John Carter Walks Into a Bar: Possibly The Greatest Story Ever Told (John Carter 2012)

Blame can and should be leveled at the marketing, which was atrocious and seemed almost purposefully pedestrian and obtuse, but poor marketing alone can't account for Carter's box office failure. Is there an element of familiarity to some of the elements here? As you astutely note, other creators have pilfered Burroughs' text for decades. But the film has a raw vitality and life that transcends that familiarity at least for me. Yes, there are scenes and choices that don't work, but there are many, many more that do.

I'm saddened that we'll never see Stanton's follow-up film, as I feel he'd have delivered an even more accomplished, confident and exciting sequel, but I'm grateful that John Carter exists, and that Stanton and Lynn Collins have crafted such an admirably strong, funny, compelling and intelligent female character in Dejah Thoris. I very much look forward to sharing this filkm with my daughter when she's old enough.

John Carter was way superior to Avatar measured in entertainment value and otherwise. I lost a lot of respect for Jay Leno who made the Movie look like a joke and a flop by telling the whole American people what a disaster it was and ignoring the Box Office in the rest fo the world , making everybody laugh. Also the media choosed to quote and print all the negative reviews. Sadly, the audienced choosed to listen to them instead of seeing the film themselves and make up their own mind. The combined effect of all this became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

All you had to to was to take a look a the imdb discussion board, one of our social media these days. But as mentioned, also people higher up, like the authors of articles in blogs and online newspaper, had some pretty obnoxious reviews that only exposed their own lack of understanding. The saddest part is that we will probably never see to two announced sequels.

Stanton was even so sure about the success that he was working on them while the movie was in post production. Most of the masses will never realize what could have been. John Carter movie review—starring Taylor Kitsch. You are commenting using your WordPress.

You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. The Horror Lexicon And in regards to John Carter, I reckon that general audiences missed the boat — and a nice treat — by giving the film a pass. The Phantom Menace [] etc.

Yet if you gaze underneath such familiar visual trappings, you may detect that John Carter possesses a droll, sure-footed imagination, and the rollicking senses of humor and, yes, joy , that many recent space adventures have deliberately forsaken in favor of darkness, angst, and doubt.

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Directed by Andrew Stanton Finding Nemo [], Wall-E [] , John Carter is yet another one of those recent releases that met a cruel reception from reviewers; a reception that speaks more trenchantly about those reviewers and their own shortcomings than those of the film in focus. Other critics only wanted to discuss inside baseball and reinforce a behind-the-scenes story: The film was too expensive at million dollars! The director had shifted from animation to live action…why?

I wonder what these same critics would have made of Star Wars when it first premiered in Who are these Jedi Knights we keep hearing about? Who are all those aliens in the cantina? Why all this endless talk of an Imperial Senate that we never actually see? But the cardinal sin is this one: So yes, narrative-wise, the story of John Carter has been re-purposed many, many times. No point denying that. Beyond those laudable values, a mild updating of the material to include elements of the second Carter adventure, Gods of Mars provides for an interesting commentary in our modern, twenty-first century era.

And you fight like a Thark! After running afoul of U. And oddly, the gravity differential on Mars has granted Carter the strength, speed and agility of a superman. Still, John is quickly captured by the warrior-like, green-skinned, twelve-foot tall Tharks, and trained as one of their number. Attempting to find a way home to Earth, Carter comes to the rescue of Dejah, and learns that Helium and even Sab Than are being manipulated by dark, shadowy overlords known as Therns.

Their agent on Barsoom — Matai Shang Mark Strong — reveals that his people feed on societal divisions and strife, and are manipulating the planet Barsoom towards total disaster.

“Something new can come into this world” | John Carter () – FictionMachine

We simply manage it. Feed off it, if you like. Stanton stages these moments with fierce abandon and with flourishes of heroic music on the soundtrack. Carter leaps into action and attempts to break free. After Carter lunges into action, he gets smacked down… hard. This happens repeatedly perhaps three times in all , and each attempt only lands Carter in deeper trouble: Yet the sequences featuring these jump cuts reveal character traits ably as well. This is a trait that will come in handy on the desert plains of inhospitable Barsoom.

Also, the moments of Carter jumping up — and getting smacked down hard — play as direct and deliberate contrast to those later moments on Mars when the gravity difference allows the protagonist to leap into the sky…. On Barsoom — where he belongs — nothing can hold Carter back. The pointed contrast with the earlier jump-cut shots thus represents a visual recognition of destiny achieved.

