People telling me the film is a lot like the book.
Not good enough. At best, you're aping the opinions of others who may or may no have actually read the book. (Which, IMHO, was deservedly a classic of its genre.)
It had a huge promotion campaign. Lots of money invested in it. As for saying it is based off a classic, I'm not sure that motivates large shares of movie goers. The Lone Ranger is a classic character and the film bombed. It was also a bad film. A strange coincidence.
Throwing a lot of money at a promotions campaign does not make it a good promotions campaign.
As for letting people know its a classic, at the very least, it informs people up-front that's they are not going to be watching something derivative.
It did get a huge budget. Apparently, at Disney they did not want to say no to the director who also directed stuff like Wall-E and Finding Nemo, and was a writer on films like Toy Story and Monster Inc. Basically, they didn't want to piss him off so he got all that he wanted to make the film.
Which is not necessarily the best plan.
Power, of any kind, is pointless if it is not properly controlled. And just because someone has success in one arena doesn't mean it will necessarily translate into success in another similar area.
Even the best writer, director or producer needs someone to tell him if somthing isn't working, even if it's just the editor or a beancounter. Sometimes, an expenditure request must be met with a firm "No."
And original animated kiddie films are very different from live-action adaptations of classic pulp Sci-fantasy. You don't handle he actors he same way, at the very least.
But does too much money=a bad film? It seems that a film on another planet with aliens and high-tech needs lots of cash to not look cheap.
No. There is no direct correlation between movie quality and the money spent making it.
And that goes for each and every detail of he process. Just because you spend a bunch of money on the CGI doesn't mean you're getting CGI. (And the CGI quality
was one of the knocks on this film.)
There is that, but you know, if you start with bad source material or material that aged badly...
IMHO, the source material is pretty good. Perhaps you should read it.
It is cute to blame marketing for a bad film.
I'm not. I'm saying that a bad marketing campaign can kill a film regardless of its quality.
It was part of the promotion campaign. If people didn't get it or remember it, at some point I question their intelligence.
Not in these releases for TV & Theater:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rf55GTEZ_E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edwLjEB-rAY
Oh wait, here it is the online only trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WR6HUkzxjR0
Assuming that your audience will get important info that is only released in a part of your ad campaign is idiotic. That the part of your campaign in question was online
only just compounds the issue.
The Internet IS a powerful marketing tool, and audiences are increasingly web-savvy, but ASSUMING that level of sophistication is a marketing misstep.
(Personally, I rarely look online for anything beyond a movie's casting, and almost NEVER look at online trailers.)
Hell's bells- they didn't even use obvious options like "...of Mars", or "Edgar Rice Borroughs'..." as part of the title.