Star Wars meets the Civil War, but with more sand and fewer good haircuts.
Disney threw a staggering 250 million dollars at director Andrew Stanton to bring Edgar Rice Burroughs’ century-old pulp hero to life, and the result is a gargantuan science-fiction spectacle called John Carter. Dropping the classic of Mars tagline so suburban moms wouldn’t confuse it with an alien horror flick, the movie follows a disgruntled Civil War veteran who stumbles into a sacred cave, grabs a glowing medallion, and gets zapped straight across the solar system to the red sands of Barsoom.
Once he touches down on Mars, Carter discovers that the planet’s lower gravity turns him into a superhero capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound. Before he can find a way back home, he gets dragged into a planetary civil war between rival human factions and nine-foot-tall, four-armed green aliens. With massive visual effects, towering Martian beasties, and endless desert brawls, this is Disney’s ultimate attempt at an old-school space opera.
Review by Ben Dover
Look, I am sixty years old. I grew up in a world where movies used real dust, practical explosions, and actors who looked like they actually worked for a living. Today, the kids sit on their phones all afternoon watching people dance for six seconds, but apparently Hollywood expects everyone to pay twenty bucks to watch two and a half hours of a guy in a leather loincloth jumping across an orange computer screen. John Carter is the definition of big-budget Hollywood insanity. It cost more money to produce than the gross national product of several small island nations, yet they named it like a documentary about an accountant from Cleveland.
Taylor Kitsch plays Carter, and while the guy is in decent physical shape, he delivers half his lines like he is trying really hard to sound like Russell Crowe while fighting a bad cold. The plot is a dizzying soup of alien vocabulary where every single name sounds like a throat-clearing noise. You have Tharks, Therns, Than, and Thoris. Five minutes in, I felt like I needed a decoder ring and a pair of reading glasses just to figure out who was shooting blue laser beams at whom.
That being said, I have to give credit where credit is due. Once you stop trying to understand the goofy Martian politics, the movie is actually kind of fun in a dumb, Saturday-afternoon television way. Lynn Collins shows up as Princess Dejah Thoris, and she completely runs circles around Kitsch.She has actual screen presence, looks great, and swings a sword like she means business. Willem Dafoe is stuck in a motion-capture suit playing a giant four-armed bug guy, but even under fifty layers of digital paint, the man brings real gravitas.
The biggest problem is that the film never knows when to stop adding nonsense. Every time you get a solid battle scene, the plot screeches to a halt for a tedious lecture on ancient Martian religion or synthetic energy fields. It thinks it is deep philosophy, but it is just comic book fluff wrapped in a quarter-billion-dollar price tag. Still, if you park your brain at the door and just want to see giant white ape monsters get sliced up in an arena, you could do a lot worse on a lazy Sunday.
Cast and Characters
- Taylor Kitsch as John Carter:A weary former Confederate soldier from Virginia looking for gold who gets magically exported to Mars, where he turns into a jumping machine.
- Lynn Collins as Dejah Thoris:The feisty Princess of Helium who is also a top scientist, warrior, and easily the smartest person on the entire planet.
- Willem Dafoe as Tars Tarkas: The noble leader of the Green Martians (Tharks) who adopts Carter after realizing the human can leap over mountains.
- Dominic West as Sab Than:The power-hungry ruler of the predator city Zodanga, armed with an overpowered superweapon.
- Mark Strong as Matai Shang:The smug, shape-shifting Thern priest pulling the strings of the war from the shadows.
- Samantha Morton as Sola:A compassionate Thark female who looks after Carter.
- Ciarán Hinds as Tardos Mors: The ruler of Helium and father to Dejah, forced into impossible peace deals.
- Daryl Sabara as Edgar Rice Burroughs: John Carter’s young nephew on Earth who inherits his uncle’s journals.
Special Effects and Music
The special effects are where all the studio money went, and it shows. The CGI creations, especially the massive four-armed Tharks and the gigantic, slobbering Martian dog Woola, look remarkably detailed and have real weight. The flying solar-powered airships are cool, even if the endless red-rock canyon backgrounds eventually blur together into a giant dirt marathon.
