There’s an interesting vibe surrounding Disney’s ‘John Carter’ right now. From the sci-fi geek side of things, I’m constantly running into people who are interested in it. From film fans down to the general public, there’s mostly a collective shrug going on. The marketing Disney has done up to this point–including clipping ‘Of Mars’ from the title–has made the movie a big question mark in the minds of most people. What they see is a young, unknown lead and copious amounts of special effects and I don’t think many are differentiating between this and something like the Star Wars prequels.
I’ve not seen John Carter yet–I do soon–but based on the source material and what I’ve seen from Andrew Stanton and his work on this so far, I’ve got hope that it will be a worthy take on Edgar Rice Burrough’s epic source material. The new promo stuff, like these new trailers and featurette, and the gorgeous poster below suggest it just might. And there’s the four minute clip, that has me sold. Look at the white apes and the way they interact with Taylor Kitsch and the way the camera moves around the scene. This has a texture and weight that’s more reminiscent of Ray Harryhausen movies than anything Lucas related.
Stanton, who created one of the best science fiction films of the last four of five years with Wall-E, seems to have a great grasp of the live action medium, especially when augmenting it with visual effects.
Will it work? Will it be the John Carter I used to read as a kid? The jury is still out on that, but I’m dying to find out.
What do you think?
I hope to hell they manage to pull this off. JCoM is just about one of my most favorite books. I learned to read using it since I have learning disabilities and learning to read was a titanic struggle but A Princess of Mars got me over. I don’t know how many copies of APoM I burned through growing up I usually had it on me all the time stuck in a back pocket or a glove compartment.
That being said the marketing of the movie has me concerned it looks like a sterile lifeless adaptation. My hope is that Taylor Kitsch can bring the excellent acting he did as Tim Riggins on FNL(a lot of credit goes to that shows writrs) to JCoM. If Kitsch can have a Riggin’s like performance then the movie might work.
Im not getting sterile from the longer clips, but I haven’t seen anything that shows whether Kitsch can carry the film or not. That longer scene with the white apes looks pretty good, and he seems to be doing ok in the action scenes.
My concern is how he’s going to interact with Tars Tarkas and Dejah Thoris and if those relationships–arguably the heart of the book–are going to come through.
I’m pretty optimistic about the whole thing, primarily because I’ve heard the director talk, and he’s clearly a legitimate fan of the books, not some kind of ‘big fan’ who just picked up the book a month before they stopped filming, ala everyone who has made a Conan movie.
I guess we will see. But it seems like just now they are starting to delve into the more interesting facets of the film.
I do admit that many of the trailers have given off a generic fantasy war film, and there’s certainly much more texture and interest in the Burrough’s books. What I’m starting to get a whiff of is typical Disney marketing, where they want you to believe this is generic easily-digested action fantasy instead of epic science fiction.
Disney is acting almost like they’re embarrassed to be putting out this movie.