Ryan McNeil
The classic adventure movies have a lot in common. Think about the very best tales of treasure seekers, warriors, pirates, thieves, and explorers. They all feature strange lands beyond our imagination. They are built around great heroes whose boots we dream of standing in. And their quests are often about more than just material gain – rather they are a chance for honour and redemption.
JOHN CARTER brings many of those elements to the screen, but there’s one key detail I left out, and it’s the piece that decides whether the film succeeds or fails.
The film begins with the death of John Carter (Taylor Kitsch). He has been entombed in a crypt that can only be opened from the inside, and left his sizeable estate to his nephew Edgar. Edgar is given Carter’s journal in the hopes that it will explain his curious behaviour in his last days and his sudden passing. Through that journal, we learn that Carter’s walk to the grave began during the American Civil War.
Carter, a confederate soldier, gets captured by The Union and forced to fight for them. During an escape attempt, he finds himself in a cave filled with gold and face to face with a strange figure. Carter kills him, and somehow in doing so finds himself yanked out of the cave…and our world. He wakes up on Mars – or Barsoom as the locals call it – where he is able to jump wickedly high. just moments after he figures this out, he gets captured (again). This time he is held by the Tharks – tall, green, four-armed aliens indigenous to Barsoom. He particularly intrigues their king, Tars Tarkas (voiced by Willem Dafoe), the Jeddak who first found him.
What Carter doesn’t realize is that the world he has dropped on to is at war with itself. Two cities of Red Martians (who look and act human) have been at war for a thousand years. Now the city of Zodanga has been given a weapon that will tip the scales in their favour and allow them to defeat the city of Helium once and for all. The weapon was given to them by a Thern named Matai (Mark Strong). The Therns are shape-shifters and are constantly trying to play each side of the war for their own gain. It was also a Thern that Carter killed in the cave, bringing him to Jasoon.
Thus Carter finds himself as the monkey in the middle. He becomes at odds with The Tharks over their customs, he gets pulled into the Zodanga/Helium battle against his will, and he realizes the heavy danger the Therns pose. Through it all, he also finds himself working alongside the Helium Princess Dejah (Lynn Collins), who seems to be the only one looking to end things peacefully…and maybe get him back home to earth.
Time after time, I was able to see what director Andrew Stanton wanted JOHN CARTER to be: It admirably attempts to be a a grand space epic with roots in traditional storytelling. It is lovingly told by people who have an affinity for its source material – and it should be noted that said source material has aged beautifully in the hundred years that have passed since it was published. The film wants to honour the story by becoming something timeless, and at many turns it comes close. However, when it comes to embodying a great adventure, JOHN CARTER forgets the first key ingredient – fun.
Almost every character in JOHN CARTER speaks and acts like the world is about to end. Sure, if things don’t change on Barsoom, their way of life will go into upheaval – but the sun will still rise tomorrow. Even as the unwitting protagonist dropped into the middle of it all, John Carter has a neverending brood that goes with him from scene to scene. What I wouldn’t have given for some levity – for some cracks about the oddity of Carter’s sudden ability to jump tall buildings, or for a bit more sass from the warrior princess. Such details could have drawn people deeper into this world and its conflicts. Instead, we struggle to catch up to the severity of the situation, and the film keeps us at arm’s reach.
What’s curious is that the film has that tone of adventure and levity in its beginnings. Starting with the mystery surrounding Carter’s death, and spanning through our glimpse of him as an American Civil War soldier, the movie draws us in and makes us smile. It’s once we leave this planet that things trail off for a long time. In some ways, the movie feels like it is built to be more than the sum of its parts. No actor stands out, no characters stick with us, no sequence rises above. It stands to reason that if they all came together properly, that every cog and wheel would do its part to build something marvelous. But that’s not the case.
There are things about JOHN CARTER that I liked. For instance the creature design characters like The Tharks and Woola feel both familiar and novel. This might seem like a gimme where sci-fi movies are concerned, but remind yourself that there were two films just last year that centred around aliens and couldn’t design interesting creatures. Woola is especially charming in the way he has a slimey four-legged toad appearance, but in every respect behaves like a dog. That’s more of the whimsey I wish spread through the whole film. Not that I’m here to slam JOHN CARTER, because messy as I believe it is, I also believe it has a lot of merit. But had the filmmakers found a way to add brushstrokes of the joy that Woola embodies in other areas of the film, they easily could have tipped the scales in the film’s favour.
I see a lot of potential in JOHN CARTER. There are nine more books set on Barsoom, but I fear we will never see any of them adapted for the big screen. That’s a pity, since these age-old science fiction stories lay the groundwork for a lot of the biggest intergalactic films we’ve seen through the years. That fun and joy I wanted so badly could easily have been had in further films now that much of the ground rules have been established, and set pieces with the creatures we’ve met could have been explored to great result. It’s a pity we likely won’t see them, but that’s what happens when you execute on almost every level, but forget to make it fun for viewers to watch.
It was a bit of a “meh” to me. I feel warmly about the source material but I was always afraid it might not convey that well to the screen and I’m afraid that’s how it turned out. I’m not sure what could have been done to make it better. Perhaps embracing the pulp fiction origins, making it black and white, playing on nostaliga and charm? I’m not sure. Also: the 3D was very bad and really knocked me out of the film. The characters looked like paper figures. Not cool at all.
My current stance on 3-D is that most of it is unnecessary if not flat-out distracting. Thus, I have made it a point only to highlight when 3-D is used to great effect (HUGO, TINTIN) rather than point out every single instance when it is not.
“Pulpy” might well have been the way to go with this film. Embracing the daring-do. There are moments where it seems to be clicking well (Carter’s gladiator battle in the arena for instance), but they’re a bit too staggered.
Thanks for reading!
I tried to warn you my friend …
Ah, but see there’s a lot about the film that you didn’t like that either didn’t play into my reaction, or didn’t bother me at all.
It was close – very close actually – to getting my 2.5 star “it’s okay” rating, but it needed one more fun sequence. That leaves me more in the middle. I wasn’t fussed about it – but I can see things in it that other people might like.
It appears that my criteria for an action film is far less rigid than a majority of writers. Glad you didn’t hate it, Hatter.
Not in the least. I think a different edit might have done the film well, but I do believe that it has been carrying a bullseye for months now…unfairly so.
Maybe avoiding 3D helped, but I honestly really enjoyed this. And this was with a kid RIGHT BEHIND ME. The opening is admittedly dodgy (though it comes back around in a way I didn’t expect a kid’s adventure epic to do), but once you get past that first hump of exposition I found it refreshing, and better than most of the adventure movies to rip off the source novel. I’d rather watch this again, for example, than AVATAR, and I liked AVATAR. It also actually cares for its characters as more than just props. I wanted to see them on further adventures, and it’s a shame I likely won’t.
I was actually a bit grumpy when I realized that the theatre I’d chosen to see the film at was showing it in 3-D. You’d think I’d know better…
I’m not surprised that you dug it, that’s part of what a 2 Star rating means from me is that I didn’t like it, but I can understand how somebody else would.
One theory I’ve just started wondering about – did Stanton, Pixar & Co. miss an opportunity by not making this their first animated feature geared at adults?