And really not sure about why it got so many brickbats. It reminds me a little of the Dune movie - visually lovely, but very, very flawed, but it hangs together much better than, say, Prometheus managed to, which has very similar flaws but happens to be pretty boring, something JA at least isn't. I think my biggest bugbear about it is the number of ideas flung in here, none given more than surface attention, and which suggests this would've made a really good (albeit expensive) sci-fi series rather than the adequate movie it is. The notion that time is the greatest commodity is one worth exploring, as are the moral implications of farming your own species to provide effective immortality (B5 touched on this with one ep, whereas JA takes it to a conclusion) and I don't think we've really had an effective tale of memory wipes and rebuilt cities since Dark City, the powerful families (again, echoes of Dune's Houses) being above the government (ties in with a bit of modern social commentary.) There's a lot here that just cannot be given decent treatment in a movie all at once, and maybe if they'd focussed on one idea with the others as background for potential sequels it would've been an excellent film and their first one since the Matrix to really grab attention, but it just flings them all in, mixes in action and hopes the finished product works. So yeah, it deserves some censure, but the amount it got? Worth watching, but glad I didn't pay for it at the cinema, even though many of the visuals deserve big screen treatment.
I thought it was okay. I just didn't find anything particularly original about it. Just felt like a mashup of things that had already been done. Plus I had a hard time taking Tatum in those ears seriously.
Werewolf rollerblade love interest guy seemed to have been written by and for 12 year old female Twilight fans. Otherwise, I enjoyed it.
A good rule of thumb is ignore reviews of anything on the internet. We are well into the age of "it's cool to hate everything". Yeah, a few shows or movies are exempted from this hate, but those are random. According to the internet Firefly and Breaking Bad are the best shows evah! While good, there are many just as good and some better.
^I can see the similarities to the Matrix element, I find JA's a much more satisfying one though - we can't empathize with the needs of the machines, but more life? Eternal youth? That has been the basis for a lot of different tales over the centuries. Had JA been a bit weightier on it, could've made for some nice, thoughtful sci-fi.
This is why I gave it a chance. In fact, I'd really encourage people to ignore the reviews and check out John Carter. I thought is was excellent.
I liked John Carter, it was a pretty difficult story to put on screen given the time the books were written, and would've benefited from making Carter assume he was on Mars (makes sense given the average knowledge of the time it's set, plus have the natives call it something similar thus making the mistake even more understandable), but given the viewer the truth of the matter. Even without that, it was a fun story and worked rather well. Another film that really didn't deserve to bomb.
Another for John Carter here - it was a combination of bad marketing and bad studio execs that did it in. Who the hell releases a scifi trailer without any SFX completed yet? And suits thought the problem was it had the word Mars in it - Mars Needs Moms bombed, so naturally they thought the problem was with the word Mars. Oy. JC was fun and had some great moments, and WAYYYY better than the reviews suggested, but I didn't think it was fantastic. The leaping concept appeared a bit silly - yes, it is in the books, but not to that level. A good solid outing that should have done OK-good at the box office and probably deserved a chance to get a sequel. But inept leadership, and a director that demanded he be in charge of marketing and didn't know how to market it killed it. In that context I'll rent JA at some point, thanks for the heads up.
The leaping thing should have stayed at 3-4 times what he could leap on Earth. Carter was a strong physical specimen in the books, but not superman. That last 1/2 mile leap in the film was ridiculous.
