Pulp Magazine Authors and Literature Fans discussion

Has anyone seen the new John Carter flick and, if so, can tell the rest of us if it sucks or not?

In another group I heard it was OK. I'll be waiting for the DVD.

Hello:
I haven't seen it yet but I've heard it's pretty good. I'll probably see it this coming weekend and then I'll give a report.
Have a Great Day!!!
The "Creature"

No i havent seen it yet but im reading the novel right now and its surprisingly good adventure for a book 100 years old.

I read the novel years ago when I was on an Edgar Rice Burroughs kick. As Mohammed says above, for books written 100 years ago, they are still pretty exciting and readable.

Ed Brubaker has been on a pretty relentless "John Carter doesn't suck" campaign on Twitter. It seems to be getting a fair amount of negative press, and his counterargument is that it's a fun, well-made adventure movie.

My wife and I are going to re-enact our courtship and sneak some booze into the theater tomorrow night and see it, so I'll report back.

Disclaimer, I've only read Burroughs's Tarzan novels, so I won't be able to tell you how faithful the adaptation is, just how much I enjoyed it after a brass monkey.

You really should read the Barsoom novels, Adam. They're free on Gutenberg, I believe. The first 3 should really be read together & the 10th, Llana of Gathol might be my favorite. The others were good too, except the last two novellas which were published in one novel. They pretty much sucked.

After having read half the novel im more impressed than i ever imagined. The book is ever young!

Sure its old school late 1800s classic adventure writing but im enjoying the prose as a tool for sword and planet adventure. John Carter is a convincing narrator,hero. He talks like a gentleman but he is a complete badass. The way ERB writes about the different cultures of Mars takes you there so vividly.

Adam wrote: "Ed Brubaker has been on a pretty relentless "John Carter doesn't suck" campaign on Twitter. It seems to be getting a fair amount of negative press, and his counterargument is that it's a fun, well-..."

The press i have seen have been positive. Heh i went to Lovefilm to log in my account. Their review said it was a smart,complex story adventure for a blockbuster.

It has great word to mouth. People who never read ERB are running to see the film. I have to keep friends,siblings wait for me while i finish the book before we see the film.

Well, the press I have seen has been mostly negative.

"Why did Disney's 'John Carter' flop?" http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-john-carter-flop-20120313,0,1528115.story

"'John Carter' could lose $165 million, analyst predicts."
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2012/03/john-carter-could-lose-165-million-analyst-projects.html

"The belly flop of 'John Carter' shows just how risky Hollywood's tentpole strategy can be"
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-rt-us-johncarterbre82c05l-20120312,0,2362736.story

"Disney shareholders meet following 'Carter' disaster."
http://www.contactmusic.com/news/disney-shareholders-meet-following-carter-disaster_1302902

The film currently has a 51% positive score on Rotten Tomatoes. I've seen a lot worse than that, but it's not good coupled with all the press about how financially poorly the film did in its opening. Things like that affect public opinion. The first week of a blockbuster film's performance can be critical and has a snowball effect.

I thought it was quite good, but not great. I gave it a 7.5 out of 10.

The framing story, however, was great.

Peter

Dan wrote: "Has anyone seen the new John Carter flick and, if so, can tell the rest of us if it sucks or not?"

John Carter may have a 51% Critics Score, but it has a 71% audience score, so many people like it.

71% of people who saw it liked it. The problem is that not nearly enough people actually bought tickets and saw it. (See articles above.)

All my talk of "negative press" has nothing to do with whether or not people who saw "John Carter" liked it. (I am seeing it tonight and am looking forward to it.)

But a movie widely regarded as a "massive flop" is bad news for that movie. Even if it eventually makes its money back, and Disney doesn't have to deal with a $150 million write-off, the chance of there being sequels is extremely low.

And it's never good news for a director, star, or franchise when your film is constantly mentioned in the same breath as "Ishtar."

Jon, a friend of mine who is also a mod of the fantasy group here did a review of John Carter here:
http://mossjon314159.wordpress.com/20...

She gave it 4 - 4.5 stars. She's a friend on here because we share similar tastes in books, so her take on the movie means more to me than most critics.

I am sure my wife and I are going to have a good time watching "John Carter" tonight, whether or not we think it's great or merely OK.

All my comments on here so far have just been reportage on the film's budget, performance at the box office, etc.

Just to clarify, none of has actually seen it yet, right? :-)

It was OK, but only OK. I don't know how John Carter is characterized in Burroughs's books, but for my taste Taylor Kitsch played him more thuggishly than I would have liked. He's supposed to be a Southern gentleman from Virginia, right? Not a long-haired pretty boy who grunts all of his lines.

