John Carter of Mars - $250 million Turkey?

[Svartalf]

Like they did with the Conan and Kull movies...
tag a famous name onto a movie that hasd nothing to do with it and draw money in by conning the fans.

[Coito ergo sum]

they’re suggesting that John Carter may be yet another instructive warning about what can happen when a studio devotes millions of dollars to razzmatazz and scrimps on story. Claudia Puig in USA Today grants that the movie is “ambitious” but she also writes that it’s “bloated, dreary … humorless … tedious.” Moreover, she says, “The characters are one-dimensional, even in 3-D, which is gimmicky and unnecessary here.” And hers is one of the more positive reviews of the movie. A. O. Scott in the New York Times concludes: “A bad movie should not look this good.” Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal refers to it as a “weirdly inert spectacle.” Betsy Sharkey in the Los Angeles Times calls it “a big-budget fiasco [that's] enough to make your jaw drop.” In his review of the film, Roger Ebert writes in the Chicago Sun Times that director Andrew Stanton’s previous films include A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo, and Wall-e. “All three have tight, well-structured plots,” he writes, “and that’s what John Carter could use more of.” Mick Lasalle in the San Francisco Chronicle observes that it “opens with a big battle scene before we even know who’s fighting, why they’re fighting, or which side we ought to root for. Has the moment come in movies where just the spectacle of stuff blowing up is enough to engage an audience?” But Peter Howell in the Toronto Star figures that the movie is likely to have a long life — at midnight screenings. The film, he says, offers much “Rocky Horror-style shout-out potential, because it’s more fun to mock this cinematic catastrophe than to watch it.” On the other hand, Ty Burr of the Boston Globe, who also mocks the film, notes that “behind me at a recent screening was a row of 10-year-old boys who were ecstatically in from the get-go. That’s probably all that matters.”

http://www.imdb.com/news/ni24149569/

[Xamonas Chegwé]

It bombed!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17442200

[Hermit]

It bombed!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17442200

A film produced by Disney and starring an actor named Kitsch? No way!

[Clinton Huxley]

I'm waiting for the sequel. Get Carter (of Mars) starring Michael Caine who gets into a fight with a big Martian, who's in bad shape.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

They should have given Deja Thoris three tits.

[Coito ergo sum]

I would have been happy if they would have just followed the description Burroughs gave of her in the book. Why, oh, why, do filmmakers have to make films of books by changing them around. What is the point of making the book into a movie, if you're not going to make it look like the image people see in their heads when reading the books? Deja Thoris was supposed to be a hot piece of ass dressed only in jewelry, basically. They turned her into Xena Princess Warrior....

Disney in $200m writedown for ‘John Carter’

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/d4e15530 ... z1pf30CgkK

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I don't see the utility in a bald recapitulation of the book.

[Coito ergo sum]

I don't see the utility in a bald recapitulation of the book.

It need not be a bald recapitulation; however, generally fans of a book want to see the book translated to film. They want to see the book. Simple things like following the description of the appearance of the characters is important to giving viewers that sense. Think LOTR -- if the hobbits had been portrayed with small, hairless feet, with no interest in pipeweed or ale, it would sort of go against the idea that they were putting the books on film.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I don't see the utility in a bald recapitulation of the book.

It need not be a bald recapitulation; however, generally fans of a book want to see the book translated to film. They want to see the book. Simple things like following the description of the appearance of the characters is important to giving viewers that sense. Think LOTR -- if the hobbits had been portrayed with small, hairless feet, with no interest in pipeweed or ale, it would sort of go against the idea that they were putting the books on film.

"The movie is about the world created in John Carter of Mars." You can't have a one-to-one congruence between book and movie, so it's axiomatic that there will be differences. Fitting the book into 2 hours or less means there will be major differences. So we will have differences. Now add in the economic aspect, people gambling that the differences they make will be attractive enough to fans of the books to get them into the theater and create a positive response. So, in the end, we're talking apples and oranges.

[Coito ergo sum]

I'm not suggesting their won't be differences. In LOTR, Peter Jackson consolidated some scenes, and skipped some scenes. However, he stayed true to the style and the look and the feel of the books. That, I think, is why they were so good, and so popular among readers of the books, even though they were not a rote recitation of the books. The essence of the characters has to be preserved. I don't think they did that here.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'm not suggesting their won't be differences. In LOTR, Peter Jackson consolidated some scenes, and skipped some scenes. However, he stayed true to the style and the look and the feel of the books. That, I think, is why they were so good, and so popular among readers of the books, even though they were not a rote recitation of the books. The essence of the characters has to be preserved. I don't think they did that here.

And that's the difference between Jackson and Disney. I visualize it as a sliding scale, rather U-shaped as it were, with one end being one-to-one and the other being "well, they have the same name". Somewhere along there any movie will fit, but there will always be people who wish it had been to the left or right more.

[kiki5711]

The first paragraph of Peter Bradshaw's review in the Guardian made me laugh...

John Carter is one of those films that is so stultifying, so oppressive and so mysteriously and interminably long that I felt as if someone had dragged me into the kitchen of my local Greggs, and was baking my head into the centre of a colossal cube of white bread. As the film went on, the loaf around my skull grew to the size of a basketball, and then a coffee table, and then an Audi. The boring and badly acted sci-fi mashup continued inexorably, and the bready blandness pressed into my nostrils, eardrums, eye sockets and mouth. I wanted to cry for help, but in bread no one can hear you scream. Finally, I clawed the doughy, gooey, tasteless mass desperately away from my mouth and screeched: "Jesus, I'm watching a pointless film about a 1860s American civil war action hero on Mars, which the inhabitants apparently call Barsoom. I can't breathe."

Can't wait for the Kermode review....

[Svartalf]

I don't see the utility in a bald recapitulation of the book.

It need not be a bald recapitulation; however, generally fans of a book want to see the book translated to film. They want to see the book. Simple things like following the description of the appearance of the characters is important to giving viewers that sense. Think LOTR -- if the hobbits had been portrayed with small, hairless feet, with no interest in pipeweed or ale, it would sort of go against the idea that they were putting the books on film.

"The movie is about the world created in John Carter of Mars." You can't have a one-to-one congruence between book and movie, so it's axiomatic that there will be differences. Fitting the book into 2 hours or less means there will be major differences. So we will have differences. Now add in the economic aspect, people gambling that the differences they make will be attractive enough to fans of the books to get them into the theater and create a positive response. So, in the end, we're talking apples and oranges.

If some basic visuals, like the costumes described by Burroughs, aren't respected, how is it about the Barsoom described in the books?

Shitting in the collective face of your cash cow ought to be punishable by gruesome death.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

If some basic visuals, like the costumes described by Burroughs, aren't respected, how is it about the Barsoom described in the books?

Reality check. Nekid women all over the place would not be a Disneyesque thing, nor would it be PG-13, the money slot for movies.