The Movie John Carter?

I also think audiences these days don't understand the dichotomy between the ridiculous and the earnestness of these kinds of films. Unless it obviously has a sense of humour or is very very very sincere (AVATAR), these kinds of loin cloth epics confuse the contemporary audience. They see it as cheesy. They also see it as not on purpose. That the director was trying to go for really really serious and just made something absurd. Therefore the director screwed up and the movie must be bad. They can't understand the joy of having characters be serious in a gloriously absurd setting, and understand that it's meant to be joyful, and a little silly, but also grand and epic.

People these days don't want "cheese". It terrifies them. Cheese equals bad. There can't be anything of quality mixed with cheese. Which is so odd as it's quite the opposite in fine dining .

(it's also quite odd, as romantic comedies of late and a heck of a lot of action have tons and tons of cheese - but for some reason they aren't seen as having it in the same way or something)

All this is too bad, because in the 80s audiences were all over it.

Well personally I love cheese. And the 80s. And Shirtless Taylor Kitsch, which is probably the one of, if not THE biggest selling point of this movie overall.

Mom and I went last night and had a blast. (I begged for Not 3D, because I can't stand those glasses, but the 2D version is plenty awesome and no less cheesy.)

SirOtter said:

The great Fritz Leiber wrote a novelization of one of Henry's films, the only time I'm aware that was done.

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Tarzan and the Valley of Gold. Pretty good book. He makes the main henchman truly scary, and Tarzan a deeply enigmatic figure.

Saw John Carter today; liked it better than I expected. Didn't understand why Dejah Thoris was wearing all those clothes. (Lynn Collins is lovely, though.)

Carter actually came across as a more interesting, flawed character than Burroughs' hero.

Under 1/3 G, of course a healthy human could leap a good deal higher than on Earth, but not like 1938 Superman. I didn't mind, though; it's a fantasy version of Mars, and ERB used the idea of low gravity as giving his hero almost a magical power.

Funny seeing James Purefoy and Ciaran Hinds together again (Marc Antony and Julius Caesar, respectively, in HBO's show Rome).

Willem Defoe is convincing as a six-limbed green alien. I liked Woola (though I recall him having ten legs, not six, in the book; guess that's hard to pull off convincingly).

bearilou said:

Some may have liked the trailer but there were many online who voiced grave concerns about how awful, truly awful it was. I had my own and wasn't originally going to go but having read many good things about it, gave it a chance.

I'm glad I did but it wasn't through any efforts from the damn trailer.

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*shrugs* The trailer showed me that the special effects for the tharks and other Mars creatures were going to be spot on. That was the part that scared me after seeing Syfy's awful version. Otherwise, the trailer showed me it was an action movie. Not sure what else a trailer needs to do.

Shadow_Ferret said:

*shrugs* The trailer showed me that the special effects for the tharks and other Mars creatures were going to be spot on. That was the part that scared me after seeing Syfy's awful version. Otherwise, the trailer showed me it was an action movie. Not sure what else a trailer needs to do.

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For me, and many others I suspect, it needs to grab that emotional center and inspire. It's more of a motivated feeling, a building up of emotional tension over the ~2:30 they get to grab the viewer's attention, taking them to the point that they get just enough release that it isn't satisfied by watching the trailer.

It's a combination of good music (which the trailer music was completely uninspired and unmemorable) and visuals (which were too reminiscent of Avatar and made it feel like the movie was derivative instead of something unique) punctuated by fade ins and fade outs along with trailer musics beats. Timing, I guess, as I'm not a music person.

I know, like all things, this kind of thing was subjective but what really strikes me is that JC's trailer didn't 'do it' for a lot of people. It missed on a grand scale (hence a lot of outcry against it), not on an individual one. This was really illustrated by the fanmade trailer. All they did was take the trailer bits out there, re-edited them together with decent music, pulled the voice over into something that was a little more cohesive. When I saw the fanmade trailer I (and may others) pointed to it and said 'this is a movie we'd go see'.

Manuel Royal said:

Funny seeing James Purefoy and Ciaran Hinds together again (Marc Antony and Julius Caesar, respectively, in HBO's show Rome).

