John Carter

[gurugeorge]

Reasons I liked John Carter (SPOILERS HO!):

Just seen this on DVD, and I have to agree that while it's not a great film it doesn't deserve the opprobrium it seems to have suffered. It's entertaining and ... I guess the word really is "charming". It's light entertainment that reminds me of older genre films from the 50s and 60s.

I was most surprised by the leading man who looked a complete dork in the clips, but had strong presence in the film.

It may be that I'm influenced by seeing it on a small screen. I feel this may be one of those films that has suffered from the ability to do lots of fast digital editing that looks great on a sizeable computer monitor but is mind numbing on a big screen.

(I remember that asteroid film with Bruce Willis suffered terribly from that, it's the first major film I noticed the syndrome in - absolutely awful to watch in the cinema, but quite normal looking on a small screen.)

[Sören Höglund]

It may be that I'm influenced by seeing it on a small screen. I feel this may be one of those films that has suffered from the ability to do lots of fast digital editing that looks great on a sizeable computer monitor but is mind numbing on a big screen.

I don't think that's a problem with John Carter, it was shot and edited very clearly, and steers well clear of chaos cinema and Bayhem.

Film Crit Hulk provided a pretty good diagnosis of John Carter's problems: the movie's contantly explaining itself instead of just getting down with the drama and swashbuckling, including roughly 500 different prologues, and the main character who's supposed to be the audience surrogate has his motivations withheld for over half the movie just for the sake of a pointless reveal, preventing you from engaging and getting swept along.

[gurugeorge]

I don't think that's a problem with John Carter, it was shot and edited very clearly, and steers well clear of chaos cinema and Bayhem.

Film Crit Hulk provided a pretty good diagnosis of John Carter's problems: the movie's contantly explaining itself instead of just getting down with the drama and swashbuckling, including roughly 500 different prologues, and the main character who's supposed to be the audience surrogate has his motivations withheld for over half the movie just for the sake of a pointless reveal, preventing you from engaging and getting swept along.

That's an excellent analysis, spot on I think.

Shame because the production values are otherwise quite high and this could have been a rollicking old skool genre s-f/fantasy swashbuckler with modern fx.

[BiggerBoat]

Watched this over the weekend. It left me feeling ambivalent. It was chaotic yet strangely inert. The characters traveled a bunch but it didn't feel like they accomplished anything or went anywhere. The pacing felt off. The CGI, art direction and design all looked OK but the money spent was most certainly not on the screen.

I was surprised, considering the talent involved, at how unengaging the story was.

[Farscry]

It's hard to explain why, but I really enjoyed this film quite thoroughly. It wasn't spectacular in any particular way; definitely one of those "the whole is better than the sum of its parts" things. I think a lot of the appeal for me was, especially in the first half of the film, the high degree of "wow, this is crazy!" experiences that the protagonist was going through. Definitely felt like a fun swashbuckler in many parts.

[Stepsongrapes]

It's hard to explain why, but I really enjoyed this film quite thoroughly.

What's so hard to explain? It's spelled Lynn Collins.

[unbongwah]

Film Crit Hulk provided a pretty good diagnosis of John Carter's problems:

That's a pretty long-winded way of saying that the movie has about half-a-dozen too many plot threads and nearly collapses under its own weight. JC made the classic nerd-movie mistake of over-complicating the fuck outta what should've been a straight-forward, gripping adventure yarn. [Hint: if your scifi plot's more complex than, say, Star Wars or Aliens, then it's probably too damn complicated for its own good.] Add to that a relatively uninteresting protagonist and that's a lot of drag on the film's narrative momentum.

I liked JC - heck, I even liked the first trailer - but the first act is too slow & boring (does anyone give a shit about ERB or any of the pre-Mars stuff?), the second act is too meandering with the wandering-in-the-desert bits, leaving the third act to feel too abrupt and rushed to have much impact. They should've jettisoned most of the Earth-bound bits and probably most of the stuff with the Therns (even though Mark Strong was great), so they could focus on the "man wakes on Mars, finds he has super-powers, meets pretty warrior-princess-scientist, fights bad dudes" bits.

[DennyA]

They should've jettisoned most of the Earth-bound bits and probably most of the stuff with the Therns (even though Mark Strong was great), so they could focus on the "man wakes on Mars, finds he has super-powers, meets pretty warrior-princess-scientist, fights bad dudes" bits.

It's an honor to have you on Qt3, Mr. Bay!