John Carter - Review (Updated June 10, 2012)

A Civil War soldier becomes Mars' greatest hero.

John Carter opened yesterday March 9, 2012. It is a fun ride a fast-paced adventure with a lot of heart. One must take it for what it is...a cinematic portrayal of a 100 year old science fiction novel. You have flying machines and laser like space guns yet the combatants still fight with swords and knives, while riding huge beasts as if they were horses. So, just suspend your disbelief and enjoy it for what it is.

To read more in depth on the making of the film, behind the scenes, photos
 and watch many more trailers click the logo below or HERE.

John Carter

Action/Adventure/Drama‎

Rated PG-13 (Some language-nothing worse than broadcast TV.)

2hr 19min‎‎
Playing on regular screen or in 3D and in IMAX 3D at select locations
$250 Million production budget
Director: Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, Wall-E)

Cast:        Taylor Kitsch (Friday Night Lights)

                Lynn Collins

                Bryan Cranston

                Ciarán Hinds

                James Purefoy

                Mark Strong

                Willem Dafoe

Rating: B

 Box Office UPDATE:

Total Lifetime Grosses (as of June 10, 2012)

Domestic:	$72,884,435	25.8%
+ Foreign:	$209,700,000	74.2%
= Worldwide:	$282,584,435

Personally I think something sells about the whole money issue here. The production and promotion numbers seem dubious at best.

There are a lot of questions here.

1. Disney claims the production costs (among the highest for any film to date) range from $250-300 million. Really? Is it so easy to lose track of $50 million, 20% of the budget? How do you misplace $50 million? Who are your accountants, Congress? Barny Franks? Chris Dodd? (He is the new CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, can you believe MPAA is paying that crook $1.5 million anally.)
2. Disney claims it cost approximately $300 million to promote and distribute the film. Really? Why did it cost $50 million more to promote it than make it? Why couldn't it have been promoted as economically as any number of other blockbusters? 
3. Disney claims even before the film opens that it is expecting a $200 million dollar loss. Really? Why would they sabotage the film's opening weekend where a film makes the majority of its box office? Why tell the news media that a turkey is on the way, why scare off your audience before it opens?
4. Disney did a lousy promotion job. Using the name John Carter with no reference, to speak of, to Edgar Rice Burroughs, or to the previous successful hits by Director Andrew Stanton. Most references were negative in that they mentioned that it was his first attempt at live action.
5. Me thinks there is some 'creative accounting' afoot at Disney. Word is that there will be a very strong DVD/Blu-ray market. Disney is not likely to loose the amount that they have bandied about. It may have been inside politics, a cover for ousting Studio Chairman Rich Ross. Not to mention the benefits of tax right-offs for a Mega-bomb loss.

This is Edgar Rice Burroughs' 100 year old Western/Space/Fantasy novel, A Princess of Mars brought to the big screen, especially big if you choose to see it in IMAX 3D. 

I'm not all that big on 3D versions so I chose to see it in the regular 2D version.

Taylor Kitsch stars as the title character in "John Carter."
Photo: Frank Connor / Copyright © 2010 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

For Edgar Rice Burroughs fans the script is very loyal to the book. Stanton and his writing partners deserve credit for injecting Burroughs’ original tale with just enough modern sensibility to preserve a necessary suspension of disbelief for a film like John Carter. No small feat, when one considers how much the general public knows about Mars today as compared to what was known way back in 1912, when A Princess of Mars was first published.

Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe, left) and John Carter (Taylor Kitsch, right) meet for the first time.
John Carter (TM) ERB, Inc. / ©2011 Disney. John Carter (TM) ERB, Inc

The film opens with John Carter on the streets of NYC trying to ditch an unknown stalker. He slips into a telegraph office where he summons a young Edgar Rice Burrows in a terse memo to come and see him immediately without any explanation. He arrives at his wealthy uncle's estate where John Carter's manservant informs him that his uncle had died just hours before his arrival and has already been entombed in a mausoleum that opens only from the inside. John Carter has left his entire estate to his young nephew as well as his journals. It is when he begins to read the journal that the mystery begins to unfold.

John Carter (Taylor Kitsch)

This is the story of a rebel spirited, war-weary, former Confederate Captain John Carter. While searching for gold in the Arizona desert he is mysteriously transported to Mars where he becomes reluctantly embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions amongst the inhabitants of the planet, including Tars Tarkas, who calls him Virginia and the captivating Princess Dejah Thoris. In a world on the brink of collapse. 

Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe, center), John Carter (Taylor Kitsch, right)
John Carter (TM) ERB, Inc. / ©2011 Disney. John Carter (TM) ERB, Inc

One of the first things that you notice about John Carter is the spectacular scope of the world conceived by Burroughs in his stories and brought to life on the screen by Stanton. There’s a very real sense of wonder throughout the film that’s hard to dismiss, you are eager to see what unique settings lie over the ridge, beyond the next mountain or around the corner. It’s the sort of vision that anyone creating a fantastic world on paper hopes for when the dream is brought to fruition. Aside from that, since most of that fabulous world was created and filmed in my home state of Utah and the story starts in my other hometown of NYC, I have to give it a nod don't I? 

