t “theirs.”
Did I mention I have three gifted children?
Having never read Burrough’s novels, despite being a sci-fi fanatic in high school (1968-72) and loving Asimov, Heinlein & others, I was intrigued by the movie. And saddened that it is poised to become a colossal failure. The novels are on my list to read, and the movie looks like a fine candidate for an HD rental from Netflix.
Besides, if the novels were favorites of Ronald Reagan, then I want to read them. QED
If you are waiting for time to read the Barsoom books, just read Princess of Mars and you’ll be hooked. They’re quick reads and available for free on Kindle, Aldiko, or any other reader, or a couple bucks used. I’ve read the series and they’re a lot of fun, no matter how dated. The world (or another world) needs heroes and Burroughs knew how to create heroes and write a compelling story.
It was the look; I decided not to see it because it seemed too pastel and the design Star Wars prequel-ish.
When you’re asking people to so thoroughly suspend their disbelief, it’s important that what you are showing them looks real.
Absolutely. It looked like Geonosis, especially given all the alien life forms. Quite a few people didn’t really care for the prequel trilogy. I wonder if John Carter failed because of guilt by association?
Movies that attempt to substitute acting, plot, direction and cinematography with Special Effects will always underperform at the box office and leave the audience wishing they would have stayed home instead of wasting their time and money.
The best filmmakers know that the magic of film doesnt happen on the screen, it happens in the minds of the audience. The more you put on the screen, the less the audience has to participate in the process and therefore, there is less magic to be seen.
I’ll take wet streets, overexposed lighting and single camera tracking shots over highly processed CGI any day of the week.
Movies that attempt to substitute acting, plot, direction and cinematography with Special Effects will always underperform at the box office
Uhhh, what? Does the title Transfomers have any meaning to you? I think it is the exact opposite. People don’t want meaningful exposition with their movies. They want lots of stuff blowing up and a hot chick showing skin. Those movies don’t underperform at the box office. I’m frankly surprised by John Carter’s box office negatives. Truly, the trailers had all the makings of blockbuster vehicle. I think maybe people are tired after the string of films like Clash of the Titans, and the Immortals, and the like. I’m willing to be 90% of the people who saw the advertisements didn’t even know this was supposed to take place on Mars.
The major reason I think it is not doing well compared to say, Transformers which is a movie, based off of toys, with little history, is that ERB’s Mars novels have a intense, well developed fan base that have lived with these books all their life. Take away several key things from those stories and you fail.
The first fail was altering the storyline. They could have done the 1st book, Princess of Mars with just a few touch ups. The lore and intensity of information to be imparted got lost in the rush for action. The LoTR stopped the action a few times to cover background and got away with it well.
The second fail was that of character changes. John Cater was first and foremost a southern gentleman, full of honor and would lay down his life to do the right thing, especially for a woman in need. The movie Carter was a burned out, depressed PTSD sufferer who had to be forced to do the job of saving the girl in order to get his gold. Hollywood goes and mucks that up and your hero loses out most of his appeal.
The Tharks were not explained well, and the Red Martians of Helium would have laid down their lives for their princess’s honor.
Honor was also lacking as the code of weapons which every martin held dear (except Therns) was not used. That was important in explaining Carter’s survival a lot.
Tweaking the story with the fantastic magic technology of the Therns and making them shapeshifters was where I gave up. That really had no basis in the books and was not even really explained in the movie.
All in all it seems like the writers just skimmed the books and took out some neat action aspects, and trashed the rest. They needed writers who had read the stories over and over growing up and instructed to follow the storyline as best you can.
After this I doubt we will ever see that occur, and maybe it is for the best.
I liked the movie but didn’t love it. And I’ll note that the fact Dejah Thjoris was wearing anything but jewelry made it untrue to the books.
My sentiments exactly, except I’d say that I noted WITH DISPLEASURE that Dejah was wearing more than just jewelry. On crucial points like that, i demand fidelity to the original work.
A flaw that struck me particularly given the casting of D.T.
I saw the film and thought it was about as close to the first couple of books as Lord of the Rings was to that. Quite well done and enjoyable.
As for the design seeming Star Wars prequelish, it is more likely that the book influenced Star Wars than the other way around.
The book had no cinematic or visual design whatsoever. It was words on a page.
You do realize there are descriptions of characters and locations in books. There’s also a story arc and world building, particularly in science fiction.
But you have to read those words on the page to get that part. I think that’s Matt’s point. What the words on the page said had a very strong influence on the science fiction film genre.
Your assertion that the book had influence on Star Wars is spot-on. Take a look at the art of the ships on the cover of one of the Ballentine paperbacks from the early ’60s, and some of the characterizations in the first book. There’s a “Jabba” character described in there. Unfortunately, anyone who hasn’t read the series may well pass the movie off as a “Star Wars” ripoff.
The argument in the article that notes our factual knowledge of the Martian landscape from probes and rovers spoiling the mystery of the planet that was a source of imagination in the early part of the last century is an interesting point.
I hate it, but the movie might have been doomed from the outset. Even aside from horrible marketing, aside from scientific discoveries throwing cold water on the story’s premises, the John Carter stories were adapted generations too late.
If the Tarzan stories were only now being adapted into a movie, I’m not sure modern audiences would buy into them. Same goes for Flash Gordon, or Zorro, or the other great pulp heroes. Sadly, we oversophisticated moderns only seem to tolerate the classics that have already made their way into the pop-cultural groundwater. The early days of film were the time for John Carter to become iconic, and I don’t know if a retrofit is possible.
What would be amusing would have been an opening scene set sometime in the future when humans first land on a desolate mars. Wouldn’t it have been interesting if they not only find the remains of a civilization in some of the out of the way places, but a stele celebrating the heroic deeds of a certain non-martian from the third planet? Face etched in? Then, while looking at the ruins of helium, the scene desolves into a flashback–the city as it once was a century or so ago–before transporting the viewer back to the cave scene with John Carter!
As it was, the only comment I had coming out of the movie was that it was a concept design for a franchise.
Nice idea out the opening, but it was used before in another modern adaptation of a Victorian-era scientifiction novel: H. G. Wells’s “First Men in the Moon.”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058100/plotsummary
“The world is delighted when a space craft containing a crew made up of the world’s astronauts lands on the moon, they think for the first time. But the delight turns to shock when the astronauts discover an old British flag and a document declaring that the moon is taken for Queen Victoria proving that the astronauts were not the first men on the moon.”