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I know. I was all OMGOMG in the theater. I was glad to see them.

bearilou said:

For me, and many others I suspect, it needs to grab that emotional center and inspire.

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Hmm. See, all I needed was the title to get that. I guess having been an ERB fanboy all my life I don't understand why this didn't simply break box office records it's opening night. I don't get how everyone e wasn't all Squeee! The minute they heard about it.

Shadow_Ferret said:

I don't get how everyone e wasn't all Squeee! The minute they heard about it.

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See, I was! When I heard about it, I really was all OMGOMGOMGGGGG!

Then I saw the trailer and said 'what the hell is this shit?'

Not that it didn't have the elements of the book in it. Not that it didn't manage to capture much of what ERB had done.

The visuals taken as a whole were very lukewarm. The trailer music was unmemorable. The voice over was confusing. I saw John Carter sailing through the air on one of his epic jumps with his arms flailing all akimbo and felt the camera shot/framing was completely uninspired. It just showed a guy that look like he'd been shot from a catapult.

I thought to myself, if this is the best this movie has to offer? It's so screwed.

I went into the movie (after many positive reviews) really expecting the worst, hoping for something salvageable and came out more impressed than when I went in. The trailer really did the movie a disservice.

The trailer is like a query letter. It has one shot to hook the watcher into saying 'yeah! I want to see THAT!' Two minutes to get your attention, and it failed.

That's my thinking on why this movie has not done well at the box office. Maybe it can still be turned around. Maybe the surprised positive reviews will be enough to carry it through. I can hope because I'd love to see more movies.

Ah well... I can always go back and see it again. Maybe my repeated viewings will help carry it!

I think part of the issue is that not everyone is a SFF fan, and being thrown into the world of John Carter is more confusing than interesting to them. Similar thing happened to Blade Runner, which is why the theater version has that god-awful voice over from Harrison Ford.

Also originally, Star Wars did not do all that great in theaters--it was actually the toy sales that made the profit. Maybe Disney should pump more effort into selling John Carter dolls.

defcon6000 said:

Also originally, Star Wars did not do all that great in theaters--it was actually the toy sales that made the profit. Maybe Disney should pump more effort into selling John Carter dolls.

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Will the John Carter doll come shirtless? I'll buy one!

Actually, I'd want a Woola doll. Big, squishy, plushie Woola.

Um. Really? Star Wars didn't do great? I remember lines going around the movie theaters. Both times I went the theater was packed.

Shadow_Ferret said:

Um. Really? Star Wars didn't do great? I remember lines going around the movie theaters. Both times I went the theater was packed.

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Well, it didn't have a huge opening weekend, which seems to be what the companies care about these days. Star Wars built up business by word of mouth.

Shadow_Ferret said:

Um. Really? Star Wars didn't do great? I remember lines going around the movie theaters. Both times I went the theater was packed.

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Indeed--compared to toy sales, at least. Linky.

I could see where things were headed,” Kurtz said. “The toy business began to drive the [Lucasfilm] empire. It’s a shame. They make three times as much on toys as they do on films. It’s natural to make decisions that protect the toy business, but that’s not the best thing for making quality films.”

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Bolding mine.

bearilou said:

Will the John Carter doll come shirtless? I'll buy one!

Actually, I'd want a Woola doll. Big, squishy, plushie Woola.

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Seconded. On both counts.

Just got done talking to someone on their journal about this movie and an article they linked to on why it "flopped", I just highly doubt a studio would be bullied into letting the "director" do the marketing alone because seriously this is Disney one of the most powerful and recognizable companies in the world. No matter how well freaking *wall*e* or *finding nemo* was.

I think it was personally, released at the wrong time and wasn't OVER marketed as a big budget summer block buster like it should have been. Releasing it during the month of March when it's rainy, kids are in school and people are just starting to long for the first signs of Spring, that and I think it relied too much on people buzzing over it being a 'John Carter' movie by the name alone. The trailers were confusing as well to me since they didn't speak of the movies long, distinguished past as influencing some of the most major works of science fiction and fantasy and fiction for years to come (which I did not know, I heard of "a princess of mars" but not being a Burroughs fan I've never read it, once I heard these stories were like the foundation stone for so MUCH Sci-Fi I now want to pick it up).

