The Case for John Carter

I think we went over this 3-4 years ago, and I know Barney wants to read about it some more, but I understand the film was mismarketed. I didn't see much besides one trailer, but I already knew the character. Seems that wasn't the case for most.

There was that outstanding fan trailer that spelled out the impact of John Carter's legacy. Maybe something along these lines would have helped?


Has anyone read the book RobertB linked to?
www.amazon.com/John-Carter-Hollywood-Mic...he+gods+of+hollywood

www.amazon.com/John-Carter-Hollywood-Mic...er+gods+of+hollywood

The author is a Burroughs fanboy, so the fact that John Carter doesn't supplant Star Wars as a Disney tentpole is beyond him. That aside, he comes to the conclusion that John Carter was criminally mismarketed. Part of it was studio politics that happened due to upper management changes at Disney, part of it was just shitting the bed on Disney's part.

I was going to post over there but this is more appropriate.

John Carter failed first and foremost because it was a bad movie. It has nothing to do with hand-wringing, money-counting corporate fatcats (the same ones that cancelled Firefly, I'm sure). It has to do with the fact that the movie reviewed poorly, word of mouth was bad and...nobody knew what the fuck it was. "Mismarketing" my ass. It has more to do with the fact that you're talking about a 100 year old character/series of books that is hardly current or timeless. I mean, Tarzan has zero traction these days so why should John Carter?

The movie was sloppy, sluggish, ugly and badly cast. It was, floor to ceiling, a vanity project for Andrew Bird. I'm sure that part of the "mismarketing" also has to do with the fact that Disney realized that they had a turkey on their hands and at some point during production (which was apparently very troubled due to Bird's attitude and arrogance) they realized that they needed to just cut their losses on it. There is no way a John Carter movie is ever going to be more than a cult curiosity, absolutely none of the DNA of what makes a successful mainstream film is in there.

Now, I'm sure y'all have your own reasons for liking the movie and I'm not here to judge, but I think a majority percentage of why you guys like the movie at all is simply because it is a John Carter movie. I love John Carter myself. But after seeing the film, I realized that it's the kind of thing that has no business being made into a film...unless it's the 1970s and Frazetta is doing the production design.

I didn't think it was conan or lotr good, but certainly better than a lot of films that received sequels and franchises:

transformers, underworld, resident evil, clash of the titan (remake), expendables, etc.

still, the John carter franchise could have been topical...climate change/dying planet.

that scene where he is fighting that tribe alone, with bodies pilling up while others are jumping in, is the closest thing to a frazetta painting that has ever been filmed.

Michael Barnes wrote: I was going to post over there but this is more appropriate.

John Carter failed first and foremost because it was a bad movie. It has nothing to do with hand-wringing, money-counting corporate fatcats (the same ones that cancelled Firefly, I'm sure). It has to do with the fact that the movie reviewed poorly, word of mouth was bad and...nobody knew what the fuck it was. "Mismarketing" my ass. It has more to do with the fact that you're talking about a 100 year old character/series of books that is hardly current or timeless. I mean, Tarzan has zero traction these days so why should John Carter?

The movie was sloppy, sluggish, ugly and badly cast. It was, floor to ceiling, a vanity project for Andrew Bird. I'm sure that part of the "mismarketing" also has to do with the fact that Disney realized that they had a turkey on their hands and at some point during production (which was apparently very troubled due to Bird's attitude and arrogance) they realized that they needed to just cut their losses on it. There is no way a John Carter movie is ever going to be more than a cult curiosity, absolutely none of the DNA of what makes a successful mainstream film is in there.

Now, I'm sure y'all have your own reasons for liking the movie and I'm not here to judge, but I think a majority percentage of why you guys like the movie at all is simply because it is a John Carter movie. I love John Carter myself. But after seeing the film, I realized that it's the kind of thing that has no business being made into a film...unless it's the 1970s and Frazetta is doing the production design.

I had no idea of the backstory/canon of John Carter. All I knew was that decades ago SPI made a game on the subject.

I tried watching the movie, honest to god. But I gave up after about a half hour. It made no sense and was boring as hell . And if you're gonna make a movie costing that much, it needs to be accessible to those who don't know the source material. You think everyone or even half the people who saw LotR read the books beforehand ? Doubt it

I am having difficulty disagreeing with Barnes. Yet, I still enjoyed it with only the barest inkling what it was about before hand.

