John Carter

            It's amazing how easy it is to express patience with a movie when you have a belly full of all-you-can-eat crab.  Just saying.

            On to the review!

            John Carter (of Mars) is currently getting very mixed reviews, and for good reason.  It's one of those films that is so mixed it fails to be anything.  Instead, you can talk to 20 people and get 20 different reactions.  Love it, hate it, ambivalence?  No problem.  You just watched John Carter.

            But why?

            First, a little bit of history for your brain holes.  John Carter of Mars was a book kinda written by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the same man who created Tarzan.  John Carter shows up in is Barsoom novels.  The books take place over a long period of time, so the main characters are generational, meaning that John Carter isn't always the protagonist.  The interesting bit of info (thanks internet!) is that the book John Carter of Mars was a compilation of stories put out decades after the Barsoon series was 'finished' and is often regarded as the worst in the series.  Weird, huh?  So why did Disney take the risk?

            Because money, duh.  From all that I heard, Disney was banking on this becoming their next big thing.  With a large number of books to choose from, if John Carter brings in the bank, they can turn it into the next Harry Potter moneymaker.

            The jury is out on whether or not they succeeded, but the first signal that something may have gone wrong was when Disney moved the release date from June (movie blockbuster season) into early March, where there wouldn't be any competition.  The move showed possible doubt in the film but it may pay off in the end.

            Anyways, the movie.  *ahem*  It's busy.  Very, very busy.  As a potential franchise starter, we needed to learn everything about everyone.  This is one of the major bummers in the movie.  For every minute something fun happens on screen we're forced to digest five minutes of back-story, dialog or potentially boooooring conversations.  This is purely subjective, but for some reason I didn't find any of the human characters to be particularly interesting, so that's probably the reason I was bored whenever nobody was being stabbed.

            Taylor Kitsch (of Friday Night Lights fame, although I haven't seen the show I've heard great things) plays John Carter, a troubled ex-military man searching for a cave of gold after the Civil War.  After a series of awesomely ridiculous events, he gets more than he bargains for when he wakes up on Mars.  He then discovers that he's gained extraordinary powers due to the different atmosphere, allowing him to leap dozens of feet and throw large objects around like it's nothing.  Unfortunately for him, he gets captured by the Tharks: six-limbed, 8 foot tall aliens whose ranks include Willem Dafoe and Thomas Haden Church.  Because when you need to invoke otherworldliness, just the voice of Mr. Dafoe is good enough.

            *deep breath*  Carter then gets embroiled in a battle between the two last cities on Mars, the good city of Helium is represented by the love interest, Deja Thoris (Lynn Collins) while the evil walking city that devours everything else, Zodanga, is represented by Sab Than (Dominic West).  Sab Than is being helped by a super-advanced group of...people...led by Matai Shang (Mark Strong), who have given him the ability to destroy living matter with ease. 

            Cool, huh?  Yes, in theory, there's some awesome stuff in there.  But there is just so....much.....bad....pacing.  The beginning starts off well, but about 45 minutes in we're treated to absolutely nothing happening, then again when it should be climax time, we stop for a good ten minutes to build unnecessary tension.

            Here's what I loved:  The special effects.  The Tharks look fantastic and are blended seamlessly into the movie.  I also admired how the SFX team avoided the temptation to give them too many human characteristics.  Though they're still split between male and female, you can really only tell based on the overall size of the Thark you're looking at.  The females are a little shorter and more slender.  Also, there's a 'dog' in the movie that pretty much steals the spotlight whenever it's on screen.

            The fight scenes were clever and made excellent use of the locations and special effects.  That's all I have to say there.

            The downsides:  The dialog is pretty straightforward and doesn't leave much to the imagination.  It works, but it's not very interesting.

            The characters are sort of wooden.  John Carter especially seems to take the 'stoic badass' and make it more and more wooden as the movie goes on.  After a really clever succession of jail break attempts that highlight his character's drive and the film's humor, his character has nowhere to go but down.  The guy who urinates through the bars of his jail cell just to piss off the guard is long gone by the time we get to the final scenes.

            I could go on about what's good and what's not so much, but it's a 2 hour film and I'm getting close to my self-imposed word max.

            The best part of John Carter is realizing that the science fiction elements were mostly written between 1910 and 1930.  Witnessing fiction brought to life from the stories of a man who influenced Ray Bradbury is pretty damn awesome.

            If you can overlook bad plotting and so-so characterizations, check it out.  It's not going to be another Harry Potter franchise, but there's a slim possibility that they can improve on this one for the sequels, assuming it makes enough to justify one.