The score is composed by Michael Giacchino, and it is easily one of the best parts of the movie. It has a sweeping, classic adventure orchestra feel that gives the action scenes far more emotion than the screenplay actually earned.
Ben Dover’s Rating
4 out of 5 Stars
Jump over the plot holes and enjoy the giant alien monsters.
Plot Synopsis and Breakdown
In late 19th-century New York, young Edgar Rice Burroughs is summoned to the estate of his wealthy, eccentric uncle, John Carter, only to learn that Carter has suddenly died and left him a locked journal along with instructions for his unsealed tomb. Reading the diary, Edgar uncovers Carter’s unbelievable history.
Thirteen years earlier in the Arizona territory, Carter is a traumatized former cavalry officer prospecting for gold while refusing to help the US Army fight the Apaches. Cornered in a mysterious cave with a vein of gold, Carter is ambushed by a bald man holding a strange medallion. When Carter kills him in self-defense and utters the alien word inscribed on the medallion, he is instantaneously teleported to Mars, known to its inhabitants as Barsoom.
On Barsoom, Carter discovers that his earthly bone density and the lower gravity grant him superhuman strength and the ability to jump massive distances.He is captured by the Tharks, a fierce nomadic tribe of green, four-armed aliens led by Tars Tarkas.Meanwhile, the civilized human factions of the planet are locked in war: the roving city of Zodanga, led by Sab Than, is wiping out the peaceful city of Helium thanks to an invincible energy weapon gifted to him by Matai Shang, leader of an immortal race of shapeshifters called Therns.
Sab Than offers Helium peace if Princess Dejah Thoris agrees to marry him. Dejah flees on an airship and crashes into Thark territory, where Carter rescues her with his leaping abilities. Realizing Carter’s power, Dejah convinces him to help her stop Sab Than while promising to help him find the medallion that can send him home. Along the way, they fall in love and discover the true manipulative nature of the Therns, but they are betrayed and captured.
Carter survives a brutal gladiatorial battle against giant white apes, earns the full loyalty of the Thark army, and leads a massive charge against Zodanga’s forces right as Sab Than is about to conquer Helium during the forced wedding. Carter kills Sab Than, exposes Matai Shang, and marries Dejah, choosing to make Mars his permanent home.
However, on their wedding night, Matai Shang appears, uses the medallion to exile Carter back to Earth, and leaves him stranded. Back in 1880s Arizona, Carter spends a decade searching the globe for another Thern medallion. Returning to the present frame story, the journal reveals that Carter faked his death using puffer fish poison to lure a pursuing Thern assassin into his tomb.When the Thern shows up to verify the body, Carter ambushes him, takes his medallion, leaves his nephew with instructions to write books about his adventures, and teleports back to Barsoom to be with his wife.
5 Famous Quotes
- John Carter: “Whatever it is you suppose I owe you, our country, or any other beloved cause, I have already paid. I have paid in full, sir.”
- Matai Shang:“We do not cause the destruction of a world, Captain Carter. We simply manage it. Feed off it, if you like.”
- John Carter:“Oh, and Ned, take up a cause, fall in love, write a book.”
- Tars Tarkas:“When I saw you jump, I wished to believe it was a sign that something great can come into this world.”
- Sab Than:“Death to Helium!”
5 Interesting Notes and Facts
- The Mars Title Drop:The studio stripped “of Mars” from the title because Disney had just suffered a massive box office disaster with Mars Needs Moms and executives superstitiously believed the word “Mars” repelled moviegoers.
- Decades in Development Hell:Filmmakers had been trying to adapt Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars into a feature film since as early as 1931, cycling through various directors including Robert Rodriguez and Jon Favreau before Disney finally made it.
- Box Office Wallop:With a production budget of around 250 million dollars and hefty marketing expenses, the movie pulled in only 73 million dollars in domestic theaters, making it one of the most famous financial write-downs in cinema history.
- Pixar Live-Action Debut:This was the very first live-action movie directed by Andrew Stanton, who had previously helmed animated monster hits like Finding Nemo and WALL-E.
- Steve Jobs Dedication:The movie includes a dedication in the end credits to Apple co-founder and former Pixar boss Steve Jobs, who passed away in late 2011 shortly before the film hit theaters.
Photos
Trailer