Virag's Movie Reviews: John Carter (2012)

Flop, yes, but not an awful movie.  The John Carter was nothing special, and perhaps a more charismatic leading man could have made the film more compelling.  The girl was good though; I appreciated that she was not overly rail-thin, which is a bonus in movies.  John Carter looked okay, and the filmmakers tried their best to stay close to the books but perhaps not close enough.  On the other hand, given that the source material has influenced and been ripped off by writers and directors for a hundred fucking years, perhaps the filmmakers could have taken the basic plot and the atmosphere of the original source material and made a much more coherent story.  The first thing that stuck out was the astral projection plot device.  Yes, it was part of the Barsoom stories, but I have always found that pretty stupid.  What they should have done was make the conduit to Mars a physical thing like a Stargate or E-R Bridge or something.  That leads to the second point: the Barsoom of the story should have existed 500,000 years ago.  That would explain why Mars is dead now (and was dead during the 1870's too), but John Carter was transported by that wormhole thing to a planet in his far past, a planet that still supported life.  Those two things alone would have the movie much better, but Disney is not known for getting too worried about getting it just right.