John Carter

I loved this movie which is based on the Barsoom series of books, written by Edgar Rice Burroughs and published in 1912.

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The story behind the making of this film is long and complicated, as many groups of people tried to bring it to the screen over the years. Some of the reasons for the various projects being derailed are bad scripts, the wrong director, technology not being ready for the action shots, and dumb assumptions on the part of movie execs. When it did finally go into production in 2009, with Andrew Staton of Pixar at the helm, there was so much discord at the studio that it’s miraculous that the film was finished and made any money at all.

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Between all the post-production work, the cost of reshooting some scenes, and the adding of additional scenes at the last minute, this is one of the most expensive movies ever made.

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And even though this was planned as the first of a trilogy of films, and set an opening-day record in Russia, it lost between $149 and 265 million with North American audiences. For the studio to even consider making the second and third films, John Carter had needed to make $700 million: it made $284 million. But that’s not the movie’s fault!

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The marketing of it has been called “one of the worst marketing campaigns in movie history”, and much has been written and recorded about why that is. All that said, let me share a bit about the movie itself, which is an action-packed love story that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

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The plot revolves around John Carter, a disgruntled captain of the Confederate Army who, through a chance interaction with someone in a cave, wakes up to find himself on Mars. He befriends a race of green giants with four arms who save him from the desert. And while he tries to stay out of the war happening on Mars, his friendship with a beautiful, human warrior-scientist princess puts him right in the center of it.

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There are plenty of excellent action scenes, the races and creatures are extremely well-imagined, the CGI is well-done, and the plot is solid. It strikes a good balance between quiet, emotional moments and loud sword fights and battle scenes.

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John Carter is played by Canadian actor Taylor Kitsch, who is handsome, but the way they styled his hair in this (really unattractively and hiding his face most of the time) tones his presence way down. We don’t love John Carter because he’s a handsome action hero. We love him because he’s honest, wily, and wears his heart on his sleeve.

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There are some major players in this (including Willem Defoe, Dominic West, and Bryan Cranston), but their roles are small or they are the animating force of CGI characters. The princess is played by an actor straight out of Juilliard.

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The casting is clever because none of the actors overshadow Mark Strong’s character. He plays one of a race of entities who are the ultimate bad guys, profiting off war and the destruction of the planet.

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This is a science-fiction romp. Highly recommended!