Starring: Willem Dafoe, Mark Strong, Lynn Collins, Taylor Kitsch,
Ciarán Hinds, Bryan Cranston, Dominic West Directed by: Andrew Stanton
U.S.
Opening Date: March 9th, 2012
THEY SAY
From Academy Award-winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton
comes John Carter - a sweeping action-adventure set on the mysterious and
exotic planet of Barsoom (Mars).
John Carter is based on a classic novel by Edgar Rice
Burroughs, whose highly imaginative adventures served as inspiration for
many filmmakers, both past and present. The film tells the story of
war-weary, former military captain John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who is
inexplicably transported to Mars where he becomes reluctantly embroiled in
a conflict of epic proportions amongst the inhabitants of the planet,
including Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) and the captivating Princess Dejah
Thoris (Lynn Collins).
In a world on the brink of collapse, Carter
rediscovers his humanity when he realizes that the survival of Barsoom and
its people rests in his hands . . .
WE SAY
Considering the amount of talent involved
(Stanton is one of Pixar’s mainstays and directed the likes of
WALL-E and Finding Nemo and
Disney clearly spent a bundle on it) the trailer for John Carter
comes across as disappointingly generic. In fact you’d be excused for
thinking that you were watching a sequel to
Prince of Persia!
Take the alien design, for instance: it
might as well be any alien from any old sci-fi movie of the past decade or
so! Couldn’t they at least have stolen the designs from the much more
original ‘Seventies Marvel comics? Sure, the movie is based on a fantasy
series by the creator of Tarzan which is the granddaddy of them all
but at least some originality would have been called for!
(By the way, the movie used to be called
John Carter of Mars. Then studio bigwigs must have realized that anything with “Mars” in the title
tends to flop with audiences – including Disney’s
own Mars Needs Moms which flopped
big time - and dropped the Mars bit from the title.)