So opening sequences can only be used once? Has anyone informed Hollywood of this? They’re making the same entire movies over and over. While it might be said that all movies are based on plots developed by the Greek playwrights there is no excuse for doing such a bad job of it.
The problem with John Carter is that while the writers and producers were trying to stay close to the original, no one was thinking of how to adapt it to modern audiences. Either that, or they were trying too hard to adapt it to modern audiences.
Look at the original Star Wars. What is it? It’s Space Cowboys. It’s set in a future, or past that is unknown to us and is not subject to our physical laws. But the plot is vintage Randolph Scott with a little Mark Twain thrown in.
Stop trying to read minds, or send messages. Try storytelling.
By no means! We executed story elements can be raised to the strata of masterpieces: by example “Romeo and Juliet” is thought primarily of as Shakespeare work, but he lifted it for earlier sources.
I haven’t yet see “John Carter,” but it’s ironic that a writer known for cracking good storytelling has his story left on the floor.
For a great setting of pulp-age Mars and Venus tropes in contemporary stories, check out “The Sky People” and “In the Courts of the Crimson Kings,” by S. M. Stirling. Sure he’s cheating, but it’s pure fun.
As a baby, my little sister was totally creeped out by that album cover. We used to set it up in the hall and she’d end up crying because she couldn’t get to her room without having to walk past it. Great visionary work, though. Fripp was/is pure genious.
“The storytelling is incomprehensible, the characterization is ludicrous, the story is two and a quarter hours long and it’s a boring, boring, boring two and a quarter hours long.”
No. There was nothing seriously wrong with the movie.
Story: Very good. Characters: Very good. Look: Very good. Length: Just a bit long.
Perhaps the problem was the budget. The material didn’t justify $250 million, in my mind — it wasn’t Star Wars or Lord of the Rings.
What Keith said. I thought it was beautiful, fun, funny — did I say beautiful? But I also loved (and still love) the 5th Element. I’m hoping for a franchise, myself — always happy to see James Purefoy, especially with less clothing, and Taylor Kitsch isn’t painful to behold.
Thanks for bringing it up. If the Fifth Element is in my TV Guide I immediately flip to it. Watched it way to many times and never tire of it, but the “Return of the King” and the original ‘Star Wars” will always take the day.I am 63 soon and undoubtedly not as sophisticated as the youth masses, but I still know what I like. My grandfather thought the original ‘King Kong’ was amazing and freightening. So did I when we watched it on black and white TV in the 50′s on his couch.
Haven’t seen ‘John Carter’, hope to on the big screen and see what it is all about. I hope there is a good story and not just all techno trappings no story, I am weary of that, very weary. How many slams, crashes, whirls, ka-booms, roll overs, firewalls, vertical and horizontal flips etc etc. can one human take without another human there to tell the story. Like them all but bring it together you guides to our destiny. “Luke,,,Luke…it is your destiny”. Larsky
I think the problem may have been the studio, and its distribution network, not the movie itself.
If you look at Disney/ Buena Vista’s track record, they do well with “kiddie” fare, like “Toy Story”, “The Lion King”, & etc., but their more “young adult/grownup” fare tends to flop. Sometimes it deserves to (“The Black Hole” comes to mind), but most of the time it’s due to marketing failure.
Simply put, Disney knows how and where to market the likes of Buzz Lightyear, but is clueless about even The Rocketeer, let along John Carter. It’s not enough to “target” a film for a specific audience; you have to know where and when to get it TO that audience. All Disney really knows is how to get a movie to the Chuck E. Cheese crowd.
“John Carter” should have been either a late summer release, or a late fall or Christmas issue. And it should have been in theaters likely to attract older (and let’s face it, “geekier”) audiences than the regular Buena Vista network used for the studio’s usual fare.
This isn’t a new problem with Disney. “Twenty Thousand League Under the Sea” (1954), starring James Mason and Kirk Douglas, nearly died at the box office for the same reasons. Its repeated re-releases up through the Seventies were mainly an effort to actually get the original investment back. (I first saw it in a theater in 1971.) “Tron” (original) was a money-loser, “Island At The Top Of The World” was a near-total loss, and let’s not even talk about the “Tron” sequel.
The fact is that Disney just can’t figure out how to market a film that requires the attention of anyone above the level of a bright five-year-old. And to compound their problem, they apparently don’t even realize that that IS their problem.
cheers
eon
I think the ‘Disney’ name itself is part of the problem. Disney = princesses. Maybe Pixar is more than that, but it’s still “kids”. They want to help their brand grow up a little, but their one credible franchise in that direction hasn’t cut it.
People had no idea what this movie was all about, but it had cheesy effects, looked like Star Wars, and was made by ‘Disney’. Even so, you’d think it would have appealed to more people, because enough tend to like Star Wars.
Hmm, sort of a mystery, but I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily Disney’s fault.
Good point about the princess thing. I still can’t see why they didn’t just call it “Princess of Mars”, which probably would help appeal to a wider audience, no to mention being true to the story.
I liked it, but I can see why people who aren’t sci-fi fans might not. With the original Star Wars, you knew the good guys, bad guys, and general plot within the first couple of minutes. Audiences expect to be able to do that, and don’t want to have to do much thinking. Maybe some clever editing could cut the length down a bit, make the story line clearer, and they could re-release it as “Princess of Mars”.
Oh, god, don’t give them any ideas for another go at it by focusing all the Disney animation magic on Princess Dejah. Who wants to do that parody.
Truthfully, I think your attitude might have something to do with it–they killed a LOT of interest in this film when it dropped the title–’A Princess of Mars’ in favor of the incomprehensible ‘John Carter’–and I think that happened because so many think, like you, Disney=princesses.
People had no idea what the movie was about because they changed the name to avoid people’s biases.
WALT Disney himself would have known what to do with it. Not as a kids animation, but as a live action movie, a la “Swiss Family Robinson.” He loved larger-than-life heroes and heroism and a good story. The modern Disney has been careful and cynical and talks down to its audience (most of the time). From Isaacson’s book on Steve Jobs, we find just how hard Pixar had to fight to make good movies with Disney. Burroughs had fun and told a damned good story that raced along. 2 1/2 hours?? It was their job to find what made the Barsoom Series compelling (The Story) and bottle that essence in the movie. Peter Jackson did that for LOTR. It wasn’t a literal retelling, but he captured the essence and (re)told a great story in a visually stunning way.
