John Carter

The story of how Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess Of Mars finally hit the big screen after nearly a century of delays is certainly more interesting than the eventual feature film inspired by it.

Originally conceived as a possible animated movie for Warner Bros. in the 1930s the stalled project passed through studio after studio decade after decade until it finally landed for a second time at Disney where it ultimately became a derivative action epic.

Released in 2012 and renamed after its reluctant hero, there was much anticipation for John Carter.  With an obscene 250 million shooting budget plus 350 million more attributed to promotion all at its disposal, no expense was spared on the uneven visuals.  If only there was as much care put into the actual, overly familiar story.

The aptly named Taylor Kitsch plays the title role, a wealthy, obsessive treasure hunter.  Widowed and rendered childless through mysterious circumstances, like Lt. John Dunbar, he’s a cavalryman tired of fighting “shameful” wars.  Kitsch tries to sound like Eastwood with his soft, gravelly tone but he looks like a Guess Jeans model in need of a shave.

After multiple escapes, all played for non-existent laughs, from a team led by fellow officer Bryan Cranston, who wants him manning a colonial post in Arizona, the two end up paired together and, while being pursued by pissed off Apaches, retreat near a mysterious cave where the hero suddenly and violently encounters a man transported from another world.

As the stranger lies dying in the dirt, he chants something in a mysterious language.  Kitsch hangs onto his glowing blue medallion and after the final word is uttered, he himself is teleported to Mars, or Barsoom, as the natives call it.  It takes him nearly an hour to realize where he is.  He’s pretty but stupid.

In the opening scene, we are told that the red planet is not airless or dead, but it is dying, thanks to a triumvirate of sorcerers who interrupt a forgettable civil war to recruit Dominic West as their newest puppet dictator.  Bestowing him with a powerful weapon that vaporizes his growing list of enemies, they seemingly give him free reign to rule but in truth, he does what they tell him to.  (His immediate attempt to screw them is easily anticipated and instantly thwarted.)  They do this because they want to be perceived as legend.  I think they’re just lazy and cowardly.  I’m amazed none of them are named Trump.

Meanwhile, Kitsch is discovered by a tribe of green aliens, each with a set of ram-like horns on their faces and two sets of arms.  Their leader is voiced by the always committed Willem Dafoe (they’re all CGI characters) who thinks the visitor’s name is Virginia, his home state, a tired running gag, before he’s given a new Martian name you won’t remember.

Upon landing on Mars, Kitsch suddenly turns into Super Mario, discovering quite by accident that he can’t walk normally.   Instead, he leaps and bounces about so much he cuts down on travel time considerably.  Dafoe’s alien is adamant he demonstrate this power to his tribe or else.  Curiously, there’s a scene where he actually does this in a failed effort to try to retrieve that time-travelling medallion but I guess that doesn’t count.  Kitsch also learns he’s as strong as Hercules.

Resistant to being an on-call circus monkey, he’s taken prisoner where he’s given something to drink.  Suddenly, instead of listening to made-up gobbledygook passing for a foreign language, he now hears perfect English.  This is some potent shit.

In the meantime, West and his overseers are determined to conquer the city of Helium where sadly no one speaks in a really high voice.  They hatch a secret plan.  Rather than just bomb the place like everywhere else they’ve destroyed, they force the ruling king into a bad deal.   Make your hot daughter, the princess, West’s wife and they’ll rule together.  Of course, there’s a swerve waiting in the wings.

The princess is a master swordsman and a scientist.  She’s on the verge of discovering that West’s new weapon is actually The Ninth Ray.  (Don’t ask.)  But one of the shapeshifting sorcerers deliberately delays that eventual awareness through not-so-subtle but undetected sabotage.

Once she knows of West’s intentions, she bolts and is rescued by Kitsch who at first only sees her as a damsel in distress.  (The movie is set in the 1880s.)  Alternately, it takes her quite a while to believe his story.  She’s also pretty but stupid.

John Carter is a shameless patchwork of a whole bunch of other famous movies.  The floating boats in the desert are straight out of Return Of The Jedi.  Kitsch’s dilemma and the breathtaking Utah scenery feel a lot like the original Planet Of The Apes, especially the sequence where they travel by river.

The scene where Kitsch and two of the green aliens find themselves battling two giant hairy beasts, also with two sets of arms, is the dungeon scene with Luke from Jedi with the white snow creature from The Empire Strikes Back set in the outdoor arena from Gladiator.

The aftermath, where the hero finds himself covered in the creature’s blue blood, suddenly turns into a tribute of sorts to Braveheart, where Kitsch rallies the green aliens for an eventual invasion of Helium.  All the routine fight scenes, not always easy to follow and sometimes difficult to see especially when set at night, are straight out of countless swords-and-sandals epics.

And am I wrong in thinking that the disruption of the wedding is straight out of The Graduate?  All that’s missing is Simon & Garfunkel and a bus ride into the credits.

And yet, there are some enjoyable moments, most of them humourous.  One of the green aliens smacking Kitsch in the head when he fucks up.  Another alien wiping away the tear of her strict father during a second wedding. The princess watching her clone fleeing and declaring, “I’m getting away!”  And Willem Dafoe’s rival, voiced by Thomas Hayden Church, looking very bored when one of his hairy beasts isn’t getting the job done, so he orders a second to enter the fray.

My favourite CGI character is easily lovable Woola, Kitsch’s faithful animal companion that won’t be denied.  Honestly, who wouldn’t melt at the sight of an instantly loyal, supremely speedy, always panting Martian dog?  And I’m not a dog guy.

But of course brief seconds of pleasure can never overcompensate for an otherwise overlong 132-minute running time.  Some critics were brutal in their assessment of John Carter perhaps because their expectations were so severely unmet.  When you have a deep appreciation of the long running series of Burroughs’ more popular and acclaimed original stories, you feel the mediocrity more personally.  The truth is, for me anyway, it’s a more average disappointment than a full-on disaster as it showcases very forgettable characters with equally forgettable names reciting dialogue that sometimes sounds corny.

That said, it also has a White Saviour problem at its heart.  The tribe of greenies can’t defeat West and his army on their own.  They need the long-haired hunky honky to lead them to peace through violence.  Even the redskinned princess (a very white Lynn Collins in redface (she’s not the only one) is not offensive in itself, no sir), fully capable of swordplay and scientificy stuff on her own, has to be saved time and time again.

The movie was directed by Andrew Stanton, the Pixar filmmaker who made WALL-E and the seriously overrated Finding Nemo.  He had grand ambitions for John Carter.  It was supposed to be the first in a trilogy of epic adventures, not unlike Star Wars.  But because it lost hundreds of millions of dollars, Disney wasn’t willing to sink any more into a follow-up, let alone two.

John Carter even ends with a possible title for that unmade second film.  If only they got it right the first time.

Dennis Earl
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Sunday, April 19, 2020
9:52 p.m.