John Carter of Mars in 3D Review
Much better than the trailers make it out to be.
These guys need to fire their marketing team, as the trailers for this movie had me convinced I would end up seeing another cheesy Disneyfied victim of the PG-13 serial movie killer. While it does labor under the duel yokes of Disney and the PG-13 taskmaster, it manages to make for a somewhat entertaining film. It also successfully pays tribute to the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel (which I read as a kid) while making it modern enough to not feel archaic.
That being said, it does have its problems. Honestly, the whole thing felt like they were trying to do too much in one film. Overambitious. The story lags quite a bit in the middle (actually to the point of boredom at a couple points), and there are a lot of bad story leaps that progress without logic. It actually seems to fall apart towards the end. I think the main issues there come from trying to fit pretty much everything from the book into one movie, and while I appreciate that as a fan of Burroughs it makes the movie drag. I found it very difficult to tell any of the characters besides John Carter or Deja Thoris apart (even the main bad guy I kept getting confused with Kantos Kan) and the CGI was actually weaker than I expected. It wasn’t bad per se, but the green Martians looked more cartoonish that I would have anticipated from a Disney film with a $250,000,000 budget. Honesty, horrible movie Ghost Rider had better graphics. I also felt the 3D was underused and less than impressive (I actually saw it on IMAX).
On the other hand, some of the visuals were pretty stunning, and they managed to keep the savage Barsoomian tone in the costumes. I thought the two main actors were pretty impressive for relative newcomers (on the other hand, how hard is it to play a character in a pulp action film?)
Before I go into the story, let me call on my old friend Science and talk a little about gravity and the effect it would have on a Terran suddenly transported to Mars. Mars has 38% of the gravity of earth. That means you could pretty much jump three times farther on Mars than you could on Earth. This means if you could long jump 6 feet on Earth you could jump 18 feet on Mars. Pretty impressive and probably a lot of fun. However, what you could not do is jump six football fields up onto a giant tower. Also, lower gravity does nothing to stop inertia. I don’t plan to black hole this movie for this, as the whole jumping thing was a pretty integral part of the book, but just thought you should know. (Pigs Fly image courtesy of the Funny T Shirt category).
Where you would be superhuman, however, is in your reflexes. Most science fiction doesn’t really address this, but here is how it works. On Earth if I drop my keys while trying to get into my apartment door a lifetime of video games has given me the reflexes to catch them with my other hand before they fall too far in most cases. If I were a Martian I would have almost 3 times as long to catch the keys, most likely causing them to evolve with slower reflexes. John Carter, while maybe being able to jump 10 yards or so, would actually be insanely fast on Mars and the Martians would to him appear to be moving in slow motion. That does not make for good visuals, however, but there it is.
Anyway, the movie. John Carter (Taylor Kitsch-Friday Night Lights, the Covenant, X-Men Origins: Wolverine) is an ex Confederate cavalryman trying to make his fortune in Arizona. He runs afoul of the local military and has to run off into the desert. While being pursued he and his pursuers are attacked by Apaches. He ducks into a cave and is attacked by one of the bald bad guys (Therns-kind of like much less interesting or menacing versions of the Strangers from Dark City) whom he shoots and gains an amulet. Then, 20 minutes into the movie about Mars, he ends up on Mars. There he discovers that his musculature from Earths gravity lets him jump super high and far. He is captured by Tars Tarkus (William Dafoe-Boondock Saints, Spider Man 2, Finding Nemo), Jeddak of one of the green Martian tribes. They are four armed Martians who live in a semi-savage state (if you read the books you might recall this was the start of some pretty serious racism. Disney managed to avoid most of it). He starts off treated as half prisoner, half child. Meanwhile, we learn of the two factions of red Martians, who look human, fighting it out and the bad guys are winning thanks to a ninth ray weapon given to them by the Therms.
Carter and the green Martians witness a battle in the air between the two factions and he rescues Deja Thoris (Lynn Collins-X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the Lake House, the Number 23), Princess of Helium. He wants her help getting back to Earth, she wants him to fight for Helium. They run away from the green Martians with the aid of Sola (Samantha Morton-Minority Report, In America, Control) and a kind of cool dog like creature who can run ridiculously fast. They travel all over Mars and more or less do a bunch of stuff. The problem is I kind of lost track of who was doing what for what reason. The bad red Martian Sab Than (Dominic West-300, Phantom Menace, the Wire) is involved in some kind of plot with the Therms, but I still can’t figure out what they were trying to accomplish. I was practically begging for John Carter to be taken in chains in front of him just so I could hear a evil monolog telling me what the hell was going on.
Anyway, the stars. Sci Fi movie based on a serious of books I really enjoyed. One star. While they didn’t stay locked on to the story 100% they did enough to not annoy me. One star. Both Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins did a good job as the good guys. One star. I’ll always give a star for William Dafoe, and his character Tars Tarkus was the coolest one in this film. Two stars. A lot of really good visuals. One star. The action and fight scenes were pretty good, and the jumping thing, even though provably not possible, was pretty cool to watch. One star. I thought the airships looked really cool. One star. Overall entertaining. Two stars. Total: ten stars.
The black holes. The pacing really plodded at points, especially at the beginning and the middle. One black hole. Except for the fact that some were green and some were red, I found it impossible to keep the supporting characters apart. One black hole. While the heroes were good, the villains sucked. The Therms had all the menace and threat of a meter maid, and Sab Than felt as dangerous as a rabid purse dog. One black hole. The story had too much stuff packed into it, which led to the characters making decisions based on pretty much plot convenience. One black hole. The movie ramped up in the third act and then petered out in a really drab and boring ending (which was also a massive lead in towards the inevitable sequel). One black hole. By the end of the movie you come to the slow realization that this film is actually kind of dopey. One black hole. Total: six black holes.
A grand total of four stars. Not bad, but not great either. Worth seeing in a theater? Sure, I supposed. Some of the visuals were pretty good. Worth seeing in 3D? Not really, in my opinion. Of course, I don’t actually like 3D that much so take that for what it’s worth. Date movie? Probably not. I think the dopeyness of the film would be much more apparent to anyone who is not a geek or fan of science fiction, and by the end of the film that dopeyness might extend to you especially if you start talking about having read the books, which any nerd is likely to do.
Thanks for reading. More movies coming up this weekend. I’ll probably see Silent House tonight, although that looks like it will freak me the hell out. Follow me on Twitter @NerdKungFu, or feel free to post a comment here on this blog. If you have specific questions or suggestions feel free to email me at [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
Dave
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