john carter

I recently reviewed the latest Conan film and gave it a bit of a slating.

One of the things I tried to say in something of its defence is that the types of story that other people have done since the Conan films means we've all become very familiar with that type of thing.  So, in other words, it ends up feeling like cliché, even though it's actually the thing that started what other people made into cliché, if that makes sense.

As I understand it, John Carter is very similar in that sense - the original novels were very inspirational to other people, who then went on to write books and make films that essentially used the ideas so we've all become very familiar with them, even though we may not ever have actually read those original books.

In the case of John Carter it has something of a tick in my case, because we're in the realm of science fiction, which is much more my cup of tea, where Conan was fantasy, which isn't so much my thing.  As such I'm probably a bit more pre-disposed to liking it than I was Conan.

I guess I should also mention the price tag thing.  I don't know how you wouldn't be aware, but Disney spent an absolute fortune on John Carter.  Assuming what has been reported is true (not necessarily always the case and I'm sure more complicated than all that) I have to confess I don't really understand how they thought they'd make their money back.

I mean if they really did spend the amount of money they did then the end film would have had to have been about the biggest movie ever.  Now that's always possible, of course, but you have to feel the odds are stacked against it.  You have to wonder - particularly when it lacked one of the things Disney tends to rely on: any clear merchandising.

Don't get me wrong - they could certainly have produced some figurines, but there was nothing in the way of cute and cuddly and even when you look at figurines it's relative small beer.  The majority of characters were humans and the alien characters didn't exactly show a vast array of variety.  Unlike Star Wars where just about every background figure is unique so you can sell toys of each one, there were only a tiny variety of different species in John Carter.  And even then the number of actual characters was actually fairly small.  There also weren't that many vehicles or other things you could make as toys.

Where I'm really going with this is I think it's actually a bit of a shame that it was seen as a big flop, as I thought it was kinda fun.

Unlike something like Conan John Carter maintained just the right level of a sense of fun.  It steered away from being ironic or too knowing or too clever, and it wasn't a comedy movie, but it kept things light and pacey (though if I'm honest I feel it was another too long movie).

The plot also basically worked and I think