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"John Carter of Mars" Moving Ahead!

Psion said:
I've been reading "Princess of Mars" to my six-year-old son off-and-on for the past few weeks. Is there anything in this film that's clearly unsuitable for kids?
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I know it's rated PG-13, but I'm honestly unclear as to why that is.

There's no cursing beyond maybe a "damn" or two. There's no blood (except for a scene of John Carter after he's fought a White Ape). The level of person-on-person violence is on par with the Narnia films or the Star Wars films.

That's probably a good test. If you'd let your son watch a Star Wars film (particularly Phantom Menace or Clones or The Clone Wars), you could, in my opinion, safely show him John Carter.
 
Hey, some publicity! Willem Dafoe will be on The Colbert Report tonight... about as geek-friendly as you can get!
 
Allyn Gibson said:
Psion said:
I've been reading "Princess of Mars" to my six-year-old son off-and-on for the past few weeks. Is there anything in this film that's clearly unsuitable for kids?
Click to expand...
I know it's rated PG-13, but I'm honestly unclear as to why that is.

There's no cursing beyond maybe a "damn" or two. There's no blood (except for a scene of John Carter after he's fought a White Ape). The level of person-on-person violence is on par with the Narnia films or the Star Wars films.
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Marketing, mostly. People usually see PG and think "Oh, it's a kids' movie." I imagine they're trying to attract the young adult male audience, who would probably rather go see a PG-13 movie than a PG one.
 
Sigh. Seems like the more mainstream critics (who I usually agree most with) aren't digging this movie so much.

And even a lot of the positive reviews still seem to take issue with how messy and convoluted the story is.
 
davejames said:
And even a lot of the positive reviews still seem to take issue with how messy and convoluted the story is.
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Eh, I'm sure many mainstream critics said the same thing about the original Star Wars way back when. ;)

Most of the more geek-friendly reviewers seem to like the movie quite a bit. (myself included)
 
don't really care what critics or websites like Rotten Tomatoes say. i do think it's a good sign that people who enjoy science fiction seem to like John Carter though.
 
Praetor_Shinzon said:
don't really care what critics or websites like Rotten Tomatoes say. i do think it's a good sign that people who enjoy science fiction seem to like John Carter though.
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My feelings as well. I've seen too many films over the years critics drooled over and yet didn't move me or films they didn't care for yet I liked.
 
That was a fun film, very entertaining all the way. The story runs along at a good clip and the various factions on Mars are played out with a lot of verve. The story lacks the typical angst and cynicism that a lot of films use and uses good guys vs bad guys. And the good guys win. Very entertaining, and I will be adding this one to my collection when it comes out.
 
Low grades from the mainstream usually equate to high quality. Hopefully, if it's a good adaptation, it will still be successful and spawn sequels.
 
Yeah, I'm going more by the fact that Newsarama, IGN, Comic Book Resources, Coming Soon, and you guys here have all been enjoying. At this point I don't care what the mainstream critics are saying. And when I clicked on the Metacritic link, it had a 53.
 
Yeah, it looks like the early enthusiasm has been tempered now -- it's currently sitting at 49% on Rotten Tomatoes, and the Hollywood Stock Exchange is predicting around $30 million for opening, which is not encouraging.

I'm glad to hear it's playing well with genre fans, though -- I tend to trust their judgement more when it comes to movies like this.

I'm planning on seeing it next week sometime, with my dad, who seems decidedly less than enthused about the film. Given the crappy marketing job, I can't say I really blame him. To people unfamiliar with the source material, the trailers make this seem like a knockoff of Star Wars and Avatar (or, worse, Green Lantern). It's almost as if Disney wanted this to fail.
 
The daily papers I'm familiar with had reviews by critics I don't trust and they weren't enthusiastic. That actually gives me hope.
 
The Atlantic has up a nice article about the long, strange journey of the Barsoom stories to the silver screen, from Bob Clampett's animated test reel to Andrew Stanton's John Carter.

I'm practically salivating thinking about a three-hour cut of John Carter. :)
 
I really didn't enjoy it. There was nothing particularly bad about it, I mean it was done well enough, but I found it really dull. I know the books came first but it just seemed to have borrowed practically everything about itself from other films of this kind, from Flash Gordon to Star Wars it seemed it owed a lot. Especially the Star Wars prequels, it seemed like they'd seen scenes in that and thought "We can do that." Maybe I'm judging it harshly, but I went in knowing nothing of the series other than it existed and came out disappointed.

It did make me wonder if it had just been dumbed down from the book but judging from what's been said here I think I've lost all my interest in checking out the books too.

Actually Mark Kermode says it best... oh some backstory required to the review. The director was on the show last week saying how he didn't make the film for anyone else he made it for himself, he doesn't care about box office so long as he made a film he would want to watch. He also said they removed Of Mars from the title because "some people don't like sci-fi".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00pyvth
 
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I'm not really deterred by some of the less than positive remarks from some out there. I've seen too many films I've liked that others and some critics didn't. I've also been unimpressed with films a lot of people have drooled over. Avatar comes immediately and most recently to mind.

I'm seeing it this afternoon. I don't see many films in the cinema anymore, not like I used to about twenty or so years ago. But this is a visual spectacle and I haven't seen a decent adventure romp in quite some time. Add to that I get the impression it's a bit smarter and more mature than Star Wars and the like. For me thats a good thing.
 
We i saw it a couple hours ago and it was better than Cowboys and Aliens but not by much.

How come only the extras were truly red skinned?

Three of the principles. that i counted, where there more, from Rome were on site and this is all we got?

Then Marc Antony's rescue of carter was hilarious.

the stole a lot form Attack of the Clones and the other Star wars Prequesls.

they should have got Sting to redo walking on the moon while carter was learning how to jump...

He should have broken every bone in his body... Or was the fasxsimile tougher than his real body?
 
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