Movie report: John Carter (2012)

Movie report: John Carter (2012)

I watched the science fiction movie “John Carter” last night. Don’t ask me why. It got terrible reviews. I guess I wanted to keep my geek credentials current.

This movie reminded me of the Green Lantern movie. Not in its content, but because it had such a massive budget for special effects, yet is laid low by very simple problems that make it difficult to follow. They spent a quarter of a billion dollars making this movie. Billion, with a B.

So, let’s get right to the problems, shall we? Scene 1…

The first scene is of the planet Mars, with a voice telling us that this is the planet Mars, and how the evil warlike Zodanga city is pretty close to conquering the nice city of Helium, and then the entire planet. Next, we see an aerial battle between blue flying things and red flying things, where a handsome, ripped young man is desperately giving orders and his plucky crew is striving to carry them out. Yay! We want him to win! Oh, wait. He’s the bad guy. At this point, half the audience was probably confused.

Next, come a series of problems with COLOR, of all things. The evil Zodangas have red flags. The nice Helium folks have blue flags. But, when the bad guy is given a powerful weapon by mysterious beings, it shoots rays that are – blue? Huh? And the nice Helium folks with the blue flags? They’re called the “red people” and have red tattoos all over them. Huh?

The scene then switches to Earth, New York, but not NYC, in the year 1881. It is raining. Everyone we see has an umbrella, except for the handsome fellow that the camera is tracking. Poor guy, he can’t afford an umbrella, right? No, it actually turns out that he is fabulously wealthy. Huh? You have a budget of 250 million dollars: give the guy an umbrella!

He’s being followed by a mysterious figure in a bowler hat. Remember this.

He – it’s John Carter – walks into a telegraph office and hands the telegram-sender-guy a telegram to send that is ALREADY TYPED OUT. Huh? The text of the telegram appears on the screen, far away and blurry, for 3 seconds. 250 million dollars, and they couldn’t let us see the text big and clear for 10 seconds? Oy. The telegram-sender-guy says it’s 50 cents to send a telegram, unless you want to pay more for special delivery. Carter plunks 2 coins down on the counter. Ah, 2 quarters, right? Poor guy, can’t afford special delivery, right? No, it turns out he’s fabulously wealthy. The telegram-sender-guy looks at the coins and says something like “Okay! Special delivery it is!” indicating that what Carter plunked down is a lot of money. WHY USE COINS? Why not plunk down a big crispy bill with a 10 on it to show us this is a lot of money? Oy.

Next scene, a man in a bowler hat is riding on a train. Remember the mysterious figure in the bowler hat following Carter? Same guy, right? Nope. Turns out this is the recipient of the telegram, traveling to visit Carter. There must be a thousand different kinds of hat: why give Carter’s nephew and the mysterious figure the same kind of hat? 250 million dollars and you can’t buy 2 different hats? Oy.

At Carter’s house, we learn that he just died, that he was wealthy, that he explored the world looking for something, that the nephew, Edgar Rice Burroughs (i.e., the author of the book the movie is based on, and better known as the creator of Tarzan), is the sole heir, and that Carter is interred in a crypt that cannot be opened in the back yard. Carter has also left Edgar his journal, which Edgar begins to read.

The story shifts to about 13 years previously, where Carter is a mystery man wandering around the West. Huh? Why is Carter a mystery man? He’s narrating his own story! He knows what he was doing and why! Oy.

Then comes a wholly unnecessary sequence where Carter is picked up by the commander of the local fort, who wants him to help fight Apaches. Pointless sequence, introducing several characters we will never see again. The purpose of it seems to be to establish that Carter is a good fighter, that he fought in the Civil War, that his wife and daughter died during the War, and to get Carter into a cave in the mountains. Huh? All this back-story could have been stated when the nephew visited the house, or in the first few words of the journal. Oy.

Anyway, Carter enters the cave, struggles with a mysterious figure (yeah, there are a lot of them), and finds himself teleported he knows not where, but we do: Mars, or Barsoom as the locals call it. On Mars, it turns out he is Superman: he can leap tall buildings in a single bound and is immensely strong.

Even so, he’s captured by some of the locals. No, not the Zodangas or Heliums we met earlier! Don’t be ridiculous! This is an entirely different group of tall, skinny green people with 4 arms, WHO ALL LOOK EXACTLY THE SAME. Two of these greenies are friendly to Carter and two are hostile, but it’s hard to tell which ones, because they all look the same! 250 million dollars and you can't give them different bow ties or bandannas or ball caps? Oy.

The greenies toss him in with a bunch of child greenies, because what else do you do with immensely strong, dangerous, unknown strangers? Keep them with your children, of course! Oy. They also shave him. Why? None of the greenies has hair. They’ve never shaven anything in their lives. And if they’re going to shave his face, why stop there? Why not shave his head too? Oh, because he has to look nice when he meets the princess. Oy.

We now meet a princess of the Heliums. She is a scientific genius who has independently invented the same blue ray (hey! “blue ray”, just like – never mind) that the handsome bad guy was given. Great, all she has to do now is refine this and the Heliums will have the same weaponry as the bad guys, right? Of course not. What her father, the king of the Heliums, wants is for her to marry the bad guy with the weapon, which will completely subjugate Helium to Zodanga without Zodanga having to do anything. Wow. Just – wow.

Finally, all the elements for an action movie are in place. Good guy with amazing powers: check. Beautiful princess forced to marry bad guy: check. Bad guy with nasty weapon out to conquer the world: check. And, except for a pointless detour to the greenie holy land, a pointless lesson in the composition of the solar system, Carter pointlessly slaughtering an entire tribe of greenies (rather than simply leaping away from them), and a pointless gladiatorial contest between Carter and the main hostile greenie (which is over in 1 second: blink and you miss it), it plods to its inevitable end. Oy.

The actual ending is totally illogical. After reading Carter’s 2 hour and 12 minute story, Edgar realizes that there’s something vital he needs to do immediately. He rushes out to do this vital task – and it turns out it was completely unnecessary. The movie would have had the exact same ending if Carter had never written his journal, or left it to Edgar, or if Edgar had read it, or not. That’s right, Edgar just wasted 2 hours of his life for nothing. And so did the audience. Oy.

Bottom line: visually spectacular, some fun lines, and lots of head scratching.


Not recommended.

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