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View Full Version : John Carter (Andrew Stanton)



Watashi
03-09-2012, 04:37 PM
IMDb (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401729/)

http://scifimafia.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/John-Carter-IMAX-Mondo-Poster.jpg

D_Davis
03-09-2012, 07:59 PM
That poster is amazing.

Dukefrukem
03-09-2012, 08:00 PM
I wish Earth had more than one moon.

Watashi
03-09-2012, 08:07 PM
That poster is amazing.
Yeah. It's the IMAX poster. No idea why they didn't just make it the official one.

soitgoes...
03-09-2012, 08:19 PM
The Martian satellites don't look like that.

[ETM]
03-09-2012, 08:34 PM
The Martian satellites don't look like that.

Srsly? Eight legged beasts and sentient Martians are okay, and the moons are not?

soitgoes...
03-09-2012, 09:09 PM
;407016']Srsly? Eight legged beasts and sentient Martians are okay, and the moons are not?Where exactly did I say that either of those things were okay? I mentioned the moons because they were mentioned two posts above mine.

[ETM]
03-09-2012, 10:18 PM
I meant that it's a bit of a strange complaint considering it's clearly not actual Mars.

soitgoes...
03-09-2012, 10:37 PM
;407050']I meant that it's a bit of a strange complaint considering it's clearly not actual Mars.
I wouldn't say complaint, but rather observance. Again the only reason why I said anything was because of Duke's post about the moons, which brought my attention to the moons on the poster. That is all. It isn't as if I've been dwelling on it for hours.

Sxottlan
03-10-2012, 01:17 AM
Well played Regal Cinema, well played. Only screening John Carter in 2D after 4pm so that people are forced to pay evening prices even if they don't want to pay for the expensive 3D.

I see what you did there.

TGM
03-10-2012, 01:21 AM
Well played Regal Cinema, well played. Only screening John Carter in 2D after 4pm so that people are forced to pay evening prices even if they don't want to pay for the expensive 3D.

I see what you did there.

It's for this reason why I'll be waiting to see it during the week. ;)

Irish
03-10-2012, 01:38 AM
No votes yet?

Sxottlan
03-10-2012, 02:03 AM
$250 Million for this?


No votes yet?

Meh. Still debating my thoughts on it.

Watashi
03-10-2012, 05:24 AM
Well played Regal Cinema, well played. Only screening John Carter in 2D after 4pm so that people are forced to pay evening prices even if they don't want to pay for the expensive 3D.

I see what you did there.
Not my Regal theater. Though I usually see the last show of the day anyways.

Kiusagi
03-10-2012, 07:00 AM
I need to dwell on this for a while, but I'm most likely going to give it a yay. I enjoyed it, but there's some problems. For instance, there were a few pieces of the plot that I did not understand, since the explanations either whizzed by or did not exist. I'm sure Taylor Kitsch is a good actor, but he seems miscast and somewhat bland here. It may just be how the character was written.

Some positives: the humor, Lynn Collins, and of course the visuals.

Dukefrukem
03-10-2012, 01:16 PM
Midnight Update: John Carter earned an est. $500,000 at midnight showings, which is on par with Prince of Persia. ($30.1 million in its opening weekend)

Ezee E
03-10-2012, 05:04 PM
Lorax is gonna make more in its second weekend.

Fezzik
03-10-2012, 07:52 PM
I saw this at 9:45 this morning.

I don't see the hate its getting from critics, to be honest, I loved it.

Maybe I'm not the most discerning individual when it comes to genre filmmaking, but I thought it was tighting written, incredibly well directed, especially...

during the one man vs Warsoom tribe scene, with the cuts between Carter's battle and his flashback of finding and burying his wife and daughter

Kitsch does need to kick it up a notch, probably, but Collins, Hinds and West were all great, and the CGI / Motion Capture of the Tharks was pretty stupendous, boosted by stellar voice work from Willem Dafoe as Tars.

The most surprising aspect of the film, for me at least, was its sense of humor.

I really liked it. I'll probably see it again, in 2D though.