Quite right, The Rocketeer was, is and always will be one of my favorite movies, and Disney made it. Then they didn’t know what to do with it.
When I first heard that John Carter was being made I thought that Disney was the wrong studio, that they would tone down of drop the more fantastic or exotic elements of Burroughs stories. I guess I’ll have to wait for the DVD to find out.
But why in Gods name did they use “John Carter” for a title, the first book was Princess of Mars. Thats a great title, brings in the Hunger Games crowd, on the previews show a scene (I hope there is scene) with Dejah Thoris fighting next to JC. But “John Carter?”, what is it; a men’s shirt a cologne? Lousy title.
As for the “we know Mars is dead” issue, its been a long time since I read the books but wasn’t John’s speculation on his mystic trip to Mars, that he had been transported through Time as well as Space? I take it that they didn’t use that angle in the books, I know they didn’t hint at it in the ads.
Pity, great pity.
Princess of Mars, which unfortunately I have seen, was put direct to DVD by Asylum films, and stars Traci Lords. Need I say more?
Le Cracquere at 9 makes a very valid point, and it mirrors the original article’s basic idea, too. We’re too “over-sophisticated” in the way the Silver-Age Romans were too sophisticated to believe in Homer or his gods.
Think about it.
RussellB at 10 has a brilliant idea–the geniuses who made the movie were clueless. RussellB, you shoulda been the writer.
I have often thought of how you would adapt one of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu stories. The only way to do it would be to have characters from our world somehow enter a parallel universe. The New England of Lovecraft, his wonderful, spooky, ultimately horrifying Innsmouth, simply doesn’t exist.
Not in our dimension. Same with Barsoom.
So, I would have had John Carter go through a dimensional warp, and have RussellB’s astronauts on Mars find such a portal, too.
Well, we can dream, right?
An Préachán
An Preachan,
If I recall correctly “In the Mouth of Madness” was pretty close to an adaptation of the Cthulhu mythos, if not any one specific story.
DG
Actually, someone did make a film adaption of Call of Cthulhu:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Call_of_Cthulhu_(film)
Call of Cthulhu was a very good adaptation – imaginative and low budget/creepy.
Having only seen the trailer, I found the effects looking CGI amateurish. 3D? Too painful to bother with. Ergo, I don’t care. You might as well have filmed “Chariots of The Gods,” and I’d have had the same interest in the pap.
They should have renamed the flick ‘Woola,’ recognizing the real star of the show. I thought the dialog was terrible. Now, early science fiction wasn’t strong on dialog either…it was mostly plot and science oriented. But that needn’t have stopped Disney from putting some real writers on the project. I wasn’t even convinced that John Carter liked Dejah Thoris. The actors were good, but without lines, they’re powerless.
I have to disagree on the idea that we know Mars is lifeless and that therefore undercuts the story. In the very brief prologue, they discuss how there are forces at work that are slowly wiping out life on Mars. That plants the seed of plausibility: maybe there WAS life on Mars in 1911, but not by the time our probes got there.
I haven’t read the books, so I can’t compare there. But I loved the film, and I’m not normally a big fan of FX extravaganzas.
That wouldn’t explain what happened to Mars’ atmosphere in the last 2 centuries.
Suppose that all the plant life on Mars disappeared suddenly (did Burroughs realize that you can’t have an oxygen atmosphere without photosynthesis from lush forests?). The oxygen in the Martian atmosphere that John Carter was breathing would take a lot longer than 200 years to recombine with the iron in the soil.
You don’t even need to go to Mars to realize that the planet has been lifeless for a very long time. Its oxygen-free atmosphere composed mostly of carbon dioxide is thermodynamically dead.
And that’s one of the reasons I have no interest in seeing the movie. I can’t suspend disbelief THAT much. There could have been life on Mars once. But not in the 19th century.
Well, since we have the opportunity to geek out; In the books the martian atmosphere was entirely artificially generated. “A Princess of Mars” ends with the atmosphere processor breaking, and all Mars having only 3 days to live. Of course John Carter has the key to saving the planet from earlier in the book, but gets sent back to Earth not knowing whether or not he succeeded.
I reread the book in anticipation of the movie, which i haven’t seen yet. I’ll admit disappointment that it’s tanking.
John Carter is a flop IN THE US. It works reasonably well everywhere else, though apparently not enough to make it profitable for Disney.
Re those saying the film sucks because we know there is no life on Mars and the story is so Victorian – You’re making Rick Moran’s point. The Moderns think themselves to be oh so clever that they can’t even suspend disbelief; they also believe THEIR tastes to be the golden standard of everything past present and future.
I saw the film and while I wasn’t blow away I liked that it was sincere and obviously a labour of love. Oh and it wasn’t based on a video game, a TV show or best-selling young adult books.
I agree with Eon’s #12 that Disney marketing was clueless about JC’s promotion, and that this is generally true of marketing any Disney movie outside the kiddie fare genre.
OTOH, most any other studio would have poisoned JC’s story with politically correct crap.
Disney knows how to make good movies. It is very limited in marketing them, particularly for movies that are outside Hollywood’s own narrow box, let alone Disney marketing’s even narrower box.
I am grateful to Disney in letting Stanton make such a superb movie.
First, I don’t think that a huge expensive blockbuster should have been the director’s first live-action movie — he should have worked his way up through a few low-budget flicks to get his feet wet. Second, the story meandered. The prolog should have been much briefer, and the river voyage was poorly motivated by the plot, and rather boring. Thirdly, the actor playing JC simply was not very good. The role needed a young Harrison Ford type, and he was not it!
I don’t agree that the whole “Mars” issue was a problem. After all didn’t somebody just make a huge hit with “War of the Worlds”? That said, it would have been easy to finesse in either of two simple ways 1) JC astrally projects back in time as well as across space. 2) Dejah Thoris says “You are on Barsoom, the fourth planet from the sun” and John Carter goes “Fourth Planet, oh, Mars!” while we see evidence that it’s a totally different solar system.
