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John Carter Review

March 10, 2012 by · Comments Off on John Carter Review 

John Carter Review, While watching “John Carter,” the big-budget film based on classic stories of a 19th-century Earth man transplanted to Mars, I couldn’t help but think about the recent marketing for the film.

Before there was ever a “Star Wars” or an “Avatar,” the promos urged, there was “John Carter.” Well, there’s nothing like dooming a film to failure by comparing the experience to two of Hollywood’s most spectacular pictures.

There is little doubt that John Carter, the hero of “Tarzan” creator Edgar Rice Burroughs’ science-fiction “Barsoom” book series, served as inspiration for the makers of “Star Wars” and “Avatar.”

There is equally little doubt that the makers of “John Carter” have seen those superior films many times, and they tried to make “John Carter” resemble those films, and they failed miserably.

I can hardly imagine a film that inspires audiences less than “John Carter.” The film is rarely rousing, despite many action scenes. Its visual style is so bland that it belies the reported $250 million budget. The attempts at humor fall flat. The romance is a bust.

What does work is Taylor Kitsch, the “Friday Night Lights” TV actor turned movie star in multiple films this year, beginning with this opportunity to flex his ample muscles and display his flowing locks of brown hair. He is John Carter, a Civil War hero who, while searching for gold after the war, stumbles upon a time-travel device.

The young man is better than his script in bringing to life a troubled soul who finds himself on a desolate, desert-like planet. This is a place where a wacky gravitational pull allows John to leap enormous distances and where he doesn’t look anything like the 10-foot-tall tribal green guys he first encounters.

Each of these “Tharks” is armed; with weapons, yes, but also with four arms apiece. They take him prisoner, until they realize his fighting abilities and that he might help them in their own civil wars raging on Mars. Then he meets a princess from a human-looking group, the Heliumites, with cool-looking red tattoos.

If you’re not confused yet, just wait. “John Carter” attempts to delve so deeply into the Burroughs’ mythology of these characters that we are introduced to more than a dozen main characters, two different worlds, varying political and theological beliefs and odd creatures, like a lizard-looking dog the size of a rhino.

John Carter Reviews

March 9, 2012 by · Comments Off on John Carter Reviews 

John Carter Reviews, This week’s leading literary adaptation is “John Carter,” a movie crafted from a sci-fi tale by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author who also brought us Tarzan.

Chicago-born Burroughs (1875-1950) scraped by in various careers until 1910, when he began writing for pulp magazines. According to a bio in The Free Library: A story called Under the Moons of Mars, which introduced the hero John Carter, was his first sale and was published in 1912. Many more Carter adventures followed including as “The Gods of Mars.” Burroughs gained even more lasting fame for his Tarzan tales, many of which were adapted into movies. Here are some excerpts from “John Carter” movie reviews:

Chicago Tribune — The major problem here is one of rooting interest. I hate to sound like a mogul, or a focus group ho, but at the center of this picture is a flat, inexpressive protagonist played by a flat, inexpressive actor. He’s an invulnerable slab, this guy, and the action sequences lack satisfying shape. Too much of the dialogue relies on tony explication of past events, explaining and re-explaining what happened when to whom, and why. We don’t really experience the story through Carter’s astonished eyes, and the story is heavy and sour.

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