Variety says John Carter film is poory scripted and directed

[JD]

Emphasize that Dejah Thoris is the leader of her noble embattled people, blahblahblah. Here comes the Earthman to help her. Not rescue her, help her. Don't be shy about explaining his Confederate backstory. There's still some romance there (much as I may find that phenomenon yucky).

That's about as much as you can do to make this story female-friendly.

Temis, that's pretty much exactly how the movie plays out.

Except she's not their leader. She's the Jedakk's (king) daughter. Her role in the story is political, but she isn't a politician.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Disney has reprinted all eleven Barsoom novels in three massive trade paperbacks, but they're incomplete versions that lack the Edgar Rice Burroughs framing sequences.

Good to know... I was tempted to get them... even though I already have the Barnes and Noble Princess of Mars volume.

What's even weirder is that the John Carter novelization, also published by Disney, reprints the full text of A Princess of Mars, but the Edgar Rice Burroughs framing sequence from Princess is attached to Stuart Moore's novelization, not to Princess. It's just strange.

I got the Disney editions because they're a complete, unified set. But definitive they are not.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

^ Me too but it's beginning to sound more and more like one to watch on DVD

I think this is definitely a movie that should be seen in a theater. It's shot in a way that is reminiscent of good old-fashioned epics like Lawrence of Arabia. It won't have the same effect on a TV screen.

There's no need to see it in 3D, though. It's not a bad conversion, but it doesn't really add anything.

I agree on both points.

 

[stj]

Although everyone has abjured the auteur theory, in practice almost everyone only talks about the director. In this case the director forgot to tell Michael Giacchino to do something besides stirring and triumphant. He also forgot to tell the writers to give the villains real motives. But he didn't forget to start the movie. Instead he gave it about four separate starts.

The problem is not Taylor Kitsch, the problem is that the effort to give John Carter baggage so that he can redeem himself was pathetic. The story is not a man who's quite fighting for causes because they're frauds, finds a new cause to fight for (and a new love.) The story is, you get to go to another planet and be their Superman. It's a thin story, and it doesn't help to really care about the shenanigans on screen, particularly since the world on screen is so hard to believe. We've seen pictures of Mars and this isn't it. Also, it's hard to believe flying ships and swordsmen even when you see these together on thesame screen. Seeing isn't always believing.

These antics are about as well crafted as you could hope for. Taylor Kitsch and especially Lynn Collins manage to sell this tripe about as well as human being possibly can. In the end, though, we have a movie which really is what the fake criticisms of Avatar claimed. A weak story, fantastic FX and a somewhat embarrassing Mighty Whitey fantasy. Well, except for Gary Westfahl over at Locus, who is unhappy about the politcal correctness ruining a good story.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

The opening wasn't as bad, apparently, as Disney might have feared. Deadline's reporting that the movie probably made about one hundred million worldwide.

 

[JRoss]

Except she's not their leader. She's the Jedakk's (king) daughter. Her role in the story is political, but she isn't a politician.

She's enough of a leader to command those ships into battle against the wishes of her father.

 

[Samurai8472]

I think this movie will be like "Tron Legacy" It won't make much but it will still be a great movie

http://www.deadline.com/2012/03/john-carter-weak-500k-midnight-shows/


The movie only made 500 thousand from the midnight screenings.

Tron did very well, don't know where you got your info.

As for what Variety says, why not just go see it?

RAMA

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/54267

A bit of "Tron Legacy" mentioned in the "John Carter" article

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/54267

"You could see Disney's JOHN CARTER shaping up as a misfire from a long way off. No studio has projected 'disaster' so loudly since Sony's misbegotten remake of GODZILLA in 1998. For a $250 million movie to be tracking near a $25 million opening is shocking."

The autopsy began before the corpse was even on the slab. In fact, with less than one week in the books and over $100 million in worldwide grosses, it's yet to be determined whether JOHN CARTER is actually dead. But that didn't stop reasonable folks like Anne Thompson, quoted above, from declaring the movie DOA before ticket buyers had their say. Here it was: another stumble for Disney's feature division (following the failed franchising of TRON LEGACY) and, perhaps most importantly, the first critical/commercial disaster for a key member of the Pixar brain trust. Finally, a chance to lambaste one of those guys.

Andrew Stanton called this pack-mentality drubbing "schadenfreude" on Twitter, and he's correct up to a point. Success breeds contempt in Hollywood; the longer you're on a roll, the more folks want to see you drive into a ditch going 100 mph with no seat belt. They want to know that you're human, and they want you to suffer for their inability to make a film 1/10th as inspired as the fiasco they're tearing apart*. Stanton was already on the clock after the largely-dialogue-free WALL-E; now that he was branching out into live action (and admittedly learning on the job) with a semi-obscure property that's long thrown a scare into studio marketing departments, the opportunity to yank the leash was there.