• I was not aware that Stanton mentioned that. Thanks for clearing that up :)

• “Wow, insulting much?...” For the record, I didn’t mean to insult you ‘much.’  I just meant to insult you a little. Only a little. (... just kidding there dude. I never meant you any harm in any way.)  But you bring up an interesting point, and I will look past your nerd raged response to accept that point. When something happens in a film that jars you out of the illusion, it is disappointing. I’ll definitely agree with you on that.  For example, I had a real hard time getting past certain flaws in Nolan’s Dark Night. One that really bugs me is where Batman quite clearly states which hostage he is going to save, and Gordon clearly states where HE is going, BUT Batman shows up at the other address.... IF Batman really did intend to only save Harvey, then WHY not at least let Gordon have a shot at saving Rachel? (The address Gordon tells his unit to go to is the one where Harvey is, after Batman states he is going to go save Rachel.)   Batman here pretty much ensures that Rachel will die when he deliberately makes Gordon’s police go to THE EXACT SAME LOCATION that Batman does!  But I made a conscious decision to not let that ruin a perfectly good movie for me. Which is all I am trying to really say in the end.   That... and I’ll see whatever horrible movie I like, thank you very much.

• I still want some good Marvel Universe style toys for this movie. Why is Disney not giving me toys?

• Yes. I'm one of them.

• Wow, insulting much? I don't care about some flaws, I always suspend disbelief. I like all three Matrix films! But when there is a glaring problem in a movie that it pulls me out of that suspension of disbelief, I can't get past it. This scene shows me a character that is so stupid, I don't sympathize with him.   But you go and enjoy this horrible movie. Just hand your money over to Disney for every horrible movie they make. Just because a movie is sci-fi doesn't mean you have to go see it. 

• I don’t know... the way I see it is that the Barsoom novels helped to make Star Wars possible by stimulating the imagination of George Lucas, (or Lucas ripped of Burroughs, depending on how you choose to see it). The success of the Star Wars franchise then allowed for the creation of John Carter, which is very fitting in a symbiotic kind of way.   I strongly feel we would not have Alien, the Last Starfighter, Battlestar Galactica (including the re-imagined one you all love so much), just to name a few if it wasn’t for people “cashing in” on Star Wars. (Tron was people trying to cash in on Star Wars....)   The revival of the Star Trek franchise also owes a LOT to Lucas, and you can see the Star Wars influence especially in the last Trek movie.   I see nothing wrong with that. One movie proves that a particular concept is marketable and viable, making the way for other projects to finally be made. This is sometimes the only way certain movies even get the green light in the first place.   If Tim Burton’s Batman flopped at the box office, do you think you would be having an Avengers movie to look forward to this year? If people were not trying to cash in on the success of previous Super Hero movies, do you think we would have had such awesome films like Batman Begins and The Dark Knight?   This evil of “cashing in” on previously successful movies ALLOWS for other films to be made that otherwise wouldn’t get to see the light of day. Some truly great films have come from this. This is actually a good thing.  Leave it alone.

• In their defense, having seen some recent TV spots, Disney is trying to generate some buzz and word-of-mouth by running ads with little blurbs from critics who might have been given an advance screening of the film.  You know, the ones where they quote them saying it's "Amazing!" and "A must-see!"  As is the case with these, you wonder if thee quotes are out of context or totally made up.  But the idea is to get people thinking and go, "Hmm.  I've never heard of this John Carter guy.  But it looks kind of cool and if the critics say it's good, it might be worth my time."  So if it helps to get asses in the seats, I can only see that as a good thing. I'm probably choosing the wrong place to say this in, since this site seems to thrive on negativity.  But if you keep saying this movie isn't going to do well, then it kind of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Because if you think it's going to fail, you're just going to shrug and think "Why bother going to see it?"  And that attitude will carry over to anyone you know who was thinking of seeing it as well. Guys, this is the movie we geeks have been waiting a lifetime to get made.  There's no reason to think this movie is going to suck given the talent behind it.  This movie needs all the support it can get.  If we want more cinematic adaptations of Barsoom, this movie HAS to do well.  So, PROVE DISNEY WRONG!  Do your own marketing.  Tell everyone you know who John Carter is and what his literary legacy is.  Tell them the things that Disney isn't; that it's inspired 100 years of Sci-Fi, from Flash Gordon to Star Wars to He-Man to Thundercats to Avatar.  Pique their curiosity.  And see it on opening weekend.  So if this movie succeeds, it will be in spite of their bad marketing of it.

