John Carter of Mars - $250 million Turkey?

[rachelbean]

We have those kind of cards too, but it's like after 3 movies you get a free small popcorn with a drink purchase, on a wednesday

[Gawdzilla Sama]

We have those kind of cards too, but it's like after 3 movies you get a free small popcorn with a drink purchase, on a wednesday

Cheep bastids.

[laklak]

We have a "Frequent Moviegoer" card, we get points for each purchase. On the way to the theater today I said, "Today we get a free large combo." When we bought our tickets we got a voucher for a free movie. And a voucher for a free large combo.

Damn, you livin' large, bro.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

We have a "Frequent Moviegoer" card, we get points for each purchase. On the way to the theater today I said, "Today we get a free large combo." When we bought our tickets we got a voucher for a free movie. And a voucher for a free large combo.

Damn, you livin' large, bro.

Ragged edge, that's us.

[Gallstones]

Movie ticket = $4.00
Buttered popcorn, drink, licorice = ~$3.50

Did we just go in a time machine to 20 years ago or is it that different between California and there?

Movie ticket = $11 (or $14 if you opt for one of the better theaters)
Buttered popcorn, drink, licorice = ~$12-14 (assuming smallest sizes for everything)

Both.
Ours is an "historical" theater, registered with the Smithsonian.
I'd pay $5.00 a ticket without complaint.

Prices are much higher out of town.
However, we have a drive in (in summer) and the ticket price is $4.00 there too.

[Svartalf]

Back when, a ticket cost like $2 or$3 ... I decided it was becoming too expensive for 2 hrs of entertainment when it went over $4... and now it's $5.5... if you go before noon, monday to thursday. regular prices are more like $10 (assuming that €=$, or it's even worse than that)

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Back when, a ticket cost like $2 or$3 ... I decided it was becoming too expensive for 2 hrs of entertainment when it went over $4... and now it's $5.5... if you go before noon, monday to thursday. regular prices are more like $10 (assuming that €=$, or it's even worse than that)

We paid $13.25 each for a matinee. It was a the Imax auditorium, $2.00 extra for that. (The screen was so large you had to turn your head to see actors on opposite sides.

[Ronja]

Regarding movie critics: the morning paper we subscribe to has 2-3 critics who write regularly. The older guy's reviews we do not read, because he's mostly about slipping in "cool" film history details ("See how clever I am!" style) and almost always blurts out serious spoilers, which I specially hate. The younger guy's reviews we read eagerly, as he has a delightful taste for the absurd and weird, and if he likes a film, we usually do, too. The young(ish) lady is the newest of them - I can't make heads or tails of her reviews, too often there's a fair dose of postmodern mumbo-jumbo, which has zero information value and is quite irritating.

Still, one out of three is not bad...

[drl2]

Anybody who goes to see John Carter expecting anything other than a lightly Disneyfied early-20th-century pulp-sci-fi action movie is kind of missing the point, I'd say.

One day, they'll make a 100 hour length "Wheel of Time" movie...

Presenting: Wheel of Time, The Motion Picture
(In its entirety)

[JimC]

Anybody who goes to see John Carter expecting anything other than a lightly Disneyfied early-20th-century pulp-sci-fi action movie is kind of missing the point, I'd say.

One day, they'll make a 100 hour length "Wheel of Time" movie...

Presenting: Wheel of Time, The Motion Picture
(In its entirety)

But seriously, I and many others are addicted - the movie saga will come one day!

[Coito ergo sum]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/enterta ... words.html

I wanted to see it, but when I looked online at the theater we like to go to, hardly anyone had purchased tickets. We like to go to a theater here locally that let's you order dinner and drinks, and you sit in big comfy reclining chairs. All the seats are reserved, so you buy the tickets on-line and pick your seat. I was checking out John Carter, and the 8:40pm Saturday night show was mostly empty. This is at a theater where normally if you don't have tickets purchased by mid-afternoon on Saturday, you likely won't get two seats together on a Saturday night.

Problems I saw with the clips of the movie that I have seen so far.

It appears disneyfied. I mean, I get the distinct impression that they sucked all the titillation out of the movie. Deja Thoris is supposed to be naked, with exaggerated female sexual characteristics appealing to the boner-ridden teenage boy community. And, her "clothes" in the books are typically just large pieces of jewelry that fall strategically over a few square inches of flesh. In the clips I've seen, they put Deja Thoris in large leather contraptions. I read a blurb on Saturday that the actress playing Deja had to go to the studio and say "dudes, this costume you have me wearing is ridiculously non-revealing - you need to cut out some of this material" or words to that effect, and that what you see in the movie is a little smaller than what they originally planned.

According to the article I linked to, apparently, those who did go see it tended to be older than the audience they were targeting. That stands to reason, because I bet that 17 year old boys don't read Edgar Rice Burroughs anymore. The older folks probably were hoping to see a good rendition of the novels, which are pulp sci-fi adventure books, sprinkled with titillation material for teenage boys.

Example - this is Dejah Thoris --

And the sight which met my eyes was that of a slender, girlish figure, similar in every detail to the earthly women of my past life... Her face was oval and beautiful in the extreme, her every feature was finely chiseled and exquisite, her eyes large and lustrous and her head surmounted by a mass of coal black, waving hair, caught loosely into a strange yet becoming coiffure. Her skin was of a light reddish copper color, against which the crimson glow of her cheeks and the ruby of her beautifully molded lips shone with a strangely enhancing effect.

She was as destitute of clothes as the green Martians who accompanied her; indeed, save for her highly wrought ornaments she was entirely naked, nor could any apparel have enhanced the beauty of her perfect and symmetrical figure.

In the movie, she is dressed like Xena the Warrior Princess in leather sort of battle gear.

Then there are the cgi acrobatics of John Carter -- he is sort of flying through the air during battles, able to make giant leaps like a super-hero. I don't like when they make films like this where the protagonist appears to have superpower when he's not a superhero.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

He got paid to write that.

[Coito ergo sum]

What do you morons expect?
a proper 'John Carter' movies ought to be PG13 for nudity and violence, at the very least.
that PoS is disney made...

At the very least is right - this thing was only rated PG? That is another point against it. I think it should be R rated for violence and graphic nudity, in order to do the novels justice.

[Coito ergo sum]

Mark Kermode wasn't impressed. Apparently they dropped "of Mars" from the title so that it didn't sound too "science fictiony" and scare off any of their potential audience!

Crap. It's a space oater, and the audience digs that shit.

I wondered why they just called it John Carter. Lame.

[Coito ergo sum]

I'm looking forward to John Carter because it looks cool from the trailer, and also I have an affection for the source material. I'm not expecting to be blown away, though. Or even just plain blown. I'm just hoping it's a bit of harmless fun and that it isn't too terribly awful.

It's nowhere near awful. We both had a good time and a few laughs. It's from a book that is nearly 100 years old, and not all that complex to begin with. This is not "Waiting for Godot", it's a popcorn movie.

I wondered why they didn't just call it "A Princess of Mars." Seems like ERB came up with a perfectly serviceable title.