I’m not a purist. I don’t have any problem making Deja Thoris an action-girl rather than a damsel in distress (though it wasn’t done well), or making the Therns plot movers (though it didn’t make sense the way it was done), but the movie had logic holes and very little *heart*. That business where Tars-Tarkas “Do’h!” slapped JC for dragging everybody to the wrong place? That was a good character touch, but those were very rare. (Like the “Take me hostage” guy — a really interesting character who is totally un-fleshed-out).
There’s still a terrific movie that could be made from _A Princess of Mars_. Unfortunately, this wasn’t it.
Oh, and for accurate costuming, see this:
http://www.erbzine.com/mag13/1312.html
WARNING DEFINITELY NSFW.
WARNING MAKES AN UNCLAD DEJA THORIS UNATTRACTIVE (would have thought that impossible..)
The head slap was good, but I was thinking it would have been so much better if he used BOTH hands from the same side to do it…would have made it awesome!
eon @ 12
Marketing is right: Was anyone else completely unaware of the release of this movie? I never heard about it until just today.
For most of the reasons given, does that mean Ender’s Game is going to suck too?
I liked the movie – didn’t like the creation of the “travellers” or whatever – their attempt to inject a little political crap. I really liked their attempt to render the animals and martians – although red men ought to be red not just tatooed. No matter, the books are always better.
eon,
Have you heard of Pirates of the Caribbean?
Yes. It was based on the original Disneyland tunnel ride intended for children. And if you disregard the racier bits intended to make the movie appeal to adolescents, its story is basically a haircut of Warner Brothers’ “The Crimson Pirate” (1954), starring Burt Lancaster, written by Roland Kibbee, and directed by Robert Siodmak. Which Warner’s intended for kiddie matinees.
Exceptions, contrary to the old saying, do not “prove a rule”. But POTC isn’t an exception; it’s a children’s story they tried to make look like something edgier to appeal to the XBox crowd. That doesn’t make it a “film for grownups”; just a kiddiefest that, if you’ll pardon the phrase, is sailing under a false flag.
cheers
eon
I haven’t seen it yet, but will the first chance I get. I read the books as a kid, and it looks great to me. I wonder if this is a case of a self-fulfilling prophecy – people staying away in droves because the film critics predicted people staying away in droves? (and, also, I guess, a lackluster promotion effort – I can’t believe they spent so much on it!)
Regarding the suspension of disbelief (why don’t we see Barsoomian civilization when we look at mars?), I think ERB addressed that in his series, so if the scriptwriters didn’t, they could have. Likewise linking the story to present day, since IIRC Carter was supposed to be immortal-ish, with memories of having fought in ancient Rome. He could certainly be alive today and traveling back and forth between Earth & Mars. But these story tweaks don’t seem like $200M-in-ticket-sales improvements, so I think the larger problem – if the movie’s actually any good, and I assume it is – was the bad press.
They spent 100 million on marketing? Where? Inner Mongolia? Until I saw the trailers online, I had not heard a breath about it.
I devoured the Barsoom series a a kid, and have treasured memories not only of the stories, but of the way I imagined the world of Barsoom at the time.
Ah, youth and innocence fled.
I’m still going to go see it, and am introducing my kids to the books.
I agree, I saw a few commercials on television and they were terribly chopped and gave absolutely no clue as to what the film was about. You didn’t even know he was on Mars … didn’t even know he was on another planet. Unless you’d read the books which many people haven’t.
I saw the movie last week with my husband. We’re both tough on movies but we liked it. It was far better than any of the Star Wars prequels that made so much money. It’s a shame people won’t be seeing it in the theater.
the idea of updating the story by using a dimensional portal that is found astronauts would be a good way to update the original story. Either way, Disney should have created a cartoon character of John Carter to build interest in the youth market. Run it for 2-3 years, build Disney theme rides, and then create the block-buster movie! Unfortunately, they did it backwards.
My 20 year old son went with me and loved it, but he would not have gone without my encouragement. He has never read the books, like I did.
The marketing had no character. The commercials were a fast-edit montage of one enormous action sequence after another. I parked it in the same mindspace I toss all such things: Not compelling enough for me to pay to see in a theater but I’m sure I’ll enjoy it on Netflix.
We’ve come full circle. Movies used to be story and character driven and stand apart with a big action sequence (Bullitt, French Connection). Now they are marketed as action scpectaculars and stand apart if they have good characters.
The Mummy is a perfect example. Goog action, great special effects — but you loved it for how adorable Rachel Weisz wass and how funny and swashbuckling Brendan Fraser was.
And damn she was adorable. I thought Weisz was the perfect casting for that period of female beauty, alabaster skin, dark tresses and very red lips.
I haven’t been to see a movie in a theater in over a decade (too many screaming kids spoiled Star Wars I) but I can’t wait until John Carter comes out on DVD (or Blue-Ray). I have all eleven of the Barsoom series books in my library in paperback and they are well read.
I never read Edgar Rice Burroughs, and had just vague recollection of him as the author of Tarzan. Both my 16 year old son and I really liked the movie. I think there is unfortunate caparisons with Cowboys vs. Aliens. Maybe John Carter, coming so soon after C vs. A, superficially seemed to be a rerun.
Personally, I really liked the movie. A lot. I think if they spent $50-$100 million less on making the movie, I think I would have liked it just as much. The story is pretty good. It seems that when Disney went for the grand slam, they struck out Too bad. They could have scored a couple runs with a double, and still been in the game with a sequel or two.
no life on Mars, could never be life on Mars
As Martin notes, sez you. On the other hand, I’ll grant you that the life as shown doesn’t fit at all well, since JC doesn’t burst his eardrums, fall over, expire, and blister in the first 3 minutes of the movie.
I’m still a bit boggled that a movie which has brought in $180 million box office can be considered a flop. It might have been a spectacularly bad investment (though I’ll bet it makes a profit once DVD sales, etc are accounted for), but people are definitely going out to see it.
By comparison, according to the IMDB it has made more money than Hugo and The Artist combined. Also, Hugo apparently cost $170 million and has only made $115 million. Was Hugo a flop?
For my money it was a fine film. Not perfect, but I’d gladly go see it again or shell out my hard-earned dollars to see a (unlikely, I guess) sequel.
You have to remember the movie studio’s share of the $180 million gross is
roughly half of the the theater box office take (these are called rentals).
Hence, JOHN CARTER has returned $90 million to Disney on a $350 million
investment. That’s a huge loss by any definition.
