Who is John Carter? ~ Movie Review of ‘John Carter’

With a budget of a quarter of a million dollars Disney had a lot riding on this film so why in the world did they change the title from A Princess of Mars to the less sellable John Carter?  The film has made about fifty million domestically, but internationally it is fairing much better; this considering that besides from Mars the rest of the movie is an American tale.   

 

                John Carter is based on an Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series which was first serialized as Under the Moons of Mars in 1912 and novelized in 1917 as A Princess of Mars.  The Barsoom novels were Burroughs’ second most known series behind his Tarzan books.  The stories were of the science fiction action adventure genre and aimed at younger readers but also enjoyed by adults (think Harry Potter) according to my father who enjoyed the novels as a young boy.  Although he seldom mentions movies he would like to see, ‘John Carter’ was one.  He also stated that Princess Dejah Thoris was one of his first crushes. 

 

                To fully appreciate the movie’s storyline it helps to understand the source material otherwise it just looks like a big budget Avatar knockoff.  The action begins in 1881 with John Carter (rising star Taylor Kitsch) fleeing a man following him in a large city.  He ends up sending a telegraph to his nephew asking the young man to come and visit him immediately.  His nephew is met at the train station by Carter’s butler who has the unpleasant task of informing the young Edgar Rice Burroughs (see what the film producers did there?) that his beloved uncle has died unexpectedly.  Along with inheriting his uncle’s fortune Ned (the name he goes by instead of Edgar) is given the man’s journal written only for Ned’s eyes.  And thus starts the real beginning of the story.

 

                The year is 1868 and Carter is in the at a small saloon/general store located in the Arizona Territory buying supplies while he searches for gold.  While there he is detained by the U.S. Calvary.  They want him to join their ranks to fight the Apache Indians.  The audience soon learns that Carter is a man of singular determination because all he wants is to find a gold mine that is labeled with a spider like pictograph and claim a fortune.  In his grand escape from a Calvary holding cell he encounters the Apache and from there he finally finds the cave of gold he has been looking for…he also finds something else which leads him to Mars.

 

                Once on Mars Carter sense of gravity is such that he can leap and run as if he is Superman.  Like the recent situation in his native country Carter finds that Mars is experiencing a Civil War along with the slow dying of the planet.  He is also amazed to find air ships and enthralls his new comrades with stories about Earth’s ships that float on oceans (water is a scarcity on the Red planet).  Among his new acquaintances are several four armed Ram looking people, a Martian princess (Lynn Collins) who looks very much like an Earthling, and a slug like dog creature who moves amazingly fast. 

                

                I enjoyed John Carter although the acting was at times overdone.  Besides Kitsch, the film had several recognizable faces; Samantha Morton, Willem DaFoe, Thomas Haden Church, Mark Strong (who is always cast as a villain) Ciarán Hinds, James Purefoy, Polly Walker, and David Schwimmer.  Many of the actors lent only their voices to the production.  Unlike Avatar, John Carter didn’t, at least to what I have gathered through research, have the actors act out the scenes with sensors but instead they were more Jar Jar Binks.

 

                The story felt disjointed at times.  I believe with plots like John Carter it is best to be as lineal as possible.  It was distracting to see Princess Dejah Thoris fighting on an airship when the last scene the audience saw her in she was about to meet the man she was being forced to marry.  It is explained later, but the fact that you are scratching your head wondering how she got from point A to X without going through the rest of the alphabet is an easy theatrical fix.  There were other issues and thus the screenplay should have been tweaked in several places.

 

                Despite my criticism I still thought John Carter was creative.  I could see how these stories sparked the imaginations of children and understand the influence the novels had with characters like Indiana Jones along with the Star Wars films.  Overall it was a fun film despite coming in at 2 hours and twelve minutes not including every preview of every film coming out in 3 D, IMAX, or both in the next year and a half.    

 

              Probably the most impressive part of the film for me (I make jewelry) is the costume design by Mayes Rubeo.  Everything from the old west, a city in the Victorian Era, Martians in Roman garb, the beautiful jewelry and gowns worn by Collins were done masterfully.  There was a hair decoration that covered the top of her hair (in her wedding garb) that I wanted to snatch right off the screen.

 

                I recommend John Carter for anyone interested in a science fiction tale that emerged from another era.  It will be an entertaining film for kids seven and up along with adults who fondly remember when these stories from their youths.  I think it is better to see in the theater than on DVD.  If anything I wish that the production had kept the original title (even if a low budget film of the same name and based on the same story was released on DVD in 2009) along with using a different advertising campaign that emphasized the Edgar Rice Burroughs. 

 

                Happy Viewing!

 

Westerfield © 2012