The special effects were good, but after awhile nothing but CGI starts to make my eyes glaze over. The big dog-like alien who follows John Carter around everywhere was cute, and reminded me of my own dog.

I enjoyed seeing '30s-style sci-fi on the big screen (this movie is more similar to the Flash Gordon serials than even the original Star Wars trilogy), but like everything else littering the multiplexes these days I felt as if it could have been twice as entertaining and had half the budget. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I miss miniatures and spaceships hanging on strings.

As I said above, I saw it last Sunday and thought it was good...

Didn't recognize a plot point or two, but thought it was pretty damn good. Even the CGI has come a long way. Thought Kitsch played John Carter the way ERB intended, same with Lynn Collins for Dejah Thoris.

Adam wrote: "It was OK, but only OK. I don't know how John Carter is characterized in Burroughs's books, but for my taste Taylor Kitsch played him more thuggishly than I would have liked. He's supposed to be a ..."

Doesnt sound like JC at all. I wrote my review of the novel just today hailing ERB for writing a hero that was both well mannered, a real gentleman when he wasnt fighting for his life. Thugish is far from John Carter in the books.

But its hollywood and the modern heroes must be pretty boy that act tough.

Maybe "thuggish" is too strong a word, but my feeling (and it's just a feeling, because I've never read the John Carter books) was that the characterization was similar to Tarzan, who's semi-literate in most movies and speaks pidgin English, whereas in the books he's an autodidact who speaks several languages and is as comfortable as a "gentleman" as he is as "lord of the jungle."

I like Taylor Kitsch from his time on "Friday Night Lights," and it was fun to see '30s-style sci-fi on the big screen, but he just never quite seemed right as an officer and a gentleman from 19th-century Virginia.

Adam wrote: "Maybe "thuggish" is too strong a word, but my feeling (and it's just a feeling, because I've never read the John Carter books) was that the characterization was similar to Tarzan, who's semi-litera..."

He is not suppose to be an officer and gentleman. He is suppose to draw in Robert Pattison fans, the younger female audience. JC if you have read him needs an older,tougher actor like Daniel Craig or Harrison Ford type back in the day. JC type hero doesnt exist in american adventure,SF films these days.

Why i will see the film because its blockuster SF adventure and not because its the classic John Carter book,story.

John Carter WAS an officer & a gentleman, albeit a tough one - just like Tarzan turned into by the second book. Both are cultured, yet quite at home in the wild. The movie portrayal of Tarzan was always way off.

Jim wrote: "John Carter WAS an officer & a gentleman, albeit a tough one - just like Tarzan turned into by the second book. Both are cultured, yet quite at home in the wild. The movie portrayal of Tarzan was..."

I meant Taylor Kitsch isnt suppose to be an officer and gentleman like in the book. He fits the mold of other SF,fantasy heroes in hollywood right now.

You cant expect a summer blockbuster to capture a classic character.

Ah! I have no expectations of Hollywood ever capturing anything correctly.

Jim wrote: "Ah! I have no expectations of Hollywood ever capturing anything correctly."

Yeah thats a very healthy attitude i share because then you can be surprised when it happens one in a million. I see fans becoming annoyed how adaptation like Conan is not faithful or any good.

Im expecting a decent,fun blockbuster nothing more.

I saw the movie today. For fans of the books, I'd say it rated 4 stars (out of 5). True, Taylor Kitsch did not play the part as a "Southern gentleman," but neither was he a "thug" as mentioned in an earlier comment. He played the part like a 21st century 20-something kid, but it wasn't so bad. Dejah Thoris was well cast and by the end of the movie, I was thinking of her as "the most beautiful woman on two worlds." Overall the story line was true to the book (in most parts). I, for one, am hoping against hope for a sequel.

I thought it was quite enjoyable. I hope a sequel gets made.

I hated the supernatural element of the movie, and I felt like Dejah Thoris became a characature of feminism rather than a beautiful and somewhat helpless heroine. I like Woola, but the movie completely glosses over the relationships between the Tharks and John Carter. The movie was terrible.

Finally saw it myself. I thought it did a decent job capturing the spirit of the original series. Some things it nailed while others were new. It was certainly undeserving of all the jeers it received at the box office.

I just saw it, too. It was far better than "Lockout", but it won't make my top 100 list.

I mostly enjoyed it, but I had to kind of tell myself that it was a movie about a totally different & unrelated guy named John Carter who went to a totally different & unrelated planet called Barsoom.