I tried to read it when I was younger, but the language of the day made it rather obtuse for an early teen to digest. I read the series after the movie, and still found the style just as dry as it was fantastic.

I liked the film. It was fun to see the martians fleshed out so well. The whole learning to walk on barsoom could have been done better, but was faithful to the literature.

That said, the silmarilion should never be committed to film, and as much as I want barsoom on the screen, I can see why it should remain in literature.

I'll give you that, the pile-up was pure Frazetta.

But Msample has the right of it. Accessibility. That is why the LOTR films were so successful- they captured everything important about the books and made the RIGHT concessions (for the most part) to accessibility. You could step right in with Fellowship having never read the books and its themes, concepts and visuals were immediately relatable and approachable.

With John Carter, you've got this goofy Civil War thing going on, the dude goes into a cave, wakes up on Mars...and he's really not a very likable or compelling character, just sort of a "man's man" in a strange land. And there's all of this old timey sci-fi stuff that just does not register with audiences today. You put that into a film that is interminably boring and badly made and there's no marketing in the world that is going to save it. If I recall, it also opened around the same time as The Hunger Games- which was a much more youthful, accessible science fiction picture. Look at that film and how approachable it is, how well made it is, and compare it to the trudge of John Carter.

I love the folks that claim that if "Of Mars" were added to the title it would have been the next Star Wars or something. It's just not the case. Sometimes a bad movie is just a bad movie, regardless of the sinister machinations of Hollywood's Satanic elite.

Heh, I said Andrew Bird...I meant Andrew Stanton. Somehow conflated him with Brad Bird. Who probably would have made a better movie out of this.

I think that Mars itself, as the location, is a big problem. Back in the 1920's or whenever, when those were written, Mars was a big fuzzy red blob in the best telescopes of the day. We know what it looks like now - it's cold. dry, and sorely lacking in six-legged frog dogs. We know that Burroughs didn't care - BAM! We're on Mars, let's get this ball rolling. But nowdays it's one more helping of disbelief. "A Civil War veteran (yep, those are real) gets magicked (magic, I'm with you) to Mars (no air to breathe there, right?), but a Mars that's completely different from the one next door, with...(okay, I'm gonna hunt up the latest Marvel movie now)." Can we go to Avatarland instead?

That's a good point, Mars doesn't have the same exoticism as it once did...and "martians" are a joke at best, at worst they call to mind Mars Attacks. Which no one wants to remember.

Michael Barnes wrote:
But Msample has the right of it. Accessibility. That is why the LOTR films were so successful- they captured everything important about the books and made the RIGHT concessions (for the most part) to accessibility. .

Getting rid of Tom Bombadil case in point.

CinemaDome: John Carter vs Mars Attacks

The casting was questionable, but truthfully, I like the film. I think the failure came from the lack of exposure to the IP. I mean, I remember John Carter and Conan as a kid...Ask an 11 year old about R.E.H Conan today...blank stares. You can only feed so many pulp films to nostalgic white, pasty, and nerdy 40 somethings and hope to pay the bills.

Even as a huge fan of the source material (despite how similar all 11 of the novels are to one another), and early 20th-c. pulp fiction, I found them movie intolerable. As Barnes said above, it's not a question of mismarketing - although it certainly didn't help anything - but simply the fact that the movie was bland, boring and boring. It belongs to the same tier of film making as that Prince of Persia movie I never watched, and does justice to neither its old-fashioned source nor contemporary adventure cinema.

Really, I think the only way to successfully adapt the material would follow the lead of these animation tests, and just embrace its old-fashioned origins:

I think John Carter was the cause of my first (and only?) fight with Jeff White. I remember having a major beef with the trailer for the movie and how it was clearly marketed to dumb people.

I've never seen the movie.

I love Jeff White and that's more important anyway.

Black Barney wrote: I think John Carter was the cause of my first (and only?) fight with Jeff White. I remember having a major beef with the trailer for the movie and how it was clearly marketed to dumb people.

I've never seen the movie.

I love Jeff White and that's more important anyway.

Oh, man, I didn't think that was a real fight. I mean...there was no ill will on this end.