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

doesn't indicate the movie has one, tbh

really enjoyed it, up until about 2/3 way through where it starts to drag a little/feel overly familiar

The case with every decent genre movie I've seen in the last umpteen years. The front half is ALWAYS twice as good as the back half. Screenwriterly ppl need to forget everything they think is necessary about 'third acts' IMO.

That said, still super psyched to see this.

i think a lot of that is that its just plain easier to introduce a good concept than it is to follow through on it

tim riggins is in this movie

lol shirtless tim riggins is like... i am clicking on a thread about this movie

exactly

who tf is tim riggins? sounds like a ship's boy in a dickens novel.

Friday Night Lights

u better recognize

doesn't indicate the movie has one, tbh

there's a guy called john carter, he is on mars, there are fights, what else do you need to know

i don't know. i mean, partly there's the problem that the novel opens basically "so one day after we'd lost the civil war to those damn northerners i had a nap and then i was on mars", i think the first part of that is a tough sell for a trailer

the trailers do nothing to convey that hes on mars

Not really! I think they could conveniently not mention his allegiance in the Civil War in the trailer, but there's no indication in the press materials that this is a "guy from 1800s gets transported to Mars" flick.

they do nothing to convey:
- the year
- the setting
- that he had a life before being shirtless in what appears to be New Mexico with a bunch of green people

i don't know, maybe it's hard to get past the fact that i already know the plot of the novel, but the superbowl trailer seems to clearly express: this guy is from earth. he winds up on an alien planet via mysterious means. he ends up in some military-hero role for alien dudes.

my main problem with it is that every line spoken suggests people talk like absolute goobers throughout the movie, tbh? but i'm not sure what else you'd go for with the source material, playing it straight sort of requires that you end up with something incredibly easy to make fun of in that line

re: time: the long-form trailer has a bunch of shots in, well, it looks more like victorian england? but that's another problem, and has people going 'whatever happened to john carter we really don't know', then cut to shirtless new mexico

there's no indication that theres any kind of story at all. you can get away with a suggestive teaser trailer that doesn't tell you anything, if it's intriguing or eyecatching in some way, but eventually you do need a trailer that at least gives you a basic 'what is this about' kind of gist. disney obviously has zero confidence in the movie and thinks they have to ambush people with the mars element and the period element, but all that leaves you with is shirtless white guy jumping high (i dont know anything about friday night lights but this taylor kitsch guy looks like a black hole of charisma)

watch what u say abt Tim Riggins

FUCK TIM RIGGINS!!!!

i think "transported to mars" is a tough sell too, because lol mars he's clearly running around with no shirt on and yelling and doing fine -- the long-running 'let us totally ignore everything we actually know about mars!' SF conceit having not been established in film afaik

and yeah the dramatic 'he jumps really high! like really really high!' is pretty woeful

idk i don't really think this qualifies as 'a good trailer' but having heard eight million times the complaint that blockbuster trailers always just give you the whole plot i think it's odd that this becomes the site of complaint for this

(in the academy this is going to be the most pointlessly overdiscussed mediocre film since basic instinct 2)

i... im sorry...

wait, dominic west is in this?

We're all in this.

I'm Woola.

;_;

basic instinct 2 had some merit

Will John Carters of Earth see John Carter?

Lotta dead John Carters huh.

John Carter of Iowa
John Carter of North Dakota

tim riggins is a charisma supernova fyi

otm

calling actors by their TV names is annoying, esp when he's got a great name like Kitsch

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Tim Riggins will be the highpoint of his career

Okay thank you for clearing that up, I was wondering who this Tim Riggins guy was when everyone seemed to be talking about Kitsch...

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Tim Riggins will be the highpoint of his career

idk he wore a swimsuit p well in 'the covenant' but probably

it's less depressing to call him Tim Riggins, that way I can pretend Battleship and X Men never happened

Anyway, looks like I will be seeing this thing tomorrow with some friends who are Edgar Rice Burroughs fiends and have been hoping like hell it succeeds. So...we'll see.

Keen to find out your thoughts, Ned. fyi you're gonna be my weathervane on this thing

"It was all about Woola's buttface! Oh yeah some dude in a loincloth."

and then there was this crazy pod race in the middle...

"Use your light saber John...oh my!"

looool

Rich Juzwiak ‏ @RichJuz: My favorite thing about John Carter is that its first line is "Mars!" (in voice over).

:D

i want to see this badly because i love the "planetary romance" genre (SPACE: 1889!) and the guardian review gives me some much-needed hope for the film

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/ba/Adventures_of_buckaroo_banzai.jpg

i am also vajazzled for this, though i refuse to specifically endorse "planetary romance" on the grounds that it sounds suspiciously like something that twirly moustache steampunk ppl would fancy.

buckaroo bonzai now and forever

Not this review?

http://m.guardian.co.uk/ms/p/gnm/op/s0NXmqAl4Z9LR-DQO91AOkg/view.m?id=15&gid=film/2012/mar/08/john-carter-review&cat=most-read

block that metaphor:

I felt as if someone had dragged me into the kitchen of my local Greggs, and was baking my head into the centre of a colossal cube of white bread.

^ a feeling i think we all know well

wtf

reviewer took too many mushrooms in prep