John Carter was a good movie, dagnabbit. I read the Barsoom books, double dagnabbit. They were not insulted by this film! ERB would have loved every second of it.
…Sorry. It still grates.
And so, adieu to Deadpool. Just over a decade before the kids are off to college, so I can have it in the house!
I don’t think the Disney people have a frakkin’ clue about how to market a live-action science fiction movie.
It has a 51% on Rotten Tomatoes with the consensus being: “While John Carter looks terrific and delivers its share of pulpy thrills, it also suffers from uneven pacing and occasionally incomprehensible plotting and characterization.”
.
I agree with that rating. It is meh. I watched it once and I have no need to do so again.
I enjoyed the movie… I thought the plot was fine and the pacing, although not perfect, was pretty good. Also, good casting.
I’m glad I’m not the only one. I ended up watching despite the reviews trashing it and was wondering if they were watching a different movie than I was. It wasn’t going to win any Academy Awards or anything, but given that I was the audience it was aimed at, I found it very entertaining all around.
*Puts on Grumpy Old Man Hat*
I think part of the problem is that kids these days have the attention span of a fruit fly on meth. They think films like Ladyhawke go waaaay too slow. It doesn’t have to always be loud [ie, the first Avengers had some quiet character moments, but Something Important is always happening].
I’ve read that this was also the problem with the recent Disney movie Tomorrowland. They needed to cut the runtime by fifteen minutes, so they showed the movie to a focus group. The focus group said to cut the explanations and the thinking stuff, and leave the explosions and car chases.
The marketing campaign for this movie was so badly bungled that I’m inclined to believe the rumor I heard of an in-house blood feud sabotaging the whole effort. Compare the marketing effort for The Avengers to that for John Carter, which came out the same year from the same company to see what I mean. Also consider that a fan site put together a better sizzle reel for the movie than Disney did.
I get the complaints, I think the actors who played John Carter and Kantos Kan should have switched roles and I think the director’s politics bled into the movie too much, but I own this movie and I’ll watch it again. Why?
I was an asthmatic 5 year old when my father gave me the first 3 Martian novels and a paperback dictionary because I couldn’t be anything more than home plate when the other kids played ball. He showed me how to use the dictionary and said “Read these. If you don’t understand a word, look it up here, and if you still don’t understand, come talk to me.”
So I read the books, and I talked to my father about Love and Friendship and Honor and being a Gentlemen and Woola. And sometimes when I watch that movie, that 5 year old boy looks out of my old man’s eyes and says to me:
“Look! Look!! Wow!”
I can’t put a price on that.