That said, a $180 million gross is still very respectable. The real culprit
in this debacle was the ridiculous amount of money the studio spent filming
this movie. I wonder if Obama was involved in any way in this project?
I know diddly about the movie business, but I think I can tell you right up front what could have made the difference between at least a middling return on this film and the catastrophe that is. That would be — The NAME, f’r criminy sakes.
Conclude what you will, but I am a huge history guy, when it comes to Civil War I can tell you the players down to Sam Watkins and Daniel Sickles, and the battles all the way up to St. Alban’s and out to Glorieta Pass. I am politically savvy enough to read PJ Media regularly, I’m just not a big literature guy….. and I never once HEARD of John Carter. So on that alone, why the hell should I care? I can’t readily define “Prometheus” either, but it sure sounds cool, so I looked up the trailer and count me in.
Let’s face it, “John Carter” is a totally white-bread All-American name, granted, nothing inherently wrong with that — so is “Indiana Jones”. Which one sounds like an intrepid, globe-trotting adventurer, and which one sounds like your Dad’s accountant?
I think ‘John Carter’ the story actually DOES sound kinda cool, as I now learn about it….. by reading about what a flop the movie was. Not an ideal for Disney. I am stunned that they spent that much money and invested so much on a product name that was destined to sound boring from moment one.
I agree.
I don’t understand how they could make a movie about Mars and have a title that doesn’t even allude to Mars.
Remember the classic sci-fi movie “Alien”? How much would it have attracted audiences if it had been named “Ripley” instead?
My guess is the studio mogul or marketing guru who named it has never read any of the books. Truth in advertising; I have, and most of the rest of ERB’s work as well, ranging from Tarzan, the Pellucidar series and the Caprona trilogy, to such outliers as “Beyond the Farthest Star”, the Carson of Venus novels, and even some of his Westerns.
If any of them had bothered to even look at a list of the titles, they would have noticed that the first novel, which they adapted, is titled “A Princess of Mars”. As for one with Carter’s name in the title, that would be “John Carter of Mars”, which is the very last novella in the sequence.
When I heard just before the release that the title was going to be “John Carter”, with not even a mention of the “…of Mars” part, I rather suspected that the movie would die at the box office faster than a banth hit in the head by a shell from a radium rifle. Which, BTW, is one of the few things which can kill one of the lion-like predators faster than it can kill anything it decides it wants for lunch.
cheers
eon
I agree the title was poorly considered. While it was a later book I think “Warlord of Mars” would have piqued far more interest in the movie.
Two points:
First, I agree that the mindset and expectations of today’s audience are totally different than the mindset of those who thrilled to Burroughs’ tales of Barsoom when they first came out 100 years ago and I agree, too, that today’s audience is also far less literate than was that audience of 100 years ago, and far more spoiled and jaded. So, perhaps it was not a good idea to pick this series to make into a movie, and perhaps it would have really required extensive violence done to the basic script to have crafted a film that would have appealed.
Second, cynical, suspicious ol’ me wonders if some “Hollywood accounting” might not be involved in this immediate claim of a projected $200 million dollar loss.
I recall, for instance, the claims and court cases pressed by several Hollywood actors over the years, who alleged that, despite the films they starred in grossing many millions of dollars–especially when you added in overseas screenings and sales of copies on tape and DVD–they received either not a dime or a few thousands of dollars after all sorts of accounting gimmicks were used to reduce the gross amount to a loss. I can’t help wondering if that kind of “Hollywood accounting” might not be in play here.
I was with about 20 people in a 150-person 3D theater 7:20 pm Saturday night one week after opening. And of those 20 people, one hundred percent had to rush for the restroom at the end. One hundred percent.
The movie has incredible pacing.
The acting and dialogue is a little weak in the beginning until the actors seem to realize who their characters are and what they are doing, and then it all flows well. And there are no bathroom breaks.
The plot was confused, the GCI characters very unappealing, and the actors mumbled. The interaction between Carter and the princess was very stilted. The movie was just third rate.
All this article says is true, and none of it matters. Everything we experience –everything– is rooted in bygone places, times, colored by contemporary imagination.
Opera lives, Shakespeare lives, in requisite creative context “John Carter” could have been another “Pirates of the Caribbean.” But against cardboard characters, wooden dialogue, incoherent plots, Tolstoy himself would founder utterly.
Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes live on… we lay this debacle not on Edgar Rice Burroughs nor on today’s fast-fingered adolescents, but wholly on Team Disney’s merry band. Wait’ll they get their hands on Asimov, Bradbury, Robert A. Heinlein– aargh!
After what Jon Davison (producer), Edward Neumeier (screenplay), Paul Verhoeven (director), and (producers/distributors) Tristar Pictures and (surprise!) Buena Vista/Touchstone did to Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers”, I suspect the custodians of the Heinlein literary estate (notably Nebula and Hugo Award-winning SF author Spider Robinson) will think long and hard about letting anyone in Hollywood within several parsecs of one of RAH’s works again. Especially Disney.
cheers
eon
If they’re claiming a $200 mllion loss, then I expect the movie didn’t do well. But I have to wonder, given the stories that have come out of Hollywood, just how much “creative accounting” was involved.
We loved the movie and are very sad there will obviously not be a sequel. I enjoyed it in 3-D even though I hate the medium and will certainly buy it when it comes out on DVD. I agree with some of the commenters in that I do think the movie would have faired better at the box office if it had been released in either June or December.
P.S.–At the end of the first volume of this series Princess Dejah Thoris and John Carter are carefully overseeing the hatching of their child, their large white “egg”–Dejah being an arthropod of sorts–that is growing in a protected royal “hatchery.”
I note the film maker didn’t have the guts to reference or to include this last scene.
I don’t get it, how is this film going to lose 200 Million? It has taken 181 million worldwide already. I think they are trying to perpetuate the loss myth so they can write down a loss.
This was a post-production 3D conversion, and it showed. Bloody awful. I suspect that a lot of the horrid reviews were from the 3D version. The spin I’d dearly love to hear is that this is the death-knell of 3D, or at least phony 3D like this one.
I read the books as a youth, and loved them. Even so, after seeing the first couple of trailers (back around the Super Bowl, I think), I had no desire to go see the movie. The more recent trailers are much better, but it was too little, too late.
Chalk me up as another critic of terrible marketing.
