I don’t want to do a sequel, either.
Disney is a major motion picture studio, which means they bring major talent, skills, and technology to every movie they make. This makes their release of the movie John Carter (2012) all the more puzzling. We can see the skills and technology in every scene, whether it’s a natural scene on Earth, or a 90% CGI scene on Mars, because they look authentic, they look consistent, and quite often they look magnificent.
But, as so often is true, the problem appears to be the story. Now, it’s true that the original Martian series does not contain fascinating plots. The series survived on exotic locales and species, but it was not hard to spot the hero of the story, and we always knew the hero would not only survive, but be practically unscathed.
But John Carter is only very loosely based on A Princess Of Mars, the first novel of the series, as it claims in the credits. It’s true that Carter is a Confederate calvaryman, looking for gold in the antebellum Southwest, and stumbles across a way to jump between planets, if more violently than in the novel. Once across, he’s captured by the Tharks, four-armed creatures with rifles and swords. But then the tale swerves, featuring the ambulatory, predatory city Zodanga that has wiped out nearly all the opposition on Mars, with the exception of city of Helium. Zodanga’s leader is aided by therns, mysterious humanoids of magical technology.
And this is part of the problem: they’re not well enough defined that we can understand their limits. They have transporter technology, personal appearance shields, frightening weapons, and a mythology on Mars that makes them into the unbeatable. In order to appreciate Carter’s strategies, we need to know what they can and cannot do. And why are the therns fairly stupid? The therns are on Earth as well as Mars – why didn’t they realize that an Earthman would physically stronger than a Martian? Yet we see Carter breaking iron chains with his bare hands – going to Mars makes you stronger? Really??
The story moves along at a sprightly clip, which has the unfortunate effect of skipping over important character development. For example, there’s this creature I’ll call a super-dog that is fanatically attached to Carter. Why? Well, it was kicked a couple of times at a party, and Carter stops it by starting a fight. But the fight actually makes the audience overlook that entire motivation, and thus the super-dog’s loyalty, which is an important plot mechanism, seems unexplained. By comparison, in the novel the dog is badly hurt protecting some Tharks from the local wildlife, but the Tharks are about to savagely kill it when Carter intervenes and saves its life, forcing the Tharks to heal it. (It’s also too much of a super-dog, even though it may be my favorite character in the movie.) Doesn’t that seem a bit stronger of a motivation, even for a dog?
And why is it wrong for a Thark to know which other Thark is your biological parent, or a child of your’s?
It’s a pity. The CGI is beautiful, the airships of the Martians alien yet attractive, there are several strong female characters, the dialog is not awful, and occasionally becomes clever. But some characters are wasted, such as the leader of Helium, who comes across strongly in his one big scene, not to mention his Admiral, Kantos Kan, who engineers the rescue of Carter from the Zodangans by pretending to be kidnapped, a maneuver pulled off with true panache. I must admit I wished the movie was about Kan rather than Carter.
And I don’t usually mention casting in my reviews, but the lead is played by Taylor Kitsch, and I must admit I didn’t like him. Part of it is the awful hair, part of it is that he always seems confused and a little behind everyone else – which is understandable in an alien environment, but I increasingly found it frustrating.
In the end, despite a big investment the movie was a flop. It can be fun to watch, but don’t come out of it with that feeling that your life has been changed. There are just too many questions and plot holes.