Another great moment occurs as Carter teleports to Mars and attempts to stand-up and walk for the first time. Again, the unexpected occurs: Once, then again, then again and again. Carter is not instantly portrayed as a physically-competent superman, able to conquer natural forces in a single bound. Instead, we see him fall flat on his face over and over, looking every bit the fool. I admit, I haven't read Edgar Rice Borroughs' Mars-series, but as far as I know, fans of the novels were pleased with the movie adaptation, as well. To sum it up, I never had even heard of Edgar Rice Burroughs even though I read a lot of science fiction I hadn't even watched its trailer.

I chose to go to it only because I had seen all the other films showing that they were showing on the day. I am very glad that I accidentally watched it! It's one of those films It will almost certainly take its place in my film collection.. There are few movies I walked out of the theater and wanted to go back in. John Carter was definitely one of those movies.

It was an easy movie to quickly get in to. The characters felt real, John Carter was a great protagonist with an incredibly sad back-story, and the dog was surprisingly adorable. Also, I never thought I would feel human emotions for big green aliens. Everything; action, special effects, acting, writing, story, music; was seamed together seamlessly.

I went in expecting a good movie and received a masterpiece. Definitely made it into my top ten movies of all time. Everyone should see this movie. This is not a film to pass up. This film was so good that I joined IMDb just to say it is amazing! As big budget films go this one takes the cake, great story line, great action, great heart melting moments!

I heard that this got bad reviews Need I say more? Well I plan on watching it at least 10 more times!!! I now plan to read all the books this was based on, as i haven't felt this excited about a film since well I don't know. I am still in shock at how kick ass this film was Even the ending was great. Now what else do I need to do to get you to go see this film?

John Carter of Mars was an epic. A detailed story, written in a time when pulp fiction was a cultural phenomenon like today's epic superhero movies. This is not a wham bam in your face Avengers movie, but a grand epic with a tribute to one of the greatest American writers of his time: Thank you Disney for your bold efforts. Sales might be the standard of today, but in the hearts of John Carter fans this was a great movie.

Put to the screen with taste, class, and detail that will let this story live on. May your efforts be rewarded with continued sales as this movie finds its way toward cult status. Star Wars is SO ripped off of that book So it's great that someone finally tackled the one and only original. And it's quite a good adaptation. I enjoyed seeing Burroughs' creations brought to life, and I enjoyed "John Carter" as a movie in its own right.

It's not a great film The same sort, but not the same one. The movie takes liberties with the original material ERB's original story would be creaky by today's standards, so there's no use being too faithful. But some of the departures are needless and poorly chosen.

The first compromise is the title. It tells you pretty much exactly what to expect: It could refer to just about anything, from a hard-boiled detective story to a teen romance. It may seem like a small thing, but the title really did color audiences' reactions to the film. Yes, the original title would have seemed strange in today's culture, but that would have worked in its favor. The change of title was a weak decision, made by a committee.

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Another compromise is the way the film starts. The whole introductory segment with the airborne battle on Mars is not only pointless, it drastically weakens the story. We should have discovered that environment as Carter does, and not had a sneak-peek ahead of time. This weakens our sense of identification with Burroughs' interplanetary Odysseus, and shifts the emphasis to the story, which was never ERB's strong suit.

This was another decision made by a gutless committee. Someone in a meeting said: They were dead wrong. To make great movies you have to take chances, build at the pace dictated by the material, and trust your audience to come along. The final, and most significant, compromise lay in attempting to modernize the story. I recently re-read the first several Mars books, for the first time in decades. They're surprisingly intimate, low-key affairs. There's a background of great events, but the real story takes place on a very human scale.

There are conversations, confrontations. Meetings in darkened rooms. The action is there, but it's far from 'non-stop. It really makes sense only when seen in that historical context. And it then acquires an extra nostalgic dimension, giving us an insight into the mind and imagination of that far-gone era. Modernizing the story homogenizes it, and makes it seem like a me-too creation.

Going for more of a retro, steampunk look would have emphasized that this is THE granddaddy of all interplanetary adventures. A more explanatory marketing campaign would have helped too. Going for more of an old-fashioned feel would also have allowed the film to preserve some of ERB's marvelous literary quality. His plots may have been pure melodrama, but his language was amazingly poetic.

Re-reading the Mars books, I found myself frequently pausing to marvel at a particular sentence, or a single phrase: Some of that should have made it's way into the dialog of "John Carter.