Watashi
03-11-2012, 05:59 AM
Sigh... this was a mess. It's really unfortunate, because there's some good stuff buried in all that muddled story. There's just too many threads going on at once. There's no time to breathe and give emotional attachment to anyone. The mythology is kinda glazed over to make room for more romance between Carter and the Princess (Lynn Collins is great, but she's not really given a lot to do).



during the one man vs Warsoom tribe scene, with the cuts between Carter's battle and his flashback of finding and burying his wife and daughter

This scene came way too early in the film to earn that emotional payoff. There were barely any sparks between Carter and Dejah. This scene should have been held for the final battle.

Watashi
03-11-2012, 06:05 AM
My main gripe is the handling of the villain (the Mark Strong character, not McNulty). He's such an interesting character. Mysterious and threatening,... but his powers in the film are wildly inconsistent. He teleports and shapeshifts, but only when the film calls for it. The dude has been trying to kill Carter once he returns to Earth, but it seems that he can never chase him down. I found it unbelievable that an immortal teleporter/shapeshifter could get outsmarted by Carter.

Dukefrukem
03-11-2012, 04:44 PM
But you still gave it a yay?

Watashi
03-11-2012, 05:00 PM
There's nothing inherently bad about it. It's highs are high, but the lows keep it from ever branching out into something special.

The best part of the film is the relationship between Carter and Tars Tarkas. That was really well done. There's a scene between them near the end that's just awesome.

Dukefrukem
03-12-2012, 02:29 AM
I enjoyed this much more than I thought it would. The humor is typical Disney humor but it was also a lot more bloody than I thought it would be... even if the blood is blue.

Dukefrukem
03-12-2012, 02:01 PM
This bombed I guess. $30 mil opening weekend on a $250 mil budget ($500 mil include promo?). However it did do $100 mil WW so it will probably make it back.

TGM
03-12-2012, 11:33 PM
Eh, this was okay I guess. I felt it was unnecessarily overly long, there was just a lot of shit going on, and a great deal of it felt like it could have easily been trimmed down on. As it is, this was an exhausting movie, and one I'm not likely to revisit anytime soon. It has its moments, and when it's good, it's real good. But while I wouldn't say there was necessarily anything bad about it, I just felt really meh about a lot of it.

Thirdmango
03-14-2012, 08:48 AM
This was a fun movie, nothing special but still fun. Tim Riggins was great and I'm glad to see he'll be in Battleship with Landry.

dreamdead
03-17-2012, 03:38 PM
As others said, this is good but nothing special. The film's plot points feel derivative of other texts throughout, but the craft involved in the style is appreciated, and the basic premise is interesting enough. Tars Tarkas' slap of John Carter leading up to the wedding, for example, is a fun beat, and there are similar moments of fun throughout. Better than I was expecting, though my unfamiliarity with the source text might lead me to pro-rate the experience rather than be disappointed that Stanton and crew didn't do more with it...

TGM
03-19-2012, 07:42 AM
Yeah, a week later and I just keep thinking about this movie and how much it just annoyed the shit out of me. And really, I think it comes down to the love story, which was just horrible, so groan inducing, just so irritatingly forced. It was so bad that I can't even see past it anymore at any of the good merits this movie might otherwise have. And honestly, if it weren't for this awful, awful love story, I would probably be able to forgive all of this movie's other many, many issues and be able to appreciate and enjoy it. But I just can't do that, the love story is just shoved so far down our throats and is so unbelievable that I can't get it past it anymore. Fuck this movie.

Watashi
03-19-2012, 07:52 AM
Fuck this movie.

:|

TGM
03-19-2012, 07:56 AM
:| What?

Watashi
03-19-2012, 08:20 AM
:| What?
Despite my switch to "nay", I would never say "fuck this movie". Clearly Andrew Stanton put a lot of passion into this film and the scope of it is quite beautiful. I don't think the love story is horrendous. It's very rushed, but Dejah is a strong (and beautiful) enough character on her own to make her scenes worthwhile. It's better than Thor's love story at least.

