John Carter

[Felon]

Went to see it with a friend. Had more than person snoring behind us, and lotfs of foot traffic during the film as well. Some fun action scenes, but on the whole it was a total mess. Sequels will be unlikely, I predict.

Who or what are the "Thurms" supposed to be? They're on Earth, they're on Mars. They have tech that nobody else has, seem quite capable of wiping any resistance, but would rather disguise themselves and work through proxies.

 

[Mercutio01]

"Thern" and they aren't portrayed in the books as they are in the film. They appear, in the film, to be evil immortals that feed, so to speak, on chaos and destruction. In the books, they're merely another race of Martian who create a fake religion (Issus) to provide sacrifices to the black martians, who would otherwise wipe them out.

The Barsoomian tribes are in a weird sort of color hierarchy with each tribe preying on another to provide tributes to a different one.

 

[Felon]

So the Therns in the film are no more meaningful even to someone who's read the books? They're just inscrutable bad guys whose existence should be accepted prima facie on the metafictional basis that movies need prime-mover bad guys?

Oh, well, in that case, who needs coherence? What a thrill ride! 4.5 out of 5!

 

[Tonguez]

These are good reviews, I read the books as a teenager (and have my own personal Tarzan collection) so to hear that this wont offend my inner fanboy is good news. I might even be willing to go see it

 

[Banshee16]

Disney seems to be having a bit of a renaissance with respect to live action films. They used to have some great live action films.....Tron, Black Hole, and I think Flight of the Navigator (was that them)? Then I can't seem to remember many good live action films from Disney for years. And now, starting with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, it seems like we're starting to see some decent, fun films again.

Banshee

 

[Relique du Madde]

I thought this movie was funny...


The book, due to being written as a bunch of serials, read like a sandbox campaign where the DM didn't really know what he wanted to do with the story and ended up having the PCs following every obscure plot hook only to accidently end up at an moment of awesomeness as a result of several hairbrain decisions by the pcs. Unfortunately, since the GM had no idea what to do at the end he decided to throw a "rocks fall you all die" type of scenario while he thought about the next adventure.

The movie felt like an rpg campaign where the players took control of the plot and the DM ended up rewriting his story in response to every one of the player's decisions and demands. As a result, the "game" was very much a rail road even though it didn't feel like it to the players.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I enjoyed it but I just have to wonder why it failed at the boxoffice, was marketing that bad to keep people from seeing it?

 

[Mercutio01]

I think there were a lot of marketing problems, foremost among them "not enough marketing." There've been more ads for that Eddie Murphy movie than John Carter, at least where I live.

 

[Desdichado]

So the Therns in the film are no more meaningful even to someone who's read the books? They're just inscrutable bad guys whose existence should be accepted prima facie on the metafictional basis that movies need prime-mover bad guys?

Oh, well, in that case, who needs coherence? What a thrill ride! 4.5 out of 5!

Actually, their motivation was quite well spelled out in dialogue. Perhaps you missed part of the movie while you were otherwise occupied in trying to think of snarky comments to make when you got a chance to get online later and talk about the movie. Instead of paying attention.

I actually appreciated it that Stanton and Co. had some faith in the audience and didn't dumb down the script by grinding every point smooth with the subtlety of a road grader.

I don't know that I necessarily liked the changes to the therns, and I thought the implication of "EARTH IS NEXT!!1!" was a bit over the top, but what the Therns were all about was hardly incoherent or inscrutable.

Disney seems to be having a bit of a renaissance with respect to live action films. They used to have some great live action films.....Tron, Black Hole, and I think Flight of the Navigator (was that them)? Then I can't seem to remember many good live action films from Disney for years. And now, starting with the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, it seems like we're starting to see some decent, fun films again.

Well... except that the Pirates movies seem to be the only ones that are more than marginally successful financially. I wished this had done better at the box office (and Prince of Persia too, for that matter) but Disney majorly dropped the ball in promoting it.

 

[Felon]

Actually, their motivation was quite well spelled out in dialogue. Perhaps you missed part of the movie while you were otherwise occupied in trying to think of snarky comments to make when you got a chance to get online later and talk about the movie. Instead of paying attention.

I actually appreciated it that Stanton and Co. had some faith in the audience and didn't dumb down the script by grinding every point smooth with the subtlety of a road grader.

I don't go shell out cash for a movie with plans not to enjoy myself. I doubt that many other people do so either. Rather, they have standards and the movie simply doesn't meet them. That is all fairly self-evident, which leads me to the unfortunate conclusion that you're trolling for criticism to which you can reply with comments that are far snarkier than anything I said.

You wish to praise the movie's lack of coherence by saying "they didn't dumb things down", and imply that it must have just gone over my head. Well, that's pretty disingenuous. This is not what you call a subtle, thinking man's film by any stretch of the imagination. Lack of exposition is not a sign that the creative team had immense respect for their audience. Rather, it's a movie about lively action set-pieces with a guy blatantly jumping around on wire while fighting CGI monsters, and that is the essence of dumbed-down entertainment. Villains don't need motivation or explanation, becuase evil is just evil and needs to be killed--what more do we need to know? Brother, this movie may succeed in those respects--because it has more than its share of spectacles--but it is about as dumbed-down as you can get without tossing in an adorable CGI dog...oh wait, they did that.

I don't know that I necessarily liked the changes to the therns, and I thought the implication of "EARTH IS NEXT!!1!" was a bit over the top, but what the Therns were all about was hardly incoherent or inscrutable.

So far, the only answer I've gotten regarding the Therns is from Mercutio, which is that they "appear to be evil immortals that feed on chaos and destruction". Now, that's from a fan who read the books, and he's not too sure. If that's what constitutes "clearly spelled-out" in your book, then we've simply got a big difference in standards.