John Carter

John Carter is the live-action (sort-of) debut of Pixar director Andrew Stanton; director of the incredibly over-rated animated hits Finding Nemo and WALL-E. The film was the most notorious bomb of the year, with Disney sinking around 250 million into this sci-fi epic with no box office stars. The rights to the Edgar Rice Burroughs novels (theBarsoom series) have been in Disney’s possession for decades but when it finally came time to releasing the film, the heavily invested studio feared the word Princess in the title would not appeal to young boys and the word Mars in the title would not appeal to people who don’t like sci-fi, so they changed the title to John Carter--a title that appeals to no one.

The film is filled with the usual digital characters battling each other, blowing stuff up, and leaping through the air in ways that might as well be flying. It generally defies all sense of our physical laws and even some of its own, but I actually think this is a decent picture--certainly better then its reviews and domestic box office performance would lead one to believe. First of all, this is based on books that were written 100 years ago when we knew nothing about what Mars was like. Burroughs (who is also the guy who wrote the Tarzan series) is one of the main writers responsible for creating the sci-fi genre. Viewed on these terms, one can accept that Mars might have air humans can breath and be able sustain all kinds of other humanoid forms.

But the main reason the film works is because of its light and humorous, but never tough-in-cheek, tone. Stanton and co-writers Mark Andrews and Michael Chabon have written a youthful adventure script with quite a few laughs that is paced is far better then either Finding Nemo or WALL-E—and better than most modern big-budget summer movies. In many ways the film is a throwback to an older kind of SciFi movie but given the full 3D, CGI treatment. It is a contemporary “Sword-and-Sandal-Picture” with a sci-fi twist

Unfortunately the cast is rather forgettable. John Carter is a movie that cries out for strong, young leads and while Taylor Kitsch and Lyn Collins are OK, they’re not enough to carry the weight of this giant picture and the supporting cast are all playing digital aliens so it almost doesn’t matter who they are.