It wasn’t incomprehensible. The friend I went with knew nothing going in beyond that it was a classic of pulp SF, and that only because I told him, and he still came out of the theater enjoying it.
None of my family read the book, we all liked the movie a lot. I found it emotionally engaging. I could’ve done without the first prologue, sure, but it was not a problem - movies used to have way more prologue than they do nowadays, and I got used to slow starts long ago.
Lack of drama with good story works for me better than the reverse, so I can agree with the Hulk critique while still enjoying the movie very much. I actually get very tired of the cliched attempts to make me care about characters by killing off their relatives, but I acknowledge that it seems to work for a lot of viewers.
It bums me out that anytime i hear this movie mentioned, the tag “biggest flop of all time” is added (not in this thread - but everywhere else it seems). I had not read the book beforehand, but i was in a mood to go eat some popcorn and watch a fun sci-fi/fantasy adventure and i thought it delivered, i walked out of the theatre happy.
Maybe i’m a sucker though, if you asked me to name a movie that i hated i’d struggle to give you an answer (and i watch a lot of movies). Similarly, i read a lot of fantasy novels and i usually enjoy them all, though i did put down Sword of Shannara a few chapters in and never picked up that series again.
I saw it yesterday with my family. We agreed that it was far too slow and boring. Someone thought it resembled Star Wars (cute Martian dog equals R2D2, weird aliens equal Jar Jar Binks, etc.). But it dragged far too much.
I thought it was pretty good and a lot of the bad press was self-perpetuating, so it’s a shame the budget got so much attention. (Unless you run a studio, who really cares how much money a movie makes or loses?) The plot and the dialogue were nothing to write home about, but the scenery and the effects were beautiful. That was enough to keep me watching in spite of the length and some of the silliness.
I saw it on DVD the other day and it was pretty much exactly what i’d hoped for from a John Carter movie - lots of action, great visuals, a plot that’s mostly faithful to the book while modernizing some of the sillier and sexist/racist elements. The only real beef I had was their cutting the cannibalism angle from the Therns and dropping the idea that the Martian “goddess” is just a wrinkled old cannibal queen, and turning them into planet-hopping Illuminati with superweapons instead, but it didn’t hurt my enjoyment of the film altogether.
I finally saw this on DVD, I refused to watch the CAM someone in the family had.
Hooo I REALLY liked the special effects and sets, I think they perfectly captured the visual feel of the material and understand that less is sometimes more.
The story didn’t really work, the prologues are flat confusing! The film felt like it wanted to skip the intro movie, get right into the action, and instead the whole thing feels hollow.
The film SHOULD have started with a wounded John Carter finding the cave, in moments of visual shorthand they could have established what time he was in and that he had been hiding from indians. They should have cast a different actor too.
Thanks for the pulling the quote. Went back and read my review. It also was pretty “meh.” Apparently the vitriol I received for not gushing about it (nothing gets email like people wanting to tell me what a soulless party pooper I am) convinced me I had hated it.
Months later I find that I remember very little of the Mars portion of the movie and everything from the getting to Mars part. I assume Bryan Cranston gets credit for that.
Thinking on it some more I think the problem was approaching the whole thing from John Carter’s emotional state, he goes from being of Virginia to Mars in three damn days it seemed like. People don’t change that fast, surreal alien world of adventure or not.
The end was totally uneeded, in fact why even cram it in? A better idea might have been to leave doubt to the audience about Barsoom, and the “tomb”.
I think this could have worked better as a show or miniseries, as is too much happens too fast.
Although I think John CRICHTON(hmm? homage?) and Aeryn from Farscape are about as believeable and good a huumon out of water finds alien love and new identity you’re going to get.
My 12 year old daughter and I saw it in the theater and both liked it a lot. Afterwards she had me load the entire series of books her on her kindle and she’s read 4 or 5 of them so far. De gustibus non disputandum est.