John Carter (2012)

I missed this in the cinema and while I thought I might catch it one day, I couldn't not read Film Crit Hulk's take on its script. I didn't remember every detail from that article (in fact I would say it doesn't really spoil much) but the concept of him having a slowly revealed tragic backstory certainly stuck with me and I wondered if that knowledge might help overcome some of the film's perceived problems. I can't say that was the case though and re-reading that article, I wondered if Hulk was talking about the same film. With his opening criticism being that the script tries to answer every question the audience could have, I suddenly felt rather dumb for spending most of the film confused.

Right from the opening scene establishing the warring factions on Mars (or Barsoon as the natives call it), I was easily wrongfooted. In time the bad guys and good guys are almost comically identified as red vs. blue but this first confrontation is very confusing. I don't think I was being too presumptuous in assuming that a ship ambushed by superior numbers likely belonged to the 'good guys' but it doesn't make any great attempts to convince you otherwise - apparently the two factions saw no problems with sharing almost identical ship designs. This conflict is abruptly halted by a god like being who grants Dominic West's red leader (sorry, I mean the Jeddak of Zodanga) near unlimited power for some vague reason - I guess leaving you to assume this God is the real villain by virtue of being played by Mark Strong.

Anyway, as Hulk mentions, none of this matters for the first 50 minutes or so. You're then introduced to John Carter twice, with a weird mix of a few scenes I found funny, intermingled with his brief cryptic flashbacks. When we finally make it to Mars (which happens instantly and seemingly by accident), I gathered that he was able to jump so far due to the difference in gravity but in no way did these scenes look like someone coping with low gravity. In fact it looked exactly like someone being pulled up by wires at random intervals while they scrabbled around to prevent themselves tipping forward. Combined with some unconvincing blending between CGI and real life I was worried about how much more of it I could take.

Thankfully things gradually started to improve and for a while you can just follow along with John Carter's experience, learning what's going on just as he is. There are some funny scenes, some good action scenes and there's even some semblance of a general goal if you can follow all of the Martian terms. I still felt like it didn't need to be this cryptic though, like with the whole Red Vs. Blue war and whether the Reds were truly evil - there's a place for a story which looks into the grey areas but this just didn't seem like the place for it. Since it seemed to be aiming for a simple action adventure it should have avoided overcomplicating things and had a clear goal from the start.

It's eventually made clear that the God-like Therns are the real villains but by this point it just felt too late for me. If this had been clear from the outset I might have felt that it was heading somewhere, I could imagine a slightly different opening narration that would touch on the Therns attempting to control the destiny of planets and feed off their followers. You've then got the idea that they're the overall villains and everyone else is just a pawn, before diving into John Carter's tragic backstory and how he ends up on Mars.

Once things did start to become clear, the film seemed to accelerate towards the end very quickly. I was particularly surprised by how short the gladiatorial fight with the white apes was, given that this seemed to be one of the most iconic parts of the movie. After so many whispered references to them throughout the film, it was pretty anticlimactic but also surprisingly violent - if it weren't for the fact that the Martians have blue blood. The same could be said of the final battle too, with missing limbs and crushed skulls that would otherwise be quite horrific.

Without spoiling too much, there is a slight twist at the end that is perhaps the only time that the more mysterious nature of the film works. In the end I think you can lay most of its problems with the script, though I haven't even mentioned the fact that it's two main characters are pretty unexciting - maybe that's why I was initially drawn more to the 'evil' characters, that seemed to have a little more to their characters in comparison.

What I did take from it though was that I might just have a little faith in Disney taking on the Star Wars franchise. While the plot was a bit all over the place, the actual design, some characters and the action was quite fun and more enjoyable than the prequel trilogy at the very least. It's definitely not the worst film I've ever seen, strangely it also felt like it might have been more enjoyable in a different medium, with a few scenes making me imagine a version from the minds of Studio Ghibli for example. In fact a cartoon adaptation might well have been a good way of getting over the strange clash between human and alien characters, it's a shame that it's very unlikely we'll see anything based on these books again.