John Carter (US Dir-Andrew Stanton) I watched this film shortly after its release on Blu Ray/DVD long after the negative reception the film had recieved during its disappointing box office run. I have always been one to dismiss any critics opinion & watch anything that appeals to me regardless of its reputation or its budgetary limitations. In John Carters case the budget was never going to be an issue either way because it was one of the most expensive films ever made & coming from Disney i knew this live action feature would deliver as a visual spectacle if nothing else. The film also beared a striking resemblance to Disneys earlier film Prince Of Persia:The Sands Of Time. I loved that film but i do feel that John Carter coming along so soon after P.O.P may have worked against it a little & confused those who had judged it on its appearence alone. There have been many expensive films over the years that were savaged by critics. Dune, Waterworld & Battlefield Earth are three examples from three different decades & i thoughrally enjoyed all three. More recently there was Avatar which recieved a mixed response but when compared to the reception John Carter recieved it is truly shocking. I loved Avatar & while John Carter did not move me like Avatar did, i still thought it was a breathtaking piece of work with stronger performances & characterization than Avatar. Plotwise John Carter is nothing any Sci Fi/Fantasy/Adventure fan will not have seen before but one claim that John Carpenter has above all that came before it, is perhaps the most immortal truth of the entire genre...JOHN CARTER CREATOR EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS INSPIRED THEM ALL!!! While i had not read the stories that were first published in 1912, i have done enough research over the years to familiarise myself with the characters & the story. I quickly realised that this truly is the grandaddy of ALL Sci Fi/Fantasy/Adventure yarns whether they be in literary, comic book or motion picture form. Flash Gordon! Dune! Star Wars! Krull! Superman! The Neverending Story! Masters Of The Universe! Avatar! ETC! Edgar Rice Burroughs pulpy Sci Fi Fantasy Adventure inspired them all in some way & to call this film adaptation derivitive of any of them would be to piss in the wind! Do i like the film Star Wars more than the film John Carter? YES! Do i like Superman the film more than John Carter the film? YES! Do i like Avatar the film more than John Carter the film? In a way YES! I still feel John Carter is a magnificent film acomplishment however & in no way deserving of the hate it recieved. I feel part of the problem is that in the present day, a film of John Carter just feels all to familiar to us who have been weined on Star Wars & the like. Another problem is that John Carter will admitadly take a couple of watches to fully engage with the characters & grasp the scope of the story. Unlike Star Wars which had irresistable characters & worlds that leapt off the screen & into the imaginations of viewers, John Carter does not exactly have the same effect initially & the over familiarity of a story dealing with warring tribes complete with stereotypical accents may be too much for viewers today to want to care about. That is not the fault of the film at all, it is just the way things are in the world today! The real magic of John Carter comes from our own Humanity & our sense of wonder at the planets closer to home rather than those created for our imaginations. The planet Mars is the focus of the John Carter stories & the film like the original Total Recall succeeds in captivating the viewer with its beautifully realised Martian surface. Total Recall presented a dark, dangerous, cold & claustrophobic Mars but John Carter presents a calmer, sprawling & sunkissed landscape that the viewer is able to ogle for the majority of the piece. John Carter presents a living, though dying Mars which manages to feel authentic while differing enough from other Mars set films to deliver a one of a kind experience. John Carter is an Earthling from the 1800s who is unwittingly transported to Mars only to discover that it is heavily populated, wartorn & whose inhabitants both Alien & Humanoid refer to their planet as Barsoom(and Earth as Jarsoom). The sequence where Carter first finds himself on Mars & struggling with the laws of this new gravity is a slave to is one of the most wonderful sequences i have seen in any Sci Fi/Fantasy of recent times & a nice introduction for the character to his new home. The script never insults the intelligence of the viewer & there is an abundance of rich science at its heart that remains for the duration. Not merely science of the planet but also science of the mind as the depth of characterization becomes clear as the film progresses. John Carter may suffer from a few cliches but it makes up for them by presenting a script more intelligent than the usual Disney film. Some of the themes dealt with as we learn more about the more mysterious characters are pretty radical & provacative. The acting allround is great, although leading man Taylor Kitsch may come across as your typical gruff hero its really upto fans of the novels if he captures their idea of John Carter. For me the best performance of the film comes from Lynn Collins who plays The Princess Of Barsoom/Mars. Collins delivers a performance of true conviction & easily outshines Kitsch in every scene they share. Their chemistry is not perfect but its adequete enough & does get better as the film progresses. British actors Dominic West & Mark Strong play the obligatory Brit-accented villains but their characters are not pantomime or typically villainous at all. Mark Strongs shapeshifter in particular is very interesting while Wests tyrannical warrior is a little better written than his usual genre archtypes. The actor sequences are as epic & spectacular as youd expect while the score by Michael Gacchino serves the film well despite not being anywhere near as iconic as those for Star Wars or Superman. John Carter is a film any Sci Fi/Fantasy/Adventure fan should experience & in no way deserving of its reputation. Just because an expensive film does not recoup its budget at the box office does not make it a bad film! A financial failure does not mean the product is itself a failure! Bad press, lacklustre marketing & perhaps the fact that the grandaddy of its genre was released 100 years after more than 100 novels, comics & films imitated it in some way. That is why John Carter failed at the box office, NOT because it stank like the hugely successful Transformers films did! John Carter will not got down as an alltime classic but the film is still one of the best of its genre & definetly one of Disneys best of recent memory. A lavish, visually awesome & sprawling tale thats a nice balance of old fashioned fairytale & allegory thats still relevant today. youtube/watch?v=nlvYKl1fjBI&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 17:02:41 +0000
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