John Carter: Teaser Trailer (Video) (2min)
John Carter: Trailer (Video) (2min)
John Carter - John and Dejah (Video) (1min)
Here you have a problem of a hundred year old sci-fi books series written with limited scientific knowledge of the medium - Mars. I never had any interest in the old series because it came off dated and likely not very scientific - something important for "sci-fi".
For the movie they titled it based on the main character with no mention of Mars and thus made it sound generic. Ten of the eleven books have the word 'Mars' in the title so you know what the story is about and only the last one mentions "John Carter" in the title yet also includes the word 'Mars'. Most of the book titles are better than the movie title and by using the word 'Mars' you immediately know where the story takes place. This was a big marketing mistake.
The lead, 'Taylor Kitsch' looks the part of a civil war vet (in that costume) but is completely out of place in his "Conan" role. He looks too disheveled, too pale and lacking muscle size. This makes his action sequences less believable. Being too pale does not work for bare chested scenes in movies - it is something you have to live with making movies. Conan worked because Arnold was ripped. Now it is not necessary to be that size but most MMA fighters have the muscle definition to play the part, Kitsch does not.
The trailers are all over the place and you have to watch multiple ones to understand what is going on if you do not know the story from the book series.
Unfortunately they got Wall-E director Andrew Staton to direct this. This guy's portfolio also includes 'Finding Nemo' and 'A Bug's Life'. What else can I say?
Now granted the CGI looks solid but what was made out of CGI looks somewhat silly and nonsensical. John Carter appears more like Super Mario leaping around just for trailer cuts. Without explaining why he can do that it simply looks ridiculous. You also have the ever tired and useless ground charging battle clashes and sword fighting with an alleged high-tech race? WTF? Why is everyone fighting with swords that look like they are out of ancient Greece and Rome? Why do the few fire arms you see look and act like Civil War era muskets? It makes no sense with the bug like feather and glass flying machines and electric like energy weapons.
The movie just comes off silly and not believable even for Sci-fi. I want to like it I just can't get past all these problems.