• People hate Nicholas Cage?

• No, the real reason is Stanton and the marketing team believed no girls would go to see a film with "Mars" in the title (and that no boys would go to a film with "princess" in the title).  Stanton himself said this in interviews. As for audiences being too "educated" to believe all this stuff happens on Mars: you give audiences' willing suspension of disbelief far too little credit.  Audiences flocked to Revenge of the Fallen, Twilight, Three Musketeers and other films with ridiculous grasps of things like "science," "geography," "history" and "physics."  They clearly didn't have a problem with the Smithsonian having a DESERT round the back and airship battles over 17th Century Paris, I really don't think they'll have a problem with aliens on Mars set back in the civil war period.

• Wow that's really sad, actually feeling cheated by seeing Seven Samurai. I don't mean that in a smart ass way. I was, and still am blown away, every time I watch Seven Samurai.

• You may not understand, but Holly would.

• I wonder how long it's been since McCain was a decent guy.

• Okay, we get it. Everyone is determined to hate this movie without actually having seen it. You'd think Nicholas Cage was the star and it was directed by Michael Bay based on the sheer contempt being aimed at the film. And the arena part of AotC was the good part of that film, which is 10 years old now.  And Joe Public isn't necessarily gonna thumb their noses at the similarities between JOHN CARTER and a Star Wars movie.

• Those places have a lot in common. They treat aliens the same. Dooku intially seems like a decent guy but serves evil...John McCain?

• There is ALWAYS going to be something to pick at.   I just hope that some of you out there remember to suspend your disbelief a little, and accept some flaws in your films. Otherwise you’ll miss out on the next Army of Darkness, or the next Big Trouble in Little China.   Which would be too bad.

• Looks okay. I think the aliens could have used mo-capping to make them more convincing. Andrew Stanton is definitely showing his animation background here, as all the CG creatures are somewhat cartoonish in movement like they're pulled from a Pixar film. I'll still watch just to see how it turns out though.

• Just because the BOOKS inspired lots of films doesn't mean this particular MOVIE isn't just cashing in on Avatar and Star Wars. They should have been more creative and invented a world that isn;t just ripping off other movies. You dorks can blame the trailers all you want, but the movie is still going to be garbage.  Perfect example: the Narnia Books were written around the same time as Lord of the Rings. Obviously they were not rip-offs of Tolkien's world. But I think it's pretty obvious that the Narnia MOVIES, which are total crap, were just riding the Peter Jackson wave. 

• I thought this was pretty cool. I wanted to see more.

• I think the real reason Mars is left out of the title is that our audience is a lot more educated these days, and pretty much everyone knows that there is no possible way that this story could take place there. This flew fine 100 years ago, but nobody today is going to buy into the whole ‘this takes place on Mars’ idea.

• Geonosis, or Arizona.

• 2:22 you can see the chain is just slipped over a hook. John Carter can just walk his ass over and unhook the chain. A stupid hero isn't worth watching. Oh GOD! At 3:50 there's a POD RACING SCENE!!!! WTF? Did Lucas rip this off or did Disney rip off Lucas? I haven't read the book, so someone else will have to help me out here.  

• "And that, my friends, is John Carter's problem in a nutshell. Even though the books did all of these things first, by inspiring countless sci-fi movies over the last hundred years, we have seen all this before. And while I have little doubt that John Carter will do these scenes better -- in director Andrew Stanton I trust -- it is hard to look at these clips and not be forced to think of other inferior movies doing them on-screen first. Audiences need to be able to watch John Carter and see John Carter, and not think of crap like AotC and Avatar and whatnot." THIS was exactly my problem when I finally got to watch the Orignal "Seven Samurai" a few years ago.... I walked out of the theatre knowing I'd just seen something amazing and groundbreaking....but after having seen so many other "works" re-doing them I felt like I had been cheated of something.

•  If you stray from the source, then why even use the name?  There have been many movies made recently that tried to capitalize on memorable franchise names, but in the end really did nothing more then use the name itself and failed miserably (I'm looking at you, Honeymooners).  If you say you're going to do John Carter, then do John Carter.  Otherwise follow Chris Ward's advice. I'm excited to see what they do here, and how they can do it better than what I've seen in the past.

• Wait, are big rocks weaker and easier to break on mars than earth? Does a lower gravity affect tensile strength? I don't understand.

