Some of you are probably asking why I put "of Mars" in parenthesis. Well, for starters, when I saw the trailer and everything that went into it, I thought a title like John Carter was a bit underwhelming. And then I found out that it's based off a book called John Carter or Mars, which I think is much more fitting, considering that this takes place on Mars, and is all about the planet Mars and all of the life forms that are on it that we have apparently been missing all these years. But I digress. What did I think of the movie? Thats a good question, because I'm not entirely sure. Some parts of it were good, others were just okay. For example, I thought the effects were good, I thought the story was interesting, the lore of this planet, which they call Barsuhm, or something like that, was pretty cool, and a lot of the creatures that lived there were cool. I've heard that this book helped inspire George Lucas when he was first writing the original Star Wars, and I can see why, there were a lot of moments where I said "wow, that's a lot like Star Wars". Okay, now onto what I didn't like. Being that this is a film that relied very heavily on CGI, you can already guess that some of the human acting was not as good as it could have been. Some actors were pretty good, like that one Irish actor who shows up in everything, but for the life of me, I have no idea what his name is. He was Mr Daily in Woman in Black, one of the men being investigated in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, he played Dumbledore's brother in the last Harry Potter movie, Ceasar in Rome and the Russian president in The Sum of all Fears. Do you know who he is? Yeah. Do you know his name? If you do, please be so kind as to leave it in the comments below. Forgive me, I digress. The other thing that I didn't care for was the fact that while some of the lore was cool, there were times where I felt like they were spoon feeding it to me with a shovel. It made it kind of convoluted and a little hard to follow, and fell into the same trap that all of the Pirates sequels fell into. Also, I have to say that some of the casting kind of irked me. For example the main villain was that one guy from 300 who was bribed by the Persians. I'm guessing whoever directed this said "You were a bad guy in that? Alright, we'll cast you". I thought he was kind of bland and not all that interesting. As for the real villains, they are led by a guy who I think is played by Mark Strong, who is one of those people who has shown talent in other movies, but just keeps on getting really bland roles. I thought he was pretty good in Sherlock Holmes and was great in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. But everything else I've seen him in, he's just playing your typical villain. I mean, sure he has a creepy face and haunting voice, but seriously, do more with this guy, give him a part with more substance.
Okay, all that aside, this is a well made movie that I can see perhaps getting a cult following. Now I generally love cult movies, being that Memento, Bladerunner and The Big Lebowski are some of my favorite movies. This one, I'm gonna have to pass on however, because there were no moments that wowed me the way I think they were hoping.
Final Grade: C+
