John Carter was an interesting failure. I really feel like it was a hostage to its budget.
And pretty appalling marketing, and being
another desert-based SF movie. I'm sure the financers of
The Princess Bride might have cautioned against calling it
A Princess of Mars, but anything vaguely interesting-sounding would have been better than the zero-public-recognition 'John Carter' - not least as he spends more than half the movie being called Virginia or Dotar Sojat.
It really should have been a hit - re-watching it this week we were all chuckling along at Woola's antics, Tars Tarka's Prince Vultan/Tormund Giantsbane stylings, and John's well-handled transformation through incessant frustrations from near-suicidal monomaniac to big-hearted hero. It's good stuff, the 19th C framing sequences give it a unique flavour, and those airship battles truly are glorious... Add it to the Dredd 2012 pile, just not a good year for being a good movie.
Meanwhile, on topic, what sort of film are we imagining Taika and Wilson-Cairns will come up with? I haven't seen
1917 yet, but it clearly had a screenplay that handled long choreographed action sequences, something that
Thor: Ragnarok seemed to avoid, in favour of clever setups and almost-static heroic imagery before cutting away. And can SW easily absorb Taika's style of knowing humour, or are we heading for another
Solo-type clash of intentions?
The news that
Russian Doll's Leslye Headland is lined up for a TV series is also interesting.
