'John Carter,' aka the Edgar Rice Burroughs 'A Princess of Mars' adaptation

it was Battleship, Candy Land, Clue, Magic: The Gathering, Monopoly, Ouija, and Stretch Armstrong

read: CGI action movie, CGI kids film, thriller, CGI fantasy, adult drama, supernatural thriller/horror, CGI action comedy

pretty obvious why they chose the one they did - biggest potential ROI

Ouiji could be a genuinely neat movie. Think: supernatural comedy/romance

Ghost

Didn't you see Witchboard back in the 80s?

a Tawny Kitaen classic

It was more than just a matter of too much talk. It was that as soon as I'd get into the mythology a little bit, there'd be this rushed, chaotic action scene which really showed the limitations of the director's abilities, cool as what I could catch in all the commotion seemed to be. Also, they failed to illustrate the parameters of John Carter's Mars powers. Like, how many times was he chained up in this movie until he was just motivated enough to break his chains or something? And the movie really should have started with John Carter and earned him his Oz moment when he woke up on Mars, not with a great Mars aerial battle. Given how little the blue-eyed people stuff made sense to this neophyte, they really didn't need to show McNulty getting his magic blue electro arm thingy. Or rather, they could have easily slipped that in somewhere else, later, once the movie got its legs.

I did love all the stuff I recognized from numerous movies that have mined this material before. Did not love seeing that kid from "World's Greatest Dad," who once I realized it was him took me out of his bits

I should stress that all these complaints have little to do with the material and more to do with how it was incorporated, or how the story was told. Which again, lays it at the feet of the director.

And the movie really should have started with John Carter and earned him his Oz moment when he woke up on Mars, not with a great Mars aerial battle. Given how little the blue-eyed people stuff made sense to this neophyte, they really didn't need to show McNulty getting his magic blue electro arm thingy. Or rather, they could have easily slipped that in somewhere else, later, once the movie got its legs.

yeah, i objected to the same thing upthread. there was just no reason to start the movie with sab than getting the 9th ray armband thing. we could easily have found out later that the therns were guiding him to victory.

I was a little worried by that intro, I was like..oh wait maybe it isn't that great? The Onion review was otm about that, it was pretty much everything everyone fears about scifi movies

It felt like the start to a cable mini-series, not a feature film. Maybe they should have gone with a scroll? "A long time ago ..."

I really liked the electro arm start! Just jumping straight in there.

don't tell anyone this...but i totally just dissed d@viD D^nby in my emp thing i'm reading at nyu on friday. if you are morbz you shouldn't miss it...

i couldn't help myself...

and i make fun of old people but morbz should come anyway...

:D

http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/global-box-office-climb-continues-in-2011

I liked some of the design work and visual effects, but really this was a complete and utter mess. I have nitpicks by the ton, but overall it just failed to engage me. I was, at times, completely lost as to what was going on, which I put down to horrible writing. It was all muddled plot, no story.
The source material was written 100 years ago, and it felt like it. All the good ideas in this have been used in greatly better movies throughout the years, and now the well is dry.

I loved it. Given the amount of utter shite that does well at the box office it is shocking that a film as entertaining as this did so badly.

for people who don't follow ILM stuff, my Denby slam is here:

http://skotrok.blogspot.com/2012/03/2012-emp-pop-conference-paper.html

its in the last section. maria said she actually sensed some dismay from the crowd, but i didn't hear any from where i was. i didn't think anyone would care, but it is new york. maybe his mom was there.

It was pretty beautiful, that moment.

Wow Scott! Can't wait to read this. You go on about some of my favorite records as a clubbing kid in the late 80s. Chep Nuñez was God.

haha, yeah, that line is great and I had a very similar reaction to his review

Wow! Heady rush reading that Scott. Kudos and ashamed I missed seeing it in person.

was that a speech for a conference or something?

My father, joking to some Disney suits after overhearing them talking about the failures of "John Carter": "John Carter from Mars? Who wants to see that?? 'Jimmy Carter From Georgia' would've made more money." They laughed.

how, how did this get made?

Dude from Pixar who's shat gold several times for Disney + his genuine (if obsessive) enthusiasm for John Carter + it is genuinely an Olde Venerable Property from the dude who who wrote Tarzan / Land That Time Forgot + a miscalculation as to the extent to which the geeks rule the world.

There's a good article on it here (admittedly back when it was expected to be ne of History's Greatest Mistakes) The Inside Story of How John Carter Was Doomed by Its First Trailer

+ a miscalculation as to the extent to which geeks enjoy genuinely Olde Venerable Properties. This was fun silly, a horrific mistake. Geeks want emo Kinkade silly.

Well yeah, there's depth but not breadth of geek geeks and breadth but not depth of "I am a geek, I have seen Iron Man 10 times".

... Who is Kinkade? Not the painter, I assume?

The design was very nice, the action scenes were quite good. I think it failed because a) there was never a real sense of threat, just a lot of vague 'I think something really bad is going to happen if I marry this guy' and b) both of the leads were really boring. The best characters were all animated, ergo Stanton is rubbish at directing actual people.

it did look really nice. Dialogue/romance was Star Wars prequels level to me though

It's not that stories with lots of made up words and names flying about can't be compelling and popular - look at Game of Thrones. This movie just didn't give us any particular reason to care about deciphering all the fantasy nonsense.

I usually love deciphering fantasy nonsense given the chance, but in John Carter I really couldn't be bothered.

But what exactly needed deciphering? Admittedly I had a few "what was that guy's name?"/"who are they talking about?" moments, but what was going on was never really obscure.

I found it pretty tiresome to keep up with what was what to be be honest. I did fall asleep for five minutes at one point though.

+ a miscalculation as to the extent to which geeks enjoy genuinely Olde Venerable Properties. This was fun silly, a horrific mistake. Geeks want emo Kinkade silly.

― Jedmond, Friday, May 25, 2012 3:12 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

cmon this is crap. people just want a good movie. this one sucked

i don't think it sucked. it was probably better than a lot of these big would-be franchise movies, if not top rank.

in general people read too much into box office failures.

no it sucked

Nah, there are worse movies. On its face it makes far more sense than, say, making a "Battleship" movie, which also cost a buttload of money.

Venerable sci-fi/fantasy property vs. venerable board game.

It was John Carter of Blahs for me.

Ifanku.

Bored game.

honestly, judged on its own merits, battleship is a better movie (by a sliver). they're both not good though

But what exactly needed deciphering? Admittedly I had a few "what was that guy's name?"/"who are they talking about?" moments, but what was going on was never really obscure.

― the fey monster (ledge), Friday, May 25, 2012 9:13 AM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark

its not about being confused, its about crappy storytelling that just numbs you by denying you access to anything human

FCH did a really good piece on why the movie was a failure creatively:

http://badassdigest.com/2012/04/08/film-crit-hulk-smash-hulk-vs-the-john-carter-script/

xp What do you mean by that? Did Wall-E deny access to anything human? JC has human characters with human emotions, as well as scenes with recognisable human import regardless of the species of the protagonists.

Admittedly I haven't seen Battleship but in terms of original - and successful - visual design JC has to be a hundred times better.

sorry but that hulk crit is more tiresome and hard to follow than John Carter.

thats not what i meant by 'human' im talking about reacting to the humanity or lack of it in a work - the emotional content. FCH compares it to stanton's finding nemo, which is about fucking talking fish and is a million times more human than JC

john carter was also pretty boring visually, imo

yeah, thought the visual look of john carter was all p second-hand frazetta-isms, w/out any of frazetta's sensuality or grit