One of the most visually amazing movie you will ever see — especially when viewed in 3-D. The story, however, was only adequate, and Kitsch as John Carter was underwhelming. A stronger presence was needed by the lead actor to balance the special effects. Lynn Collins certainly had the looks that Burroughs imagined although she never displayed the “haughtiness of royalty” that described her in the novels.
It’s quite simple why the movie bombed so hard.
1. There is no hero. The JC of the books was a Southern gentleman warrior, when the West wasn’t ashamed of such things as manliness. The mopey emo-boy of the movie is not a hero is any distinguishable way. The JC of the book is the sort of man filled with self-confidence and bravado that other men want to follow (think Peyton Manning with a sword); the JC of the movie is a frikkin loser with an attitude problem (think Randy Moss circa 2010).
2. There is no heroine. The Dejah Thoris of the books was a paragon of Victorian femininity – a strong, chaste, principled and proud woman that would make any Victorian gentleman wish to leap to defend her honor. The ninja-barbie-scientist-post-feminist princess of the movie isn’t any female any male would want to defend, nor does she want defending — a point driven home by the ostentatious scene in which she tells JC to get behind her. Riiight.
3. There is no story that makes any kind of sense. The story of the book worked because it was a straightforward boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-kills-all-manner-of-beasts-and-men-to-win-girl-back yarn. The movie gives us some sort of ecological nonsense coupled to a superweapon in the hands of the bad guy, who nonetheless NEEDS to marry Dejah Thoris to possess Barsoom… and it’s never explained why Mr. Death-Ray-On-Wrist needs any such thing. Then Ninja-Thoris is given the opportunity to kill the bad guy, but doesn’t take it because… why? All sorts of nonsense.
Sorry, no amount of special FX or marketing can overcome such fatal weaknesses.
Exactly.
And its not like movies with real men, real women, and real dramatic stories can’t work, its just so few want to bother making them.
The Barsoom series still has incredible potential to be properly adapted to film, just as we could still use a faithful Tarzan adaptation.
No matter how cynical they act, people always respond well to heroes.
This movie will be a success in DVD and streaming. Word of mouth will build it, and it will be a cult favorite. The folks who don’t like it are the folks that thought “Avatar” had a great story, instead of being “Ferngully” for adults.
I didn’t like it and yet I thought Avatar was poorly written propaganda. That you made such a simplistic equation makes me wonder whether you pout when someone doesn’t agree with you.
Retro-Sci-fi is for the SyFy channel.. done as a B/C movie.. on the cheap.
IF Disney wanted to do something really interesting and cool, they could have chosen a writer and series that transcended time and reality. The Dragon Riders of Pern trilogy from Anne McCaffrey is ripe for modern technology, wrapping cracking good story telling.
Ursula K. Le Guin with more than a few like “Left Hand of Darkness”, “The Dispossesed”, or “The Wizard of Earthsea”. Wonderful thoughtful stories of world from a vivid and amazing imagination…
James P. Hogan’s Giant’s of Ganymede series….
Boroughs would need major adapting to make it all more palatable to fans now more accustomed to interactive video games, and more modern space operas…
IT flopped because it never really had an audience that would want to throw the coin to go see it. Mars doesn’t make sense anymore. Maybe if they had picked something from Jerry Pournelle, like his “Janissaries” books, then folks would be more tempted to show up.
I probably won’t even wait for it to show up on Netflix…
r/TMF
I thoroughly enjoyed the Tarzan books but Africa was a different place then (1940s.) It was a place of mystery. “King Solomon’s Mines” would probably be a flop now. I agree that kids are less literate. I have fought a losing battle wit my five children about reading over the past 45 years. Each younger one resisted reading even the best books for youth, like the Redwall Series. I devoured Sherlock Holmes but only one of my kids is interested. She is the reader. Now 31 and a grad student. Speaks three languages.
I hear that Maine’s Michael (1 and 3) has three gifted children.
I agree about the actor. He just didn’t have the oomph. The Travelers were a distraction and annoying as all get go. But I loved the movie! I loved Tars Tarkus (even if they did turn around the who know who was related to whom plot device).
That said, even you disliked the traier, see the movie! I don’t know what the 3D trailer looked like, but the IMAX 3D was utterly sensational. I’m planning on making my husband take me at least once more. It deserves to be supported. Too bad they don’t cloud-source like Iron Sky or Courage, New Hampshire, and let people who support the project help pay for it directly, without these lame critics who never read the books complaining that “it’s derivative of Star Wars” when, in fact, it’s quite the other way around.
I saw the film and enjoyed it very much. It was a touch long and lagged in places, but not enough to condemn it. The biggest problem I had, actually, was with the casting of Dominick West. I couldn’t see his character without McNulty from ‘The Wire’ overwriting him.
Maybe the film had a few too many rounded edges in both characterization and rendering, but that, too, wasn’t a major sin.
The film got adequate promotion where I live. I don’t live and breath film, but I knew it was coming and wanted to see it easily six weeks before release.
John Carter, a hero rescues a damsel in distress, and the professional movie critics hate it, try to discourage people from going to see it for themselves.
Hunger Games, those same professional movie critics love it, and try to encourage everyone to go see the movie.
Why?
Actually, I think part of the problem is the nature of the promotional material. Lots of flashy images, but no context. You get no idea what it’s about, outside of fighting. Heck, even the title “John Carter” is bland. Could it kill them to use the term “Mars” in the title somewhere?
Even though the Narnia and Lord of the Rings series had a built in fan base their promotion at least gave some context as to what the films were about.
Neither lead actor was especially appealing. Handsome male lead, but a little too metro. Put Megan Fox in as the lead babe, appropriately attired\unattired, and you’ve got a hit.