My reasoning for switching votes was due to Stanton fitting too much into one movie. There's a good movie in John Carter, but he overpopulated it with too many villains and excessive action scenes. I applaud ambitious sci-fi epics and hope more films like this get made over any studio-driven remake or sequel.

TGM
03-19-2012, 08:28 AM
Can't disagree with anything you said except that Thor's love story was worse. Bad as it was in Thor, it was so much worse here. Thor's only became bad near the tail end of the movie, when it suddenly gained an undeserved amount of last minute plot importance. John Carter's, however, was bad the whole way through.

fvr
03-19-2012, 10:23 PM
I haven't seen it yet, but I still consider it's my place to give it a big nay.
I personally think that it's because of insipid plots like these that the world wide audiences get more and more dumb, doing less thinking and more eating and funny noises in the movie theaters.
Let's face it, we can all tell that the trailer's bringing a Die Hard out in space, with a blend of probably nonexistent plot and "tremendously good looking actors" (how Rodney McKay puts it in SG Atlantis).
Therefore, it's hard to keep an open mind about this, and the shinier it seems, the less potent it will prove.



I applaud ambitious sci-fi epics and hope more films like this get made over any studio-driven remake or sequel.

me too, I wish they'd produce a lot more of these so that the chances of more of them being enjoyable rise considerably.

I promise I'll get back with an opinion based on the actual movie screening, if I can hold it all the way until he gets the girl and saves Earth and Mars (with it's photoshop'd moons that don't look like the poster which I admit is cool)

TGM
03-19-2012, 10:34 PM
I haven't seen it yet, but I still consider it's my place to give it a big nay.

:/ Dude, please don't vote on these threads if you haven't seen the movie. Feel free to express your disdain, but that messes up the whole point of these threads (to get a forum consensus and keep track of those who've actually seen the movie) when you place a vote without even seeing the movie.

Raiders
03-20-2012, 01:14 AM
:/ Dude, please don't vote on these threads if you haven't seen the movie. Feel free to express your disdain, but that messes up the whole point of these threads (to get a forum consensus and keep track of those who've actually seen the movie) when you place a vote without even seeing the movie.

Unless he removed it, he didn't actually vote.

fvr
03-20-2012, 01:15 AM
yes, I removed it and sent him a PM, out of courtesy.
I'm watching the movie as I post this :) so I can be entitled to a legit say in this matter hihi

Raiders
03-20-2012, 01:19 AM
yes, I removed it and sent him a PM, out of courtesy.
I'm watching the movie as I post this :) so I can be entitled to a legit say in this matter hihi

Your disdain was partially valid anyway, but I don't think we can discount the considerable fun the film manages to be. It's breathless and goofy enough to avoid clunker status and I think Stanton and, if I may make a conjecture, Chabon, imbue so much of their inspirations and other sci-fi and pulpy adventure stories that the film manages to be charming and disappointing at the same time.

fvr
03-20-2012, 01:23 AM
Your disdain was partially valid anyway, but I don't think we can discount the considerable fun the film manages to be. It's breathless and goofy enough to avoid clunker status and I think Stanton and, if I may make a conjecture, Chabon, imbue so much of their inspirations and other sci-fi and pulpy adventure stories that the film manages to be charming and disappointing at the same time.

absolutely valid from where I stand. good point
too bad the poster at the beginning of the thread is just so damn cool and none of that type of coolness transpires. makes me want more, maybe expectations will be met with the sequel :)

Watashi
03-20-2012, 01:46 AM
Yeah, the movie comes nothing close to what the poster promises.

Dukefrukem
03-20-2012, 11:29 AM
Disney expects to lose $200 million on this


In light of the theatrical performance of John Carter ($184 million global box office), we expect the film to generate an operating loss of approximately $200 million during our second fiscal quarter ending March 31. As a result, our current expectation is that the Studio segment will have an operating loss of between $80 and $120 million for the second quarter. As we look forward to the second half of the year, we are excited about the upcoming releases of The Avengers and Brave, which we believe have tremendous potential to drive value for the Studio and the rest of the company.

