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Four Problematic Minutes of John Carter


I like John Carter. I’m looking forward to the movie. I, like all right-thinking men and women who saw Friday Night Lights, have a crush on Taylor Kitsch and the character he played on there, Tim Riggins. Basically, I’ve pretty much already bought my ticket — I am Disney’s best possible audience. And yet the recently released 4-minute clip makes even me sigh with trepidation.

The problem is, of course, is that it looks just like Attack of the Clones, which was a terrible movie (and, as I was shocked to discover when I rewatched the prequels for my Star Wars Blu-ray review, actually worse than The Phantom Menace). Oh, the scene is better than the one in AotC. It’s more impressive visually, the direction is better, the monster is cooler, the fight infinitely better choreographed and more interesting, what with Kitsch leaping about in Mars’ low gravity. But it’s still a beige rock arena where a white person fights a monster while thousands of skinny green aliens watch.

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.

Honestly, I think Disney should take my pal Chris Ward’s advice and rename the movie Mars Needs Tim Riggins. It honestly couldn’t hurt. Thanks to Bob J. for the video tip.