John Carter (2012)

[dracula1]

This film got hugely bigged up by the great Neal Adams on his Facebook blog.  He claims all the negative reviews were putting people off seeing an incredible family film.

[Cthulouis]

The family quality of it struck me as well, by which I mean that it has all the sort of things I wanted from the recent Conan film, but done in a very well executed way that doesn't prohibit its suitability for children. The deaths of the antagonistic Thargs are both good examples of this.

If I was a kid, I would have been playing at jumping all over the place this morning. As it is, I've just started a holiday so I have the house to myself and, well, you can see where this is going...

[judgefloyd]

Just got back from seeing this with a mate and I'm really glad I did.  I really enjoyed it - found the main character engaging and most of the supporting cast good and liked the story.  I can see the criticisms - people do tend to say a lot of stagey pompous things, one of the supporting characters really has no obvious reason to be bothering helping our hero, but overall, it was good stuff, certainly way better than Independence Day or Avatar (to name two blockbuster films that didn't lose money despite being bloody awful).  Not that being less rubbish than those two makes a film good.
  I hardly know the source material at all - read one of the books and enjoyed it some time back in the 80s, so that didn't affect my enjoyment.  I'll definitely take the son and heir to see it if he hasn't been put off by the bad publicity.  Oh and I liked the Barsoomian wedding costume.

[Tiplodocus]

I took seven twelve year olds up the Odeon on Saturday (oh, have your fun!) and they all loved it.

I quite liked it too (despite it being twenty minutes too long) and can't understand the apathy towards it.

It's certainly not without it's faults; the length, the cliche of stealing a vehicle you can't drive but still managing to outrun experienced people chasing you, to much to and from in the middle section and it could have done with more time in the visually striking cities and airships rather than on the deserts of mars (which didn't even look as good as Arizona!).

I particular liked JCs proper introduction in Arizona; from bar to Fort and his various escape attempts.  And the sequence with bodies piling up around him in good pulp fiction fashion - especially the way this wasn't just shown as a slow mo "isn't violence cool?" manner by intercutting with the consequences of such violence.

Special effects and design work was pretty much flawless for my money. And none of the fights/set pieces out stay their welcome (which is rare these days).

Like I say, all the boys liked it and were rooting for JC, Tharks and the dog!

And was the Princess the bird from Wolverine?

[Satanist]

I took seven twelve year olds up the Odeon on Saturday (oh, have your fun!) and they all loved it.

It's no fun when you have permission.

[JOE SOAP]

Interesting article on John Carter in the NY TIMES:



If Disney gave Mr. Stanton rope, he certainly ran with it. Accustomed to reworking scenes over and over at Pixar, he did not take well to the usual constraints of live-action — nailing it the first time — and went back for at least two lengthy reshoots. "The thing I had to explain to Disney was, 'You're asking a guy who's only known how to do it this way to suddenly do it with one reshoot,' " he told The Los Angeles Times. "I said, 'I'm not gonna get it right the first time. I'll tell you that right now.' "

Mr. Stanton leaned heavily on his colleagues at Disney-owned Pixar for guidance, paying less attention to input from people with experience in live-action filmmaking, according to people who worked on the movie.


Regardless, when push came to shove on "John Carter," Mr. Stanton usually got his way. One area in which he exerted his influence was marketing, where he frequently rejected ideas from Ms. Carney and her team, according to people who worked on the film.

He insisted, for instance, that a Led Zeppelin song be used in a trailer, rejecting concerns that a decades-old rock tune did not make the material feel current. Mr. Stanton also was behind the selection of billboard imagery that fell flat, and he controlled an important presentation of footage at a Disney fan convention that got a chilly reception.



Truth or blame?

[dweezil2]

Interesting article on John Carter in the NY TIMES:



If Disney gave Mr. Stanton rope, he certainly ran with it. Accustomed to reworking scenes over and over at Pixar, he did not take well to the usual constraints of live-action — nailing it the first time — and went back for at least two lengthy reshoots. "The thing I had to explain to Disney was, 'You're asking a guy who's only known how to do it this way to suddenly do it with one reshoot,' " he told The Los Angeles Times. "I said, 'I'm not gonna get it right the first time. I'll tell you that right now.' "

Mr. Stanton leaned heavily on his colleagues at Disney-owned Pixar for guidance, paying less attention to input from people with experience in live-action filmmaking, according to people who worked on the movie.


Regardless, when push came to shove on "John Carter," Mr. Stanton usually got his way. One area in which he exerted his influence was marketing, where he frequently rejected ideas from Ms. Carney and her team, according to people who worked on the film.

He insisted, for instance, that a Led Zeppelin song be used in a trailer, rejecting concerns that a decades-old rock tune did not make the material feel current. Mr. Stanton also was behind the selection of billboard imagery that fell flat, and he controlled an important presentation of footage at a Disney fan convention that got a chilly reception.



