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John Carter - Go see it!
13 years ago
General
I've seen Disney's "John Carter", and I heartily recommend it to everyone. It is not "The Princess of Mars - the Movie", but that is okay. It combines elements from the first two books, discards some things entirely, and adds some others. It modernizes the story and the conflict, making them more plausible and easier to relate for the modern audiences. And, remarkably, it does this without sacrificing the feel of Barsoom!
The movie gives you a dying world of dried-up seas and desolate uplands, where barbarous Tharks and other Green Martians dwell in ancient, ruined cities; and the civilized Red Martians, heirs of an ancient civilization, clashing and wasting one another's strength in endless wars driven by millennia-old grudges and the harsh realities of Barsoom. It gives you Dejah Thoris - beautiful, intelligent, brave, and both willing and capable of grabbing a sword and slaughtering some enemies. It gives you John Carter as a catalyst of change, a spanner thrown into the gears of fate and history, and manages to humanize him beautifully.
It is a gorgeous, fun, well-done movie that I believe is as faithful to the spirit of the original books as you could ever get in a movie adaptation, and you should go see it. Take some friends with you, too! This movie deserves a sequel!
The movie gives you a dying world of dried-up seas and desolate uplands, where barbarous Tharks and other Green Martians dwell in ancient, ruined cities; and the civilized Red Martians, heirs of an ancient civilization, clashing and wasting one another's strength in endless wars driven by millennia-old grudges and the harsh realities of Barsoom. It gives you Dejah Thoris - beautiful, intelligent, brave, and both willing and capable of grabbing a sword and slaughtering some enemies. It gives you John Carter as a catalyst of change, a spanner thrown into the gears of fate and history, and manages to humanize him beautifully.
It is a gorgeous, fun, well-done movie that I believe is as faithful to the spirit of the original books as you could ever get in a movie adaptation, and you should go see it. Take some friends with you, too! This movie deserves a sequel!
*insert joke about Willem Dafoe acting without makeup* XD
Also, that so far it's been a gigantic flop. There were plans for this to be a franchise but it seems... unlikely now.
And yeah, it is likely a huge flop. It ran over its budget (apparently at least partially because they rewrote and re-shot large chunks of the movie along the way, although it doesn't show in the quality of the end product), was marketed really badly, and has gotten a slightly unfair rap from critics. It's a crying shame, because I would very much like to see a sequel.
It's my second-favorite movie of the year after "Avengers".