Movie Review: John Carter

I first saw a trailer for John Carter when I went to see Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 3D.[1] I thought it looked pretty awesome and I was eager to see it. Leann and I don't make it to the movie theater that often, anymore, so it's taken me a while to actually watch this film. But in the meantime I read several of the books in the 'Barsoom' series. This one is actually based mostly on A Princess of Mars.[2] but also incorporates a few elements from The Gods of Mars.[3]

My verdict: This wasn't a fantastic film, but I did generally enjoy it. None of the things that they changed from the book bothered me terribly.[4] And the Therns come across as more menacing here than they did in the books. For the most part the acting was pretty good, but I felt like the actors for John Carter [5] and Dejah Thoris were miscast—neither of them had enough on-screen presence to carry their parts. And their characters' romance was rather superficial; it could've been developed better. I thought the computer animation of the Green Martians (especially the babies), thoats, and Woola were fabulous. The footage of southern Utah (standing in for Mars) was also spectacular. Overall I would say that it was a better movie that most critics made it out to be.

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Notes:

[1] Read my review Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 3D here.

[2] Read my review of A Princess of Mars here.

[3] Read my review of The Gods of Mars here.

[4] However, I thought the partial journey down the River Iss was unnecessary, unclear, and

[5] For one thing, Taylor Kitsch's beard looked terrible.

Image attributions:

Sunrise on Mars is by NASA and exists in the public domain. It is available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA14293.