Also, the violence in the previews looked too Disneyfied and the big coliseum monster battle has been done and done and done.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but the trailer convinced me not to see it for the following reasons:
a) I had no idea what the hell the movie was supposed to be about. Why couldn’t they call the movie “John Carter of Mars” instead of just “John Carter?” At first I thought I was seeing a preview of a Conan-style fantasy epic, but then…monsters? Hmm. A little more fantasy-ish, I guess. Okay. Then…”John Carter?!” I guess some regular guy falls through a portal into a mystical fantasy world? What, is this like Neverending Story for adults or something? All they needed to do was either open or close the trailer with a reference to Mars, and it would have made a lot more sense. Whichever exec felt that “of Mars” needed to be dropped from the title ought to be fired.
b) The CGI just plain looked bad. I thought at first I was seeing a preview for an HBO miniseries.
c) Hair and makeup was all wrong. There’s something about seeing people with perfectly trimmed eyebrows, sparkling clean faces, and (on the women) immaculate eyeshadow and lipstick, not to mention stylish, clearly professionally done hair running about amongst the rocks and dirt whilst clad in rough leather that just screams “clueless second-rate director.” A movie set in a dirty, rough place needs to have dirty, rough people. See Book of Eli, Gladiator, and every Eastwood Western for examples of how to do it right. When I see prettyboy and prettygirl in the desert, it tells me that whoever made the movie just doesn’t care.
I’m in the middle of the fifth Barsoom novel, read the first one before I saw the movie. My 12 year-old daughter is reading the Barsoom series and loves it.
They screwed up the Therns to make deus ex machina bad guys, which was not a good idea. If they got a second movie, how does John Carter take on the whole mythology of Issus?
I like Taylor Kitsch, but he played Tim Riggins playing John Carter. Way too melancholy, the JC of the books loved to fight and was anything but an outcast looking for a purpose. Lynn Collins was pretty enough for Dejah, but there wasn’t much chemistry and it wasn’t the love-at-first-sight story of “Princess of Mars”, where cross-cultural misunderstandings kept them apart for so long.
There should have been a lot more of JC kicking ass and swinging a sword.
With these relatively minor criticisms, the movie qua movie was still pretty good and we actually went back last week to see it in IMAX 3D with my parents. Everybody from 72 to 10 liked it, and the 3D in this movie was much better than I have seen, better even than Avatar and the last Transformers movie. Kind of a shame that Disney pushed so many chips out on this one,
I do hope the movie version of Ender’s Game fares better.
My wife and I saw it last night. She was unaware of the books, and it was so long ago I remembered little, other than ERB could spin good yarns. We both enjoyed it, and give it a A- (we don’t demand realism in our movies). I’m not sure the 3D added much, beside a more expensive ticket.
Hollywood has and will never compete with my imagination. There are many great books, and a few good movies.
Just saw “John Carter” today and was pleasantly surprised after hearing all the critical horror stories about the film being so bad and boring.
Having watched world-class movies most of my 57 years I suppose I’m probably more expert than some of these overpaid movie reviewers. I gave the movie four out of five stars and thought it special effects were fairly well done and the screenplay didn’t make hash of Burroughs original fiction.
I will agree the movie title was pretty weak though in the end credits there was a still of the planet Mars with “John Carter of Mars” overlaying it. Too bad the movie will lose money though I hear it’s doing better overseas. I suppose if it had been a movie about Mars filled with pimps, hos and rappers, with heavy metal and hip hop music playing in the background, it may have meant more ticket sales.
The problem is there are far too many dumbed-down Americans who never even heard of Edgar Rice Burroughs and in fact if they saw the movie stone cold out of the box, they’d complain it was a rip off of George Lucas’ “Star Wars” franchise even though the reality is it’s actually the other way around. Having voraciously read Burroughs’, Jules Vern’s and H.G. Wells’ works of science fiction as a young pre-teen, I thought the latest movie adaptation of John Carter’s adventures on Barsoom was fairly well done. My two cents anyway.
Well said and agreed, this movie’s biggest failing is our poorly learned youth.
The culture has changed since Burroughs’ time. Chivalry is dead, and women are no longer considered prizes for the heroes to win.
Princess Dejah Thoris was a 19th century young man’s dream. But this is the 21st century. A faithful portrayal of Dejah Thoris–both her costume (or lack thereof) and her role as Damsel In Distress to be rescued by John Carter–would alienate today’s women and girls as sexist.
I’ll bet Burroughs’ novels never appealed much to girls–but today Hollywood can’t produce a family movie that doesn’t, because in the suburbs, young kids have to be driven to the movie theaters by their parents in their Mom-mobiles.
Disney tried. They gave Dejah Thoris a less sexist costume and the role of a scientist. But the Ripley character (played by Sigourney Weaver) in the “Alien” trilogy permanently redefined the lead female role in a science fiction movie.
http://www.best-horror-movies.com/images/Aliens-with-newt.jpg
Nothing is more exacerbating the currently chic trend of super waif. Dainty, model thin, sexy women who are not only the smartest, most beautiful person on any planet in the Sol system, but also world class martial artists, with amazing wit, and more often than not impeccable parenting skills. Mary Sues if there ever was one. I can sympathize that women for a long time felt they were relegated to damsel in distress, but the pendulum has swung so far to the other side that most serious portrays of action heroines are just laughable caricatures. I guess I’m not Hollywood’s demographic, because I was long ago bored with action men that had no flaws as well.
I thought it was fun. The plot was a bit muddled, the jumping was exaggerated, and the red martians weren’t red, but I got caught up in the whole thing anyway. It captured that old pulp romance of Mars thing much better than I expected.
I’m waiting for the Blu-ray which will cost close to the price of the theater ticket after about a year on a Sunday Super Saver listing without the hassle of putting up with uncouth patrons. The in theater experience is pretty dead to me these days.
I hate movie theaters and so I’m waiting to rent the movie.
My son, who is gifted, and I saw John Carter. At the end of the movie he said, “Dad, that was a thinking man’s movie.”. I couldn’t be prouder.
I have rejected all of Hollywood years ago and am working my way through musicians. I refuse to take money from my pocket and transfer it into their pocket. When they inject themselves into politics then I protest the only way I know how. The free market capitalist way
Holy cow, Deja Thoris had a sister?
The things you forget … Damn, when I read those books, they were only about half as old as they are now. My, how time flies …
Heh – no, she didn’t. But I always imagined she did so that John Carter and I could hang out together.
“58. sinz54
The culture has changed since Burroughs’ time. Chivalry is dead, and women are no longer considered prizes for the heroes to win.
Princess Dejah Thoris was a 19th century young man’s dream. But this is the 21st century. A faithful portrayal of Dejah Thoris–both her costume (or lack thereof) and her role as Damsel In Distress to be rescued by John Carter–would alienate today’s women and girls as sexist.”
Oh Bull. Is it possible to make a movie these days with out somebody demanding that we put their modern political views into it. Anyone stupid enough to believe that modern women would like a damsel in distress is either a feminist ideologue or to stupid to have ever taken a glance at the romance section in a bookstore.