I'd have liked the air battle of "John Carter" to have been replaced with something like that. Fortunately, the film does capture many other elements of ERB's vision. The green Tharks, for one. They simply could not be better I also adored the choice of Lynn Collins to play Dejah Thoris. Though, of course, she should have been wearing full red-skin makeup. She's not exactly a powerhouse in the acting department, but she's got the perfect look; she's exactly the Princess of Mars that I wanted to see. I'd have loved to see her grow into the part through a long course of sequels All in all, despite its limitations, "John Carter" is a fine adventure film, that does manage to convey at least some of the magic of Edgar Rice Burroughs' writing.

It does require a stronger-than-usual suspension of disbelief, but I'd recommend it highly to fans of classic swashbucklers. Oscar winning "Finding Nemo" director Andrew Stanton struggles to make Edgar Rice Burroughs' vintage cowboys and aliens epic "John Carter" into a spontaneous, larger-than-life, saga about tyranny and rebellion on the Red Planet. Burroughs penned his colorful pulp escapism about a century ago in before stories like it became commonplace. Since Hollywood lacked the computer generated technology to make the world of fantasy appear believable on celluloid, the filmmakers preoccupied themselves with Burroughs' less challenging Tarzan novels.

By the time Tinsel town conjured up the technology to produce movies about similar escapades on other worlds, the studios had gone off on their own tangents. In other words, the John Carter novels languished in obscurity, while later epics like "Star Wars," "Dune," and "Avatar" emerged and appropriated similar themes.

What had been groundbreaking when Burroughs wrote it now looks hackneyed, even though Burroughs forged the formula that others imitated. The cinematic "John Carter" gives new meaning to the adage about the first being last. Seventh Cavalry tries to recruit him to combat hostile Apaches. Carter refuses not only because this isn't his fight, but also because he has already the Civil War claimed the lives of his wife and daughter. Carter escapes from the guardhouse, purloins a horse, and absconds into wilds. Our hero doesn't get far before he finds himself caught between the Apaches and the trigger-happy cavalry.

Gunfire erupts and Carter struggles to escape from the predatory redskins. Scrambling for the sanctuary of a cave that the superstitious savages refuse to enter, he surprises an ethereal alien with a supernatural medallion. Carter blasts this extraterrestrial, confiscates the pendant, and then suddenly finds himself sprawled on distant Mars.

Mars resembles the rugged American southwest with its inhospitable terrain and inhabitants. He encounters tall, light-green warriors. These fellows boast an additional pair of arms, heads that resemble the Mutant Ninja Turtles, and large three-toed feet. These four-armed creatures with small tusks protruding from their jaws behave like barbarous African tribesmen and have domesticated animals to serve as their beasts of burden. When Carter isn't tangling with their garrulous giants, he contends with striking humanoid natives covered with tattoos who fly extraordinary mechanical airships which resemble Leonardo da Vinci's designs.

The barbarians reside in the outlands, while the humanoids live in metropolitan cities of Helium and Zodanga. Basically, a civil war has been raging for a thousand years between these rivals when John Carter arrives. A mysterious society of Therns, led by the villainous Matai Shang Mark Strong , who serve the goddess Issus, intervenes and arms the Zodangans with a powerful weapon called the Ninth Ray. Helium has nothing to match this devastating blue laser technology.

The Therns, however, refuse to let the Zodangans annihilate Helium. The defiant Princess flees, and Sab Than pursues her. He destroys her ship, buts she falls into John Carter's arms. On Mars, our eponymous protagonist isn't the same fellow as he was in Virginia. He can leap vast distances and packs a haymaker of a punch that drops his adversaries as if they were straw. Predictably, Carter falls in love with the princess, and she reciprocates.

Happily, this franchise inducing nonsense isn't too Disneyesque, but they have taken considerable liberties with Burroughs' book. Anybody who has seen enough sci-fi fantasies will spot the elements that inspired those who came after Burroughs to use them in their movies. You don't need a Cliff Notes guide to distinguish the heroes from the villains on Mars. Incidentally, Mars isn't really Mars. Instead, the natives refer to it as Barsoom. One of the problems with any movie about an alien world is the environment as well as the natives.

Everything might as well be happening on Earth for all of the difference that it makes. Since our hero is a foreigner on Mars, he learns rather painfully that his human powers enable him to do things in their atmosphere that he couldn't accomplish at home. The action often bogs down in complications, and it appears that some of the plot doesn't reach the screen. Further, the leads lack charisma. Taylor Kitsch supplies sufficient brawn, but he acts like a wooden Johnny Depp, while Lynn Collins looks like she has spent more time in the gym than a science laboratory. Dominic West fares best with his arrogant portrayal of an enemy bent on destruction, but you never really hate him with any passion.