Raiders
03-20-2012, 12:47 PM
Disney expects to lose $200 million on this

That's only for the end-of-quarter results. Over time, this will come closer to breaking even, particularly once home video sales are factored in. It is still a disappointment, but I think once the total global box office results and home video results come through, the loss will be minimal. Still, I can only imagine if the series is allowed to continue at all, the scope and budgets will obviously be very reduced. I think they would be best off just forgetting the series, which is a little sad, but I don't think a smaller-scale sequel is going to be the answer.

fvr
04-04-2012, 08:10 PM
seems Disney won the expect amount they were supposed to lose :)
John Carter's doing amazingly good, in spite of critics opinions.
check out here: http://www.filmbuffonline.com/FBOLNewsreel/wordpress/2012/04/02/flop-john-carter-grosses-surpasses-production-budget/

baby doll
04-05-2012, 10:42 AM
I've actually seen this twice with two different girls, and liked it better the second time, first because I saw it at a different theatre and the screen seemed to be brighter, and most importantly, because I just talked to the girl through the entire thing. I know it's rude, but fuck it, I'm too smart for this kind of movie.

Skitch
04-05-2012, 02:02 PM
Far from an excellent film, but also not deserving of its fairly massive box office failure. I'll go a very moderate yay.

Qrazy
04-05-2012, 05:00 PM
I've actually seen this twice with two different girls, and liked it better the second time, first because I saw it at a different theatre and the screen seemed to be brighter, and most importantly, because I just talked to the girl through the entire thing. I know it's rude, but fuck it, I'm too much of a dick to be in a theater.

Fixed.

D_Davis
04-05-2012, 05:16 PM
I've actually seen this twice with two different girls, and liked it better the second time, first because I saw it at a different theatre and the screen seemed to be brighter, and most importantly, because I just talked to the girl through the entire thing. I know it's rude, but fuck it, I'm too smart for this kind of movie.

What if it was called Le Jean Cartier?

number8
04-05-2012, 06:29 PM
I know it's rude, but fuck it, I'm too smart for this kind of movie.

I'm not sure you are, actually. Evidence stacks against it.

Henry Gale
04-05-2012, 10:47 PM
Oh, I guess I never mentioned that I liked this. I saw it a few weeks back, more specifically the day that Disney's big "we're going to lose a lot of money on this one, guys!" quarterly report came out, so maybe that made me look at it as more of a weakened underdog than the $250 million undertaking it was, but that doesn't mean that I didn't genuinely connect to it.

It's far from perfect, but the basic mechanics of it are strong enough to hold the majority of it together, specifically its lead characters, enough to make the world of the film feel like it has a palpable beating heart at the centre of it to allow the parade of jam-packed sci-fi weirdness to play out with ease. Some of the action sequences are spectacular, others feel very aughts-era blockbuster paint-by-numbers in their execution, but even when they fall on that less interesting side, they're still capably handled and don't weigh down the pace of it. And I gotta say, though I agree with the slightly plot hole-ish nature of it, those last 15 minutes or so really got me. It wraps a lot into that amount of time, but it pulls the best strengths of its plot mechanics and characters together in a surprisingly moving way. It's just a shame we'll probably never see a sequel to continue where it leaves off.

And even though it's a point that's been reiterated over and over since even before it came out: C'mon, the movie ends with the title John Carter of Mars, a lot of countries have it titled John Carter: Between Two Worlds, and if they wanted to even Harry Potter-ize it, they could have used the source material to string together something along the lines of John Carter and a Princess of Mars. Anything would have better to have out there to label this than the big tub of vanilla that is John Carter on its own.

I'm still curious for the Blu-ray release because they've officially announced that it's going to have a bunch of deleted scenes (as well as things like a full commentary from Stanton), and it's known that the movie went through its share of reshoots and revisions. I guess it's because even though for me it was ultimately satisfying, the final product does feel like something of a mixed bag, and any hints as to what earlier versions of the film may have been, especially when it stems from someone like Stanton, definitely interests me.

