456: John Carter

[00:00:00] 163. Let's get to John Carter from 2012 which I'm doing as a bonus review for the Star Trek trilogy. John Carter is directed by Andrew Stanton who also did WALL-E, Finding Nemo and he's gone on to do some other TV shows

[00:00:20] since, Finding Dory as well. Stars Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Willem Dafoe, Samantha Morton, Thomas Hayden Church, Mark Strong, Sirian Hines, Dominic West, pretty decent cast. And the synopsis is transported to Barsoom a Civil War vet discovers a barren planet seemingly inhabited by 12-foot tall barbarians

[00:00:44] finding himself prisoner of these creatures he escapes only to encounter Woola and a princess in desperate need of a savior. So this movie, you know for anyone who is familiar with it, has a pretty bad

[00:00:58] reputation. When it came out it became one of the worst box office disasters of all time. It was also one of the most expensive movies ever made and it got not very good reviews and really just plummeted at the box office and was a

[00:01:15] huge write-down for Disney and completely killed off the franchise plans that they had originally wanted to do. It was also a huge miss for Andrew Stanton who had until then basically only done Pixar movies and very much

[00:01:31] hurt his I guess movie career although he has really bounced back since. But for me specifically I think I remember when this one came out but I really as many did I was like I don't know what this is I don't really care

[00:01:45] about it I'm not gonna go see it and so I didn't really get around to seeing it until probably the late 2010s in its entirety and I've seen it two or three times now over the years. It is one of those box office bombs that

[00:01:58] the reputation of that hurts the movie more. You know it's really not that bad of a movie. I think it's passable, I think it's decent, it's watchable, there's nothing really offensive about it but being such a disaster financially

[00:02:13] I think people are just ready or willing to pick it apart and say this movie is terrible don't watch it you know it's a disaster etc etc. I don't think it's that bad I think if you give it a watch especially if you went in not knowing

[00:02:28] anything about that I don't think you would see it as such a mess but this movie was very clearly very hard to market and I'm not surprised at all that it didn't do well even if it had been a masterpiece I still think it would have

[00:02:44] flopped because for one as much as I love Westerns it's one of my favorite genres and I love sci-fi Westerns I mean Dune you look at the new Mad Max movies this movie is basically a classic Western there are sci-fi elements

[00:02:59] obviously but it's visually conceptually stylistically very much a typical kind of Western and in this day and age Westerns are a dying genre they never do well Dune is the only Western sci-fi movie that has done well recently I

[00:03:18] would say but the trailers for this movie this movie was known to have one of the worst marketing campaigns in history and I have gone back and watched a couple of the trailers and they're not very good they're mostly a visual tease

[00:03:32] they're not really much about the story or anything like that and then actually before I even get into that the biggest offense now this was based off a book series called John Carter of Mars not John Carter John Carter of Mars and one

[00:03:50] of the biggest mistakes marketing wise is taking off the of Mars from the title because if you say hey let's go see this new movie called John Carter who is that person what intrigue does that give me you know what excitement there's nothing

[00:04:08] about that that sounds like a typical hero leading character name in a movie but if you say hey let's watch John Carter of Mars that at least gives me alright it's some sort of sci-fi movie probably maybe a space opera Star Wars

[00:04:24] II Star Trek II that kind of thing just calling it John Carter which there are apparently many different stories as to why that was taken off apparently Andrew Stanton wanted it to be John Carter of Mars later on where he truly becomes

[00:04:39] that character and then John Carter he is just that character in this movie and then he by the end becomes that full-fledged character however if you're making a movie that's cost over 200 million dollars and you just call it

[00:04:56] John Carter that's I don't know how they didn't catch that like I don't know how even with Andrew Stanton's success with Disney I don't know how those studio execs allowed him to do that because even if it had been called John Carter

[00:05:11] of Mars probably still would not have done that much better to be real but really whenever you hear the name John Carter the movie that just sounds boring by itself there's nothing there and so that is by far one of the biggest

[00:05:27] mistakes creating this first movie especially if you're wanting to do a franchise you easily could have called it the full title and had him become that character by the end still there's nothing really lacking from the movie or

[00:05:40] spoiling it if you give it that full title and then he has grown on me a lot over the years I don't think he's an amazing actor but Taylor Kitsch not great in this I don't fully blame him because the script is fairly weak like

[00:05:57] not only is the name John Carter kind of boring but the character itself is really just a fish out of water there's nothing to him besides being this soldier and having to learn the ways of these new species and so the lack of

[00:06:14] development there doesn't help him but he had this and battleship come out in the same year he got really unlucky where both were huge flops they really catapulted his career and he I mean at least for a little while he was kind of

[00:06:30] written off like I even remember when these came out vaguely and he was almost like a laughingstock in some ways maybe that's too harsh to say but I remember people like oh my god he's been in two horrible flops like he's done with no

[00:06:43] way bad actor and I think he has gone on to redeem himself not that those movies were his fault for flopping but he has gone on to be in like True Detective, Lone Survivor, Waco like I think he has grown a lot as an actor and

[00:06:59] what also what choices he makes but also if I was offered two huge blockbusters I would take them I think most people would so I don't blame him in the slightest bet for that but he just got unlucky because of the timing of them

[00:07:13] however at this point in time in his career with all that being said he's still not the best actor in this I think that if you're gonna do a unknown or fairly unknown John Carter Mars is a popular series but I'd say more so back

[00:07:29] when it came out and maybe in the latter 20th century but if you said the name John Carter to people now I bet 99 out of 100 people especially younger audiences would have no idea who you mean and if you're gonna create a