Manuel Royal said:

Well, it didn't have a huge opening weekend, which seems to be what the companies care about these days. Star Wars built up business by word of mouth.

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That was 1977. I'd be curious to know if they were as obsessed with 1st weekend sales as they are now. Sure, the groundswell wasn't immediate, but the first movie grossed $460m in the US and nearly $800m worldwide. Those numbers indicate it DID do great in theaters. As I said, I remember LINES.

thothguard51 said:

They claim to have spent 100 million on advertising. Fire the damn people in charge of the advertising because they did not do their job...

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$100m on what? Where? I hardly saw any advertising for it.

Just saw it yesterday in 3-D (as in green and red glasses 3-D which is the only 3-D available here)

I felt it had pacing problems and had elements that were a bit hard to understand to those not familiar with the source material but in general lines I adore it, it brought me back to the same sense of awe when I was growing up with Xena: Warrior Princess or Indiana Jones. Though I have acquantances who regard it worse to the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

Also I'm too fond of fictional civilizations and cultures, so I'm quite biased.

My take is that while it won't be a success financially, it will gain something of a cult status to those who will grow up watching it on cable.

This article offers some interesting theories about John Carter's failure, particularly relating to Stanton's mindset and process. There's a lot of anonymous sources, but it's a compelling read.

thothguard51 said:

I think Disney relied to heavily on the Cult status of the books and forgot to really push the story for fans of SF/F who are new to the source material.

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maxmordon said:

...it brought me back to the same sense of awe when I was growing up with Xena: Warrior Princess or Indiana Jones.

My take is that while it won't be a success financially, it will gain something of a cult status to those who will grow up watching it on cable.

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I agree with both of you very much here. There is a cult following out there for this movie somewhere--they just don't know it yet.

I'm struggling to put my finger on why they didn't deliberately pitch it to the SF/F crowd. There's plenty of us out here. I heard that some PR dude or other actually changed the title, taking out the "Of Mars" that was originally attached to it, in order to give it a broader appeal to people who aren't into SF/F. I find that presumptuous at best, and insulting at worst.

(I've also been inspired to do a blog post on why genre movies seem to get so little respect, just for being genre movies.)

Rhoda Nightingale said:

I'm struggling to put my finger on why they didn't deliberately pitch it to the SF/F crowd. There's plenty of us out here. I heard that some PR dude or other actually changed the title, taking out the "Of Mars" that was originally attached to it, in order to give it a broader appeal to people who aren't into SF/F. I find that presumptuous at best, and insulting at worst.

(I've also been inspired to do a blog post on why genre movies seem to get so little respect, just for being genre movies.)

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Simply, it cost too much. If it had been a $30 million film, they could have marketed it as a full-on sci-fi and made their money back. If it costs $250 million with another $100 million for marketing, it has to be sold to the broadest audience possible. The four quadrants as they call it. That's absolutely non-negotiable for them.

And, like you say, that's also why they dropped the 'of Mars' because, rightly or wrongly, they believe that there is a group of people out there who will be turned off by any flavour of sci-fi and they cannot afford to turn anyone off from seeing this. (Hell, it didn't even look like Mars from the trailers, it looked like the same, bland generic desert from Star Wars, The Mummy, Prince of Persia.)

The problem is that all this left them with a title that didn't really mean anything to the majority of the people they were trying to entice. I'd never heard of John Carter before this film, and I didn't care once I'd heard it. That's not to decry the books or the characters, I'm sure it's wonderful stuff, but it does appear to be the overall reality of what played out in the end. For this level of budget, your audience has to either be very aware of the material (Titanic, Star Wars) or so enticed by what they're seeing (Avatar, Inception), mixed with a healthy dose of positive hype/controversy, (again, Avatar: the most exepensive film ever made!!1! ) that they are ultimately drawn to going to see it.