Another is the budget, which apparently ballooned tremendously partway through the project as Stanton, a talented rookie, had to do a bunch of reshoots and redos. Collectively, such an increase ensured that the film was all-but doomed not to make a profit, simply because the bar was so very high.
Not a bug, but a feature. I\'ve read the book by Pixar\'s CEO two years ago, and this is exactly how they do things. They think that\'s instead of planning something this out and \"wasting\" time on indecision, it\'s best to just try everything first and change it then. It\'s obviously an approach that works...for animation, where you make cheap wireframe scenes for such tests, and even more detailed ones can be redrawn easier. When you have actual sets and people, it\'s lethal (see also: Tomorrowland).
And I\'m no fan of Avatar (see my review of it) but honestly, to hear that it has a better story and characters is laughable. At least it had antagonists with clear motivations I could believe in, and emphasise with (and I\'m far from alone on this.) Therns are literally three guys with whatever powers plot demands whose are evil just because the plot needs them to be. It\'s actually funny, because the warlord guy came off as no worse than Carter, and if he was allowed to exist on his own, the movie could\'ve ended fine with the marriage and Carter getting the hell out. Would\'ve been a pretty modern anti-hero deconstruction, at any rate.
Moreover, Avatar\'s Jake actually had a (relatively) compelling choice for that kind of film: if he didn\'t step up to the call and just continued being a spy, etc., then he would\'ve done decently out of this, and besides, he would\'ve had been, if not saving Earth, then at least prolonging the good existence for a lot of people. The titular John Carter could either stay and fight on Barsoom (where he gets awesome jumping and leadership) to also save both it and Earth, or he could go back to Earth as a wanted fugitive with nothing valuable, and not only have doomed Barsoom, but had left Therns alive and able to do the same to Earth later on. No real choice at all, essentially.
And all that talk about justification for being a protagonist actually makes me curious, because all I remember is him stumbling into the cave while the first Thern was there, who was then nice enough to teleport him. And afterwards, he\'s mainly valued because he jumps high due to being used to Earth\'s gravity, until he gets the whole \"hero proves himself, etc.\". Was there something else I missed?
Also, it\'s kind of ironic to hear complaints about critics (who were way too kind to this, to be honest), and then admit to being completely swayed by the marketing (or lack of it), when it came to seeing the film.
No, no, thought better of it. And I hate that coming here fills my review with ugly slash-marks.
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A good movie that failed through no fault of its own.
John Carter is a good film. It's beautifully-shot, imaginative in its visuals, takes the best ideas from its source material without being slavishly devoted to it. It features the best CGI acting of its time, with the Tharks in particular blowing the Na'vi so far out of the water they'd land on those dumb floating continents.
The storytelling is grand, epic in scope but human in perspective. It actually justifies why the human-and-therefore-already-at-a-handicap main character gets to be the protagonist in a way so many films of its type never bother to. It has a cast broad enough to be diverse without being an intolerable thicket. Every actor turns in exactly what the role demands at worst. And it even has an adorably-ugly alien dog with super-speed.
It is a pretty good movie. I still like to watch it whenever I catch it on TV. The worst thing I'll say about it is that it made me hungry for a sequel that'll never come.
So then, the question becomes, why did it bomb? Why did I, who love the film, not see it in theaters? Why was the best Disney live-action IP since the Pirates films dead on arrival?
A bit of Internet sleuthing fingers a truly awful marketing campaign as one of the biggest culprits. Whether it was Stanton's failure to construct a quality campaign or others' failure to properly use his material is buried in the mists of Hollywood backstabbing and scapegoating.
Another is the budget, which apparently ballooned tremendously partway through the project as Stanton, a talented rookie, had to do a bunch of reshoots and redos. Collectively, such an increase ensured that the film was all-but doomed not to make a profit, simply because the bar was so very high.
And, of course, the critics. Bleh. Often, I find I don't really agree with their hive-minded consensus, but the drubbing this movie got was unwarrented. So what if this movie has some of the same vague plot underpinnings as, say, Avatar? It told a better story with better characters and better narrative skill! Most of the complaints quickly seem to reveal to me that they were angry it wasn't something it was never trying to be. That, combined with a public that pretends things like Metacritic or the Tomatometer are actual indicators of quality or can even be used to objectively measure the fundamentally subjective, were a collective albatross around the film's neck.
With neither the colossal marketing juggarnaut that props up critically-panned stuff like the Transformers films, nor the kind of critical super-support that helped The Jungle Book grow beyond its opening weekend, John Carter died.
That's sad. But, at the end of the day, at least we got a good movie out of it, and if you've never had the chance to, give it a watch. It's a great sci-fi yarn, and it was the best Star Wars we'd gotten for years before The Force Awakens came out.