I’ve always wanted to see Princess of Mars made into a movie. But Disney got ahold of the rights. Damnit.
First, let me say what’s good about the film. The cast is awesome. Everyone is perfectly cast, and if a few other things were different this could have been the epic to end all epics. Taylor Kitsch is easily believable as a confederate cavalryman turned prospector. Lynn Collins is great as the princess. And the two are clearly made to wear loincloths. For the most part, I even thought they nailed the look (though they should have looked at Alan Moore’s take in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. 2 because they still got owned). But sadly, having the correct cast and look (almost) makes John Carter even more of a tragedy.
Now, I’m pretty sure critics don’t even watch the movies because nobody (film drew poor reviews for the most part) who panned the thing mentioned anything except that it cost too much to make. So you have my permission not to read them. What was really wrong with the movie was its cuddliness. The latest iteration of Conan had this same problem. One should not try to make a cuddly film from harsh source material. John Carter was not a nice person. He was a broken, evil man. His adventures on Mars redeemed his spirit but he was a conqueror, not a hero. He was Caesar not Jesus.
This could have been a terrifying, inspiring, sprawling epic. The 4 armed, warrior like Tharks (correctly realized) could beat the shit out of the smurfs from Avatar. But neither Disney, nor Andy Stanton (director of Finding Nemo and Wall-E) have the stomach to create characters that aren’t friendly or a movie without a clear good and bad.
I thought this movie was going to nail it at first, when the film starts on earth a Federal Cavalry Captain is trying to force John Carter to join up to fight Apache. But John Carter is such a hard boiled prick, they can’t get him to budge. They imprison him, he escapes. Repeatedly. But once on Mars (I’m not going to cover how that happens, read a book) everything is cuddly and the good guys are identifiable by their non aggressive colors, and boring. A scene where John Carter employs his superior strength (Earth’s gravity is stronger so on Mars John Carter is about 10 times stronger than everyone else) to murder around 1,000 Tharks in pitched battle should have been exciting. But it was not. It was boring, because nothing was at stake, nobody was seriously convinced the cuddly aliens could actually hurt him.
The movie isn’t terrible, its just tragic to finally have a John Carter film and have it be this.