[00:07:45] franchise a hopeful franchise with this movie you need to hire someone who has more star power because at the time and he still doesn't I would say but especially at the time he does not have a huge draw so I don't know why he was

[00:08:00] the first or the final choice when you probably could have found some other people who would have drawn on bigger audiences who would have been a better leading man had more of that star power charisma because he really does not have

[00:08:13] much in this so sadly with the movie being called John Carter he is probably one of the most boring characters in the whole thing I think Lynn Collins's character is the most interesting by far out of anyone not a lot of other people

[00:08:29] have that much development but I think she's easily the most compelling character so in all respects the marketing was wrong title wise how they did the trailers who they chose as a leading man like the rest of the cast

[00:08:45] you know there's decent star power there but not him at least at this point in his career and same thing with battleship but with all that aside I still think it's alright even though the Western aesthetic the visual style does

[00:09:00] wear out over the course of the movie I still think it looks pretty decent and most of the effects look pretty good the only one of the only times where it does not hold up at all is when he's doing the sort of like anti-gravity jumping

[00:09:13] where he can jump really high up and down and that looks terrible digitally like it just looks really really dated I'm sure it even looked good when it first came out but that looks pretty bad especially at this point

[00:09:25] otherwise the landscapes the color palette I think it all is solid and I like the look of the alien race I think the designs the spacecrafts and all that are pretty cool and work for me still another thing though actually if you are

[00:09:45] gonna be doing a classic sort of hero story fish out of water story that's fine more than okay with that but you need to in this day and age you really need to supplement that with other really impactful exciting insane vivid

[00:10:05] whatever might be sort of ideas and concepts within this movie or action whatever might be to elevate it because looking at something like Mad Max the new Mad Max films Fury Road has almost no plot it's basically good people

[00:10:23] escaping from the bad people that's essentially the whole plot but the action and the visuals and the characters are so heightened and so dramatic and intense and crazy and emotional that you or at least I could

[00:10:39] not care less about how minimal the plot is because really end of the day plot is usually the least important thing in terms of what you're taking from the movie the most at least that's what I do and then also with Furiosa as well that

[00:10:53] just came out a few months ago the overarching plot line of that storyline is young girl gets taken away from her family by an evil warlord and wants revenge on him but yet again everything about you know same thing with Fury Road

[00:11:10] everything else in the movie is so at 11 out of 10 that you forget about how simple the plot is and it's basically if you took those movies and made it so minimal in every way that there was really nothing going on and really

[00:11:25] nothing to take away and so this movie really has so little memorable aspects aside from just the overall sort of concept and planet and Western style that it's entertaining you know it passes the time it's a cool epic it's

[00:11:43] escapist enough but even like the action for example is so much of it is hand-to- hand combat and I really talking more and more about the creative team behind this I just don't know what they were thinking and you know sometimes movies

[00:12:02] like this have to fail in order for people to learn I get that but still I like there's so much hand-to-hand combat when there could be really cool and there are really interesting peeks into the technology and the ships and the

[00:12:16] weapons and then it's so much of it is just fistfights and sword fights and I'm like ah this is just it's old really quick even just in the choreography it gets old I don't mind sword fights inherently but all that is off the mark

[00:12:32] but not to rag on the movie too much there are some scenes I do like I think when he first gets there and he meets the aliens I think that's pretty effective and really him and Lynn Collins have a good chemistry and I think those

[00:12:43] characters I could see them going off to be in other movies and I enjoy being with them you know they're nothing amazing development wise but I think that they're the chemistry is good enough to keep me interested in what

[00:12:55] they're saying and probably you know one of the more marketed scenes the movie is the Coliseum fight I think that's pretty good but at this point there have been much better Coliseum sort of gladiator

[00:13:09] fights whether it be sci-fi or not that very much top this if you look at Thor Ragnarok Dune 2 like there's much better ones than this both choreography wise visually intensity but it's still okay then one of the only other ones I think

[00:13:29] that stick out is the ship scene where they go in the ship and there are all those like blue designs in the floor and all I think that's pretty good but one last thing about the special effects and how the movie looks as a whole you know

[00:13:46] if it's a Western it's fine to have everything in high-key you know bright lighting that's fine but with special effects really heavy special effects digital effects you're opening yourself up for people seeing the flaws much more

[00:14:01] easily because you can hide digital effect flaws in shadows in darkness and you know John Carter it's more of an upbeat pulpy sci-fi film than let's say Dune or you know maybe some of the darker Star Wars films but you could

[00:14:17] still add a little bit of dynamic lighting and change there where you could hide and add even just more mystery to how the whole world feels because you're on a whole new planet you know that you're on Mars you've never

[00:14:29] been before and while we've had other movies set in some sort of world on Mars you can kind of make it your own and find and sci-fi so you can really do whatever you want with it so I don't want to beat a dead horse there but

[00:14:42] there are a lot of big issues and then nitpicks that I think could have made this movie great and I could see another group of people another studio making this film just as how it was with Dune like the David Lynch film did not

[00:14:58] do well and then Denis Villeneuve picked it up and did amazing things with it so I think that there is a good franchise a Cinemac universe or at least just one standalone movie that could be great with what this overall world is of John

[00:15:13] Carter of Mars this movie is not that but it has potential so we'll see I don't think we'll ever get that considering this movie lost about 200 million dollars if not more for Disney so I really doubt

[00:15:26] anyone that's gonna pick it up anytime soon is what it is oh well so check it out though I think you could do worse that one is a three out of five