• I thought this thing was going to be called "John Carter of Mars."  Just "John Carter" is pretty bland.  It's not even an interesting name.  But I guess having the name Mars in it scared them?

• Maybe we can think of this movie as a new Star Wars film that is actually good....? Naw, screw it - Burroughs deserves better recognition than that. In the Mars books we have "jeddaks", "banths", "padwars" and even "sith". If no one thinks for a moment Lucas wasn't more than just "inspired" by the Mars books and maybe strayed over the line into "borrowing" from them after reading any of them then they're being delusional. I loves me my Star Wars, truly. But I had hoped this movie would help shine a little light on something so influential, and give credit where credit is due. Yet it seems a large part of the fanboy community could give a shit about that.

• The whole movie really does look like it's set on Geonosis.

• Yeah... I get your point Wataa... I think I could have worded my rant a little better, because you are absolutely right that you can have both at the same time.   However, I do want to point out that John Carter is not really going to be that film where you get both. If it is, then it would have to stray so far away form the source material that it wouldn’t be the same story anymore.   And I would like to also state (which was not originally clear in my previous post), that just because you are going to have a simple story with focus on the visual elements, that still doesn’t mean that your story can’t make sense, and hold together logically.   So... I will have to agree with you Wataa, but I’ll still stand by my original remarks.

• I just remember being incredibly pissed off through the whole thing. We went to see the film as a group and we waited so long for someone to show up I wound up having to sit in the front row, off to the side - while the person we were waiting on at least got a marginally better seat a few rows back.

• I broke one of my personal rules yesterday and sat down in a Barnes and Noble and read the first few chapters of the movie novelization. From what I read, I liked the direction they were taking it. I've been a Burroughs fan since I was a snot-nosed little shit. The man did not skimp on the epic, and his action scenes are second to none in my opinion. He can be amazingly touching - the end of "Tarzan of the Apes" still can't be beat for showcasing the quite nobility of a character. That said, I knew that we would never get a completely faithful translation of the book from page to screen, so I welcome the changes to make the characters have more depth and complexity.  Yep, the color palette is too clone-ish for my tastes too. But we are on Mars here, and I don't think they had too many options if they're going to get the audience to buy into that. And I trust that we haven't seen everything yet by far, and of course I trust Stanton too. Word of mouth by those who have seen this have been positive so far - some even recall the heady days of "Star Wars" with "can't wait to see this again" being bandied about. So I feel we have a lot to be optimistic about with this. If it tanks, well, fuck - at least I get me one good Barsoom movie I can enjoy. 

• I have to agree with you on Attack of the Clones, I swear to you this is the first and only movie I ever fell asleep on in a movie theater. The last thing I remembered was Anakin and Padme rolling around in a field on Naboo and wnen I woke up Anakin was rescuing his Mom from the Sand People.  

• I DON'T NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

• I don´t think it will be great. But it will be good. As in Ghost Protocol good. I want to like it but I can´t. Perhaps the only thing that could save adaptations of novels this old is the classic Hollywoodean holy sh*t burn money with huge (real) scenarios and super famous actors for every role etc. I know it doesn´t mean quality per se, but John Carter also suffers the syndrome of the prequels of having that feeling of being shot entirely in green screen and feeling somehow sterile.

• I don't know. The arena scene reminded me of AotC, certainly... but the arena scene had nothing to with why AotC was a steaming pile of cack. And all those clips that came after the arena part actually served to get me even more excited about this film.

•  "When I pay good money to see something on the big screen, it had better impress me visually."  "I’ll leave heavy thinking films (like Memento, The Usual Suspects, etc..) for video night." You can't have both at the same time? That's what I prefer. Saying it has to be one or the other is just making excuses for the film's laziness. (Not that I'm saying this film is lazy, since I've not seen it yet obviously, but just in general)