(One of the things that irritated me all out of proportion: People on Barsoom always use their full names. If your name is Dejah Thoris or Tars Tarkas or Kantos Kan, then you are not addressed as Dejah or Tars or Kantos.)

I liked the visuals although they weren't quite what I had envisioned -- I always thought the flyers would look more like a hybrid of a WWI-era battleship and Flash Gordon art deco stylings.

This thread's been quiet for some time; but I finally saw this movie on DVD over the weekend, and have to chime in with my comments. :-) I'm definitely in the "liked it' camp! Yes, it took some liberties with the plot, and with the characters. But I'd argue that it was generally faithful to Burroughs' basic conception (so much so that I think, if he were alive today, he'd approve of it), and that in most places where it differs, it does so for the better. The storyline, for instance, is tighter, and doesn't depend as much on coincidence as ERB sometimes does. Also, several elements in the novel that struck me as logically or scientifically unsound don't appear in the movie. I was never very impressed with astral projection via wish fulfillment as a credible means of space travel, so I thought the substitution of ancient alien super-technology as the mechanism was a real improvement, and added a dimension to the story. Samantha, I don't think we were intended to take the Therns and their abilities as really supernatural; the old inscriptions that Dejah read just explain them that way. (But she later says, after seeing the "ninth ray" mechanism, something to the effect that, "These are not works of the goddess; these are machines.") This is all "soft" SF technology, not grounded in extrapolation from any real known science and so advanced that, as in Sir Arthur Clarke's famous quote, it seems to us like magic. But I think it's meant to be seen as technology nonetheless.

Carter's character here is thoroughly human, without the vague hints in the book of superhuman origins and abilities; again, I prefer the approach here. He's also given more depth as a character by the greater exploration of his pre-Barsoom career. I agree with Mike that the movie doesn't portray him as a thug. Yes, he's quite ready to meet rudeness and aggression with a physical response. (Southern "gentlemen" of his generation, BTW, often owned a set of dueling pistols --and put them to use if they thought their gentlemanly honor demanded it.) But he's no bully picking on the weak; and he's quite the Southern gentleman, for the most part, in his bearing toward Dejah.

Dejah, IMO, comes into her own more here than in the original book (and I was quite pleased with that development!), but I'd say that her character is just a more fully realized expression of ERB's vision. Yes, she gets to kick butt here, whereas she doesn't in the first book; but as the later books indicate, Burroughs didn't see her as being helpless --she can handle herself quite capably in a knife fight if she has to. Nothing in her speech or attitudes in the movie struck me as a "caricature of feminism;" and the idea that Martian women, as well as men, take part in fighting is part of the world-building in the original books, not a idea dragged in from the 21st century. Personally, I liked seeing Dejah play a larger role here, and that made her and John's love for each other more believable.

While I'm no CGI expert, I thought those effects here were really good, and helped bring Burroughs' vision to the screen in a way that wouldn't have been nearly so convincing with, say, 50s-era effects. Putting the youthful Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) into the framing story was an interesting touch --but unfortunately, in 1881, he'd have been a six-year-old child! That's a quibble, though; on the whole, I think this film is a winner.

Werner, great review. I liked the film a lot myself and have watched it half a dozen times already, which is NOT something I do with most films. I didn't particularly like JC's character early in the movie, but I came to accept it. Some elements of the character were certainly more realistic than the ERB version.

Thanks, Charles! Yes, I too wasn't sure how to take the movie version of Carter early on; but after I learned about the tragedy he had gone through, I came to be more understanding of where he was coming from.

Cool review, Werner.

Glad you liked it, John! (Actually, it wasn't meant to be a real review, just my comment on the film --but my comments tend to get a bit long-winded sometimes. :-) )

I'm hoping they make another film in the John Carter series. Has anyone heard?

Werner wrote: "Glad you liked it, John! (Actually, it wasn't meant to be a real review, just my comment on the film --but my comments tend to get a bit long-winded sometimes. :-) )"

Nah, it's good stuff!

I thought the film was quite good but it never really took off if you see what I mean. It was obviously a high budget affair and looks good.

My main criticism of the film though is that, for me, it does not capture the spirit or the atmosphere of the books. And I love the books.

I enjoyed the film, it wasn't a faithful adaption of any particular story but that's not typically a deal killer for me. The issues involved that kneecapped the potential success of the movie had to do with behind the scenes issues. Mainly a director whose experience was in animation and had no live action experience. This resulted in massive reshoots that bloated the budget. Combined with a lack of promotion the movie was doomed as far as box office numbers go.