When the movie ended, I went from assuming I might have been one of the few in a fairly packed matinee showing to have actually enjoyed the movie to suddenly hearing the audience applauding and wooing once the end title card appeared. It's an odd crowdpleaser that sense, and one that maybe could have done a lot better than it did, but in the end it's just a nicely crafted action adventure movie with the appealing likes of Tim Riggins, Jimmy McNulty and Walter White showing up to butt heads on the big screen (in decidedly different types of roles that span a universe, mind you). And despite its imperfections, I look forward to watching it again.

EyesWideOpen
04-05-2012, 11:19 PM
I quite liked it. Good mix of action scenes (that you could actually see, no shaky cam closeup nonsense) and character stuff. Loved the scene with John and Bryan Cranston where he keeps one-upping his escape and the one with John and Tal Hajus where he drops in to the arena and you think there is going to be a drawn out fight and John just instantly chops his head off.

Skitch
04-06-2012, 03:27 AM
I'm not sure you are, actually. Evidence stacks against it.

I started making a post of how ludicrous his post was, point by point, but just gave up. There was just too much looney. It was becoming an excel spreadsheet.

[ETM]
05-28-2012, 12:33 PM
I really liked this. Much better than I expected in most areas. I wish we got more from the period between Carter's arrival on Mars and the airship battle where he meets the princess. I wish they cast a more charismatic lead in the role. But the good stuff was really good. Lynn Collins was mesmerizing as Deja Thoris, and I was amused by most of the cast of "Rome" being in the film. Purefoy and Hinds did well with their time. I wish I could have seen it on the big screen, but, even though it was advertized, it never came to our multiplex after the initial reviews.

Sycophant
07-24-2012, 04:43 AM
Basically a disaster. Burroughs's pulpy postbellum heroics filtered through a very blah version of post-modern post-heroism, giving us sorrowful music and sad flashbacks as our badass newgod hero massacres thousands of his enemies single-handedly. There were a few glimmers of liveliness and humor, but it's mostly as dull and dusty as the specatacularly boringly expensive spans of desert that frame every shot that isn't a made-for-TV closeup. Attack of the Clones 10-year anniversary edition.

I know Stanton saw this as a sort of passion project. That just kinda bums me out. This don't work.

Ezee E
07-24-2012, 09:00 PM
CGI is amazing, but everything else is awful. As I had predicted, Kitsch has no charisma for a role that depends on it. Lynn Collins as the Princess does what she can, and is probably the best thing about the movie.

Pretty bloated for a kids movie... Yikes. This and Dark Knight Rises.... :eek:

transmogrifier
07-26-2012, 08:35 AM
I didn't mind it. Not going to yay it or anything, but it's not the disaster I was secretly hoping for. It's diverting in its own way, but rigourously formulaic in the way it goes about its business.

Dukefrukem
07-26-2012, 03:44 PM
If this film is a "disaster", I wonder what word you would use to describe Battlefield Earth. Hyperboles everywhere.

Sycophant
07-26-2012, 03:48 PM
I meant what I said and I said what I meant. Movie's a disaster. So was Battlefield Earth. Maybe the relative disasters amount to the difference between a 7.5 quake and an 8 quake, but buildings still got wrecked and people lost their lives.

Sycophant
07-26-2012, 03:55 PM
For whatever it's worth, I wanted to like this movie. I used to be excited about it. Up until a few minutes after it was in my player, I was half-convinced I was about to watch a misunderstood masterpiece, or a rolicking good time.

Nope.

ThePlashyBubbler
07-27-2012, 12:04 AM
The best part of this movie was seeing Robert Morse, aka Bert Cooper, at my screening.

Thirdmango
07-27-2012, 02:06 AM
I liked when Tim Riggins went to Mars.

Sycophant
07-28-2012, 06:59 AM
The best part of this movie was seeing Robert Morse, aka Bert Cooper, at my screening.

He didn't come to my living room. :(

Grouchy
05-02-2013, 05:09 PM
For me this is the perfect example of a movie that does nothing wrong, yet at the same time it could do a lot of things better.