• There are many posters here complaining about the presentation of this film, and instead of responding to each one, I’ll post one message here to all of them:   When I pay good money to see something on the big screen, it had better impress me visually. John Carter will definitely do that! For the duration of the film, regardless of the actual story, I will be transported to Barsoom and actually get to see the twin towers of Helium, actually get to see giant green men and Tars Tarkas, actually get to see Princess Dejah Thoris.   I will finally get to see the great wastes of Mars. I will finally get to ride in a Martian Flier. I will marvel at the Martian canals, and look in awe at the beauty of this alien world that I was only able to visualize in my own imagination for 30 years. (I am old)   I’ll leave heavy thinking films (like Memento, The Usual Suspects, etc..) for video night.   But I’ll understand if this movie isn’t going to float everyone’s boat. All I can say is that it will definitely float mine, and mostly because I expect John Carter to be a little silly.   In fact, it had bloody well better be! It’s supposed to be! John Carter is (perhaps you guys don’t know this..) an immortal being transported to Mars by “wishing” himself there. He does not remember any childhood, and is a man of about thirty years old for as long as he can remember. He is the greatest swordsman on two worlds. He is the incarnation of War! He defeats entire armies, kills the bad guys, saves the planet, and gets the girl.   That’s the story of John Carter. He is here to kick ass and chew gum, and he is all out of gum.   There will be NO heavy thinking involved, no social commentaries that are relevant to our time, no heavy moral issues to deal with, no intricate themes woven in. Just some old fashioned Good vs. Evil with a lot of blood spilled along the way.   And by the Gods of Mars themselves, I can NOT wait until opening night!

• I'm still pretty excited, if only for the glimpse of the onscreen friendship between Tars and John, which was always my favorite part of the series.

• My wife recently asked me what John Carter was (after seeing a giant billboard). I described it as being "Sort of like Star Warsy". This does not bode well for them.

• oh, lucas, even when you're not ruining our movie going experience, you are :(

• Was RotS "the best" or "worse"?

• I'm serious, if this does well, Jason Street should play Lovecraft's Randolph Carter and per Alan Moore's wackiness, the Carter brothers could go around fucking up the elder gods in Kadath.

• I was excited about this movie, because the John Carter story has actual "story" built in, now it's not even on my radar. It just looks like more special effects crap, pooped out to appeal to some teen boy demographic. If it does really well I may see it on disc.

• given how the thing is looking more and more just from the trailers as Disney trying to do the love child of  attack of the cloness and avatar . sadly john carter will be lucky if it can even make back its budget for the only reason people will now see it will proably due to them being fans of taylor .

• It's not just Attack of the Clones, it's Revenge of the Sith too. Flying in that subterranean area looks just like Greives trying to elude Obi-Wan on Utapau.

• Do I care if we have seen all of this before or not? Not at all.   Look... there are two ways to create something like a novel, comic character, video game, or movie. The first way is to do something that has never been done before (which becomes more difficult as the years go by).   The second way is to do what has been done before, but do it really, really, really well. Remember the video game GoldenEye for Nintendo? It was a first person shooter, and they had been done many times before. Nothing original here, BUT it was done so well it defined the genre.   It is impossible to be original with a film based on a novel written 100 years ago that inspired so much of other things we have already seen. Impossible. And to be fair, sometimes I don’t want to see something completely new. Sometimes I want to see something comfortably familiar.   John Carter will NOT be anything new – a fantasy/sci-fi epic love story action adventure. We’ve seen this in Avatar. We’ve seen this in Star Wars. It will be a wonderfully well done movie however, and worth seeing regardless. And perhaps like GoldenEye, it will come to define that genre.

• Mars needs Tim Riggins. I like it, but only if Coach Taylor comes in at the end to fuck shit up old school.

• That's a good point and I have to say I find it a bit disconcerting too, but personally if I was a Disney exec I wouldn't be to worried about its similarity to AoTC. Most of the non-nerdy audiences they want too attract who watched Attack of the Clones probably saw it once, were disappointed, then promptly never watched it again. Meaning if you tried to explain the similarities to them, their reaction would likely be "What? There was a Gladiator Monster scene in the second Star Wars movie?... Wow, that movie was so awful and dull I completely forgot about it."

• While the arena scene didn't do much for me the montage at the end was damn cool.  I certainly agree that the big problem with John Carter is the marketing. These trailers make it look like the movie is just a quick cash in on the Nerd/Avatar craze. Disney REALLY should have focused on the "this is what inspired fucking EVERYTHING" aspect as opposed to the "hey here is some sci-fi." The one thing that really bugs me is the female lead. The one line in the trailers she has sounds like she is a reject from Avatar. It has the same native/African accent thing going on. If there was ever a time to break from the source material this would have been it. Audiences have seen "John Carter" hundreds of times now. Disney could have put a creative spin on things. Sure the fans would have lost their shit, but at least it wouldn't have looked so damn bland.

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