Tal Hajus with arms upraised
Credit: © Disney Enterprises, Inc

Carter wants only to return to Earth and resists being drawn into a fight that is not his own and where he trusts no one. Eventually, however, he rediscovers his humanity and purpose when he realizes that the survival of Barsoom and its people rests in his hands.

Airship Overhead in "John Carter"
Credit: © Disney Enterprises, Inc

This maybe Stanton’s first venture into directing live action, but with Finding Nemo and Wall-E under his belt he is not a novice by any means in maintaining the balance between old school action and new school blockbuster techniques. The film has a mix of some of the best elements from Avatar, Flash Gordon and Star Wars.

L to R: Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe), John Carter (Taylor Kitsch)
Credit: ©2011 Disney. JOHN CARTER™ ERB, Inc.

It is no secret that Disney would like to see a franchise grow out of this opening epic. There is most certainly no dearth of material, Mr. Burroughs penned 11 books in the continuing saga. Whether or not Disney's John Carter can produce the required following 100 years later out of today's youthful high tech market is something we will probably be able to determine within the next few weeks. Opening this weekend without any major competition should guarantee the #1 spot at the box office. Holding on to that spot will be a whole different proposition but if it does you can expect to see more of John Carter and his friends in southern Utah...er a ...on Mars. 

Matai Shang (Mark Strong) with Warhoons
©2011 Disney. JOHN CARTER™ ERB, Inc.

Woola is a Calot, a large, lizard-like dog, that takes space hero, John Carter as his master.
        Credit: ©2011 Disney. JOHN CARTER™ ERB, Inc.

The city of Helium, "The Jewel of Barsoom (Mars)," is the home of Princess Dejah ThorisCredit: ©Disney Enterprises, Inc

"John Carter," stars Lynn Collins and Taylor Kitsch, is based on a story by author Edgar Rice Burroughs. Photo: Frank Connor / Copyright © 2010 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Star Taylor Kitsch, front, tries to avoid creatures in "John Carter."
Photo: Frank Connor / MCT

Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins) is Princess of Helium
         Credit: Frank Connor/©2011 Disney

This little guy was just 6" tall. I was happy to have caught a little bit of Frank Frazetta in this tiny maquette.

TEVES DESIGN STUDIO » SCULPTURE » Little John Carter maquette
More pre-poduction design models: L to R, Thark, John Carter, Thoat

In the Utah desert, Andrew Stanton and his production team found the perfect location to recreate Edgar Rice Burroughs landscape of Mars.  Click here for more details from Director Andrew Stanton, the production team, and cast members, on what went into adapting Burroughs’ “Princess of Mars” into the feature film “John Carter.”

Behind the Scenes: On Saturday, June 5, 2010, crewmembers, working on location in Utah, found a large bone protruding from the ground.  The Bureau of Land Management confirmed it was in fact a Sauropod bone — either a femur or scapula — from a dinosaur that could have been 60ft long.  An excavation is currently taking place to retrieve the rest of the prehistoric skeleton discovered by the “John Carter” crew.

BTS, L to R: Director Andrew Stanton, John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) Photo by: Frank Connor ©2011 Disney. JOHN CARTER™ ERB, Inc.

Disney Editions is right on track, and this is worthy of recognition: not only are they issuing the requisite companion novel, they’re also coming out with attractively-packaged reprints of all eleven ERB novels set on Mars, the world its inhabitants call Barsoom – taking a page from the classic old Doubleday Book Club editions by grouping the novels together in omnibus volumes rather than putting out eleven stand-alone books. Readers of a certain age will remember the spectacular productions that were those old Doubleday hardcovers – the minimal cover copy, the line-drawings throughout, and most of all those exquisite covers featuring, the late, Frank Frazetta’s iconic realizations of our sword-wielding hero John Carter, the ex-Confederate Virginia man mysteriously transported to Mars, where his Earth-born muscles give him fantastic physical strength and speed. Readers of those volumes – or the wonderful set of eleven paperbacks put out by Del Rey in the 1970s and featuring some almost equally beautiful covers by Michael Whelan – may long have dreamt of this event: a lavish movie adaptation of their cherished stories. Movie critics will have their say (their early notices have not been kind to poor gravel-voiced Taylor Kitsch – one critic quipped that he shows so little vitality he might as well be watching the movie rather than starring in it), but it’s those long-time fans who constitute the show’s truest judges. They are the ones who’ve spent countless hours daydreaming of adventures on ERB’s exotic faraway world, with its red men and green men and ferocious white apes and flashing sabers and flying ships.

Buy the novels in Kindle or book form and poster art here.

 See more Frank Frazetta here buy posters etc. here.