As for the problem of our current knowledge of actual Martian conditions, why not have John Carter travel through time, as well as space. Have him look at Earth in a telescope of some kind and comment the continents are all wrong, Europe and North America are too close. People aware of plate tectonics and the movement of continents would immediately know he’s in an earlier eon. Or have some Martian tell him that the Third Planet is a big snowball, with only single celled life. That would throw him Hundreds of millions of year into the past, when Mars could have supported life.
Uh that’s “wouldn’t like a damsel in distress”. Bad fingers. Bad. Bad.
I couldn’t agree more with the author. First of all, I loved the Burroughs’ stories but if any story needed a complete update for a modern audience, it was this one. Make Carter an Afghanistan veteran. Make Barsoom a planet in another solar system. Make the ninja turtles into aliens. No, wait!
Saw it already in the 1970′s, really didn’t want to see through another “Carter” installment
Having gotten a Kindle I am reading a lot of material I didn’t read as a kid and I am having a blast with it especially since so much of it is in the public domain and a free download or available for under $2. I read one of the John Carter novels it was a lot of fun and the price of 0.00 was a plus.
There was certainly a more literate style back then but it was all definitely pulp, all in good fun and very accessible. Mostly the more literate elements are in the vocabulary which refers to obscure weaponry or terms from ancient times up to the Middle Ages. Mostly it is used for atmosphere since the authors wish to convey not just a lamp, sword or early firearm for instance but a very specific kind and they will do the same for something modern but foreign. Also some of it was everyday terminology then but obscure now. To expect to know all the words would be as ludicrous as expecting a Civil War veteran to know the word Internet but a good story is a good story in any age or any time and it is all in the telling. The Kindle is great for this because the dictionary is built right into it.
Disney used to own Touchstone wherein it could develop films like John Carter while protecting the Disney brand and using executives who knew more than the Disney way of things and they did well with it. They should have done that with John Carter.
If anything this movie’s failure was that it played to the youth who resoundingly rejected it. I suspect that is because these cretins no longer read anything that isn’t required by schools or posted on social websites. For my part I enjoyed it. Could it have been better? Yes, but sadly it was better than most blockbusters which will do far better that are released these days.
Rick Moran nails the core problem I have with all cinema versions of books — and it touches on the one reason I almost never go to see such movies.
I prefer the story the author creates in my head to whatever one a director produces on a movie screen. The reason’s simple: I like my imagination more.
By the way, if you ever wish to drive a film-buff to apoplexy, just point out to him that even the tackiest romance novel makes bigger demands on the reader’s imagination than the finest film ever made.
Disney screwed the calot. (and yes, that’s been my screen name for a long time)
I enjoyed the movie, but it was radically different than the book(s). As others have noted, John Carter and Dejah Thoris were changed. In her case the changes make her “better” in the sense that they added qualities or attributes (scientist and warrior). In his case the additions diminished him by, as others have pointed out, making him out to be a misfit and removing the qualities of a “gentleman.”
As others have noted, in the books John Carter was not a mortal man (and he knew he was on Mars as soon as he arrived). I assume that many of the changes were made to insure that Disney gets copyright protections on the “new” story and not just on the film per se.
Because I have no experience in filmmaking, I feel qualified to say that the movie would have been much better if it had used a narrator at times (which would also fit with the fact that Edgar Rice Burroughs is reading the journal during the Martian scenes.)
I think a good question to ask is why Lord of the Rings worked, and John Carter did not. Both are famous books with epic stories, from another world. Maybe John Carter payed too much attention to special effects, and not enough to story and acting (a similar problem in Star Wars 1-2, which they got right in 4, the original movie). Maybe it got too bogged down in the gory details of the book (a failure that the Dune movie also had), when they should instead have just hit the story high points, and got the SPIRIT of the book right, without exactly duplicating every story detail, and every single quote from the book. That is what made the Lord of the Rings work. It did not duplicate the book exactly, but it duplicated the SPIRIT of the book great, while also being simple to understand, even to those that did not read the book.
Lord of the Rings had a tremendous amount of depth and detail, the Barsoom books did not. LOTR is actually “literature” in the fullest sense and very deliberately harks back to myth and legend, Burroughs books are several levels lower in craft and aspiration; a comic book vs. a book.
Keep in mind that LOTR was conceived and written by J.R.R. Tolkien as a single, very long and detailed novel. The Barsoom stories were written by ERB for publication as serials in pulp magazines. Tolkien’s work was broken up into the three-volume form we know today by his original publishers, to keep production costs down and hopefully to achieve a better price break at the sales end. ERB’s stories were later “braided” into novel-length form for reprinting in hardback.
Also, Tolkien was writing a long, rather allegorical novel aimed at an audience of roughly his own age and educational level. (He was Professor of English Literature at Pembroke College, Ox ford, when he wrote it.) Burroughs was writing adventure stories for magazines whose main audience was adolescent boys. Which handily explains his original conceptions of John Carter and Dejah Thoris. (You may notice that there are no exactly parallel characters in Tolkien’s work.)
Each author knew exactly what he was doing, and exactly what audience he wanted to reach. They were two entirely different groups, hence the differences in what they wrote.
cheers
eon
these are ALL great comments and observations, but what about the old fashioned notion of just going to the film without pre-conceived expectations, and just enjoying the ride? A few people commented after the show that it was a cross between “Star-Wars” and “Avatar” and I could kind of see that in places. (the space flyers or single place bikes) come to mind. the giant earth crushers and machines are almost a direct rip-off of both movies. But, I didn’t read any of the books, or go in with any expectations other than what is this and how much entertainment value does it have?? I will say that in the last couple of years the 3D and computer graphics have improved GREATLY, so much so, that this movie was worth the watch and extra cost to see it in 3D. If the industry is spending so much money in remakes of star wars, titanic, and others in this new enhanced 3D tech, what does that tell you about the TOTAL lack of new material ans scripts available for production? I didn’t see Indiana Jones anywhere here, but I did enjoy the movie for what it was, Great Fun and a lot of visual entertainment. I felt it was 10 times better than “Hunger Games” which made no sense and promoted teen violence; was poorly executed and had a super weak premise and story line.
Yet, everyone is yelling to the high heavens what a great film it is. go figure.