He is more of a pawn of the Therns. The enigmatic Therns are an irritating bunch of opportunists with a nasty habit of shape-shifting into other characters. Altogether, despite it picturesque settings, "John Carter" emerges as a predictable yarn that delivers few revelations. The previews looks good but the reviews came in shaky. Still the girls and I wanted to see John Carter.

I am so very glad that we did. This was an excellent show! Engaging, moving, exciting, moral lesson and clean family enjoyment. What the movies have been missing for so long. As the scenes rolled by you were reminded of so many of your favorite shows especially for SciFi fans like this family.

You just can't get enough. A Part 2 would not be enough.

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This is movie set up to live on for years to come. The story draws you in and is highly addictive. Just finished watching and already I want more. Guys, seriously I think it's time for me to jump to these groups of people reviewing a movie and rating it after it ends, cause people don't have taste or they are simple haters. The movie is meant to surprise you the whole time. You just wonder what'll happen along the way. You get the feeling someone is reading you a fairy tail and you don't want to go to sleep until you get the story.

I built that stone wall with my bare hands. Found every stone, placed them just so through the rain and the cold. But do they call me MacGregor the stone wall builder? I built that pier with my bare hands. Drove the pilings against the tide of the sand, plank by plank. But do they call me MacGregor the pier builder? But you fuck one goat Storytelling -- Laughter is joke telling. It's knowing your punchline, your ending, knowing that everything you're saying, from the first sentence to the last, is leading to a singular goal, and ideally confirming some truth that deepens our understandings of who we are as human beings.

We all love stories. We're born for them. Stories affirm who we are. We all want affirmations that our lives have meaning. And nothing does a greater affirmation than when we connect through stories. It can cross the barriers of time, past, present and future, and allow us to experience the similarities between ourselves and through others, real and imagined. The children's television host Mr.

Rogers always carried in his wallet a quote from a social worker that said, "Frankly, there isn't anyone you couldn't learn to love once you've heard their story. We all know what it's like to not care. You've gone through hundreds of TV channels, just switching channel after channel, and then suddenly you actually stop on one.

It's already halfway over, but something's caught you and you're drawn in and you care. That's not by chance, that's by design. So it got me thinking, what if I told you my history was story, how I was born for it, how I learned along the way this subject matter? And to make it more interesting, we'll start from the ending and we'll go to the beginning. And so if I were going to give you the ending of this story, it would go something like this: And that's what ultimately led me to speaking to you here at TED about story.

And the most current story lesson that I've had was completing the film I've just done this year in The film is "John Carter. And Edgar Rice Burroughs actually put himself as a character inside this movie, and as the narrator. And he's summoned by his rich uncle, John Carter, to his mansion with a telegram saying, "See me at once. You won't find a keyhole. Thing only opens from the inside. He insisted, no embalming, no open coffin, no funeral. You don't acquire the kind of wealth your uncle commanded by being like the rest of us, huh? Come, let's go inside.

What this scene is doing, and it did in the book, is it's fundamentally making a promise. It's making a promise to you that this story will lead somewhere that's worth your time. And that's what all good stories should do at the beginning, is they should give you a promise. You could do it an infinite amount of ways. Sometimes it's as simple as "Once upon a time And I always thought it was such a fantastic device.

It's like a guy inviting you around the campfire, or somebody in a bar saying, "Here, let me tell you a story. It didn't happen to me, it happened to somebody else, but it's going to be worth your time. In , I pushed all the theories that I had on story at the time to the limits of my understanding on this project. It's the purest form of cinematic storytelling. It's the most inclusive approach you can take.

It confirmed something I really had a hunch on, is that the audience actually wants to work for their meal. They just don't want to know that they're doing that. That's your job as a storyteller, is to hide the fact that you're making them work for their meal. We're born problem solvers.

We're compelled to deduce and to deduct, because that's what we do in real life. It's this well-organized absence of information that draws us in. There's a reason that we're all attracted to an infant or a puppy. It's not just that they're damn cute; it's because they can't completely express what they're thinking and what their intentions are. And it's like a magnet. We can't stop ourselves from wanting to complete the sentence and fill it in.

I first started really understanding this storytelling device when I was writing with Bob Peterson on "Finding Nemo. Make the audience put things together. Don't give them four, give them two plus two. The elements you provide and the order you place them in is crucial to whether you succeed or fail at engaging the audience.