John Carter

I am nothing if not punctual.
Or, you know, the other thing. Late.
Really really late.
On an entirely different note, I watched John Carter yesterday. It was…well it was terrible. And that’s a real shame because it could have been seriously good.
At first glance, it looks like the sort of film made in the first half of the 1900s, with added spaceships and some aliens that are half ant, half human.
After that, you’ll notice the hammy script, which also seems to be nicked from the early days of film. There are a lot of inconsistencies. Johnny boy contradicts himself notably several times and people’s personalities seem to skid madly from believable to cliché. The woman of the film, Dejah Thoris, is a fighter and some sort of sciencey person. But the science bit doesn’t come up all that much, aside from at the beginning to serve the plot line. And she occasionally turns into a damsel into distress and forgets how to use a sword. Also, her accent waddles around from Middle Eastern to the actress’s more native American.
John Carter himself is as boring as no-fat cheese. It looks like cheese and it slices like cheese but there’s nothing to it but dullness and disappointment. He’s not funny and he’s not loveable and he’s not wise. He’s a bloke, who gets transported to Mars and fights a lot. Often, he is sporting a Hercules fancy dress costume. Oh, and he has a back-story, which will seem oddly familiar to anyone whose watched, glimpsed or heard about Gladiator. Except it’s not done anywhere near as well. There are, for instance, no fields of golden crops, blowing in the wind. Mr Carter also doesn’t appear to age, which considering he is ten years older at the start of film (before we go back to the start of the actual story, per se), is…an interesting choice.
It’s really no wonder that it was a total flop. There is so much potential, so much that could have gone right but they tried to make it so big, they were left with an outer shell and nothing in the middle. Visually, it’s a stunningly beautiful film. And the story is, well, perhaps a little rough around the edges. But with a war between a moving city and another, stationary one and the ant people looking on, mysterious men who call themselves messengers of the gods and one bloke from an entirely different planet, it could have been something truly special. There are some characters who should have got a lot more screen time and there are some genuinely funny moments. The aforementioned spaceships are nicely done, although exactly how they work is glossed over as is Carter’s ability to leap vast distances. But it takes itself just that little bit too seriously, as can be witnessed whenever there’s a salute from Carter’s direction. It tried to be an epic.
Even Star Wars, didn’t attempt to be an epic and look at the fan base that created. It would be nice to see someone try to re-make it (John Carter, not Star Wars. You can keep your mitts off that.), with James Purefoy playing the lead role. He gets very little screen time considering how great his character is and if someone could transplant Kantos Kan’s personality onto Carter’s, that’d add more fat to the cheese than is probably healthy.