Andrew Stanton attempts to follow in the footsteps of fellow Pixar alumni Brad Bird with his first live-action film. Unlike Brad’s absolutely sublime “Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol,†Stanton fails to light up the screen with “John Carter.†The mere fact that Stanton is responsible for such films as “Finding Nemo†and “Wall-E,†was enough to get excited about but this film shows that animation skills don’t always transfer to live-action film-making.
The film is based on the sci-fi novel “A Princess of Mars†by Edgar Rice Burroughs written in 1917. It tells the story of John carter (Taylor Kitsch), an American civil war hero who is fed up with the trials of war and is on a single minded quest for a cave of gold. This quest somehow leads him to be transported to a strange new land.
The strange land turns out to be Mars, called “Barsoom” by the natives. The natives here consisting of Tharks, 12 foot, six limbed green creatures with tusks. Human looking Martians who dominate the planet and are at war for some reason. Finally there are immortal, powerful beings called Therns who seem to be pulling all the strings for their own benefit.
John Carter finds himself in the middle of another war he doesn’t want to be a part of. He however finds himself endowed with strange new abilities that enable him to jump really high and give him great strength. He eventually gives in to the charms of the aforementioned princess of Mars named Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins), who manages to get him into the battle.
I can’t get into the more intricate elements of the plot because quite frankly I wasn’t able to follow much of what was going on due to the lack of a good foundation back-story. The characters’ motivations were also not so well established. The bad guys did bad things because they were bad and the good guys did good things because they were good. This brings to light the films greatest flaw which is an untidy & uneven script.
The visuals and music are adequately grand though it’s nothing we haven’t seen or heard before. I don’t recommend watching it in 3D, it is totally unnecessary and all the objects in the larger long shots look like miniatures.
With all its problems I still found myself enjoying watching John Carter. While it is not very well put together it is not downright terrible. The Tharks and John Carter’s adventures with them are the most enjoyable elements of the film. I can’t help thinking that if they had concentrated more on the Tharks, the film would have been a lot less confusing and a lot more entertaining. I would recommend to Stanton sit down with Bird for a very long chat the next time he decides to direct a live-action film.
Rating: 5.5/10