3 Stars (Out of 4)
See if this storyline sounds familiar. Through a set of circumstances not under his control, an alien ends up on another planet. Because of the planet's particular set of environmental habitat is vastly different from his own, he gets super powers, among them flight and greatly increased strength. He uses these powers to help the local inhabitants in a quest to bring justice to the planet. Of course, you say, his name is...John Carter? And his story is 101 years old this year? Yes, John Carter was written 20 years before Superman by the same guy who brought us the very popular Tarzan series.
The movie is one of those movies that, while not quite great, is a solid, entertaining yarn that suffered from toxic pre-release news and a badly fumbled publicity campaign. Because the $200 million plus movie was such a flop, we may not necessarily see another one, which is too bad. When we are being continually inundated with crap like the Chipmunks, The Smurfs and Madagascar, another good, family-friendly adventure story like John Carter will never be seen again. There really isn't a lot to criticize in the film. Most of the money obviously went into the special effects (which are quite spectacular), and not into casting large names. This actually works in the movie's favor because they actually got the best people for the role, and didn't rewrite the role to fit a big star. It is well acted, the special effects as I said before, are magnificent. It doesn't look as static as Lucas' horrible Star Wars prequels. The motion capture for he aliens is fluid and works well with the real elements. The story is a tad confusing. This is the biggest downfall, but not a bad one. It feels as if Disney was trying to shoehorn more than one of he novels in the movie, but this is not particularly bad. They were trying to set up for a franchise.
So what went wrong? Why did it flop? Who knows? Why does this flop but Tron do well? Or (shudder) The Chipmunks or Smurfs? My opinion is because most people haven't read or heard of the Barsoom series by Edgar Rice Burroughs (Barsoom is the native name for Mars). I would be willing to bet most people know Tarzan, though. This is the tack Disney should have taken. "See the OTHER great series from the mind that brought you Tarzan", and build on the story's built-in pedigree. A lot of people like Tarzan, or at least are familiar with it. As it was, the ad campaign was mostly another sci-fi film that nobody knows anything about. Why, then, should a parent shell out a lot of money on something that will quite possibly be stupid rather than going to a known product like The Chipmunks (shudder)? Hollywood tries to over think things a lot in that mad quest to find the next franchise. This is exhibit A. They tried to force a product on us, rather than put out a good story and let us make up our own minds. Try as they can, Hollywood cannot manufacture a cult hit. They cannot create good word of mouth. This tends to happen spontaneously. So, instead of Iron Man, they got The Punisher. Instead of Star Wars, they got Flash Gordon. The real tragedy here, is that John Carter is pretty darn good, and is worth a watch.
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