Truth or blame?

Just to highlight the point made about the use of the Led Zeppelin song "Kashmir" albeit in an orchestral form in the trailer. I don't personally think that I'd single this out as a factor to the films failure- after all David Fincher used a version of the same band's song "Immigrant Song" to his strikingly effective Girl With The Dragon Tattoo trailer.
But I agree with negative comments about the uninspiring poster campain, a trailer that failed to destinguish it from a Star Wars prequel and the seeming reluctance to admit that it was set on Mars all contributed indifference from an audience. 
If the studio was too embarrased to hold their hands up and admit what the film was about, then why should an audience have any faith that the film will be worth seeing?

A good lesson to the makers of Dredd though!

Play it straight.

[dweezil2]

Interesting article on John Carter in the NY TIMES:



If Disney gave Mr. Stanton rope, he certainly ran with it. Accustomed to reworking scenes over and over at Pixar, he did not take well to the usual constraints of live-action — nailing it the first time — and went back for at least two lengthy reshoots. "The thing I had to explain to Disney was, 'You're asking a guy who's only known how to do it this way to suddenly do it with one reshoot,' " he told The Los Angeles Times. "I said, 'I'm not gonna get it right the first time. I'll tell you that right now.' "

Mr. Stanton leaned heavily on his colleagues at Disney-owned Pixar for guidance, paying less attention to input from people with experience in live-action filmmaking, according to people who worked on the movie.


Regardless, when push came to shove on "John Carter," Mr. Stanton usually got his way. One area in which he exerted his influence was marketing, where he frequently rejected ideas from Ms. Carney and her team, according to people who worked on the film.

He insisted, for instance, that a Led Zeppelin song be used in a trailer, rejecting concerns that a decades-old rock tune did not make the material feel current. Mr. Stanton also was behind the selection of billboard imagery that fell flat, and he controlled an important presentation of footage at a Disney fan convention that got a chilly reception.



Truth or blame?

Just to highlight the point made about the use of the Led Zeppelin song "Kashmir" albeit in an orchestral form in the trailer. I don't personally think that I'd single this out as a factor to the films failure- after all David Fincher used a version of the same band's song "Immigrant Song" to his strikingly effective Girl With The Dragon Tattoo trailer.
But I agree with negative comments about the uninspiring poster campaign, a trailer that failed to destinguish it from a Star Wars prequel and the seeming reluctance to admit that it was set on Mars all contributed indifference from an audience. 
If the studio was too embarrased to hold their hands up and admit what the film was about, then why should an audience have any faith that the film will be worth seeing?

A good lesson to the makers of Dredd though!

Play it straight.

[JOE SOAP]

Wasn't it Stanton's decision to drop Mars from the title?

[M.I.K.]

Regardless, when push came to shove on "John Carter," Mr. Stanton usually got his way. One area in which he exerted his influence was marketing, where he frequently rejected ideas from Ms. Carney and her team, according to people who worked on the film.

He insisted, for instance, that a Led Zeppelin song be used in a trailer, rejecting concerns that a decades-old rock tune did not make the material feel current.

Can't help wondering what music they'd have used instead to make it feel 'current'.

[TordelBack]

Regardless, when push came to shove on "John Carter," Mr. Stanton usually got his way. One area in which he exerted his influence was marketing, where he frequently rejected ideas from Ms. Carney and her team, according to people who worked on the film.

He insisted, for instance, that a Led Zeppelin song be used in a trailer, rejecting concerns that a decades-old rock tune did not make the material feel current.

Can't help wondering what music they'd have used instead to make it feel 'current'.

Yes, that's a profoundly stupid claim that makes me believe that whole piece is just blame-shifting: would things have been improved by a medley of Adele and BWAAAAAAAAANG?  There was nothing wrong with the music in the trailers, they were just vague and bland. 

[Roger Godpleton]

Wait, wait , where the fuck are you getting a "GUH" sound in BBWWWWAAAARRRRRR from?

It's either BBBWWWWAAARRRRR or BBBBWWWWAAAARRRRM. Stop Britta'ing BBBWWWWWAAARRRRRRRR.

[JamesC]

The Iron Man trailer had ACDC and that did alright.

[TordelBack]

It's either BBBWWWWAAARRRRR or BBBBWWWWAAAARRRRM.

I felt that BBBWWWWAAARRRRR and BBBBWWWWAAAARRRRM were too old fashioned to really convey the up-to-the-minuteness of a movie based on a 1917 novel set in the 19th C.  BWAAAAAAAAANG is bleeding edge trailer sound design, and would have guaranteed an extra $200M domestic.

[dweezil2]

The Iron Man trailer had ACDC and that did alright.

And don't forget that the first Iron Man used Black Sabbath's song Iron Man in its trailer-a great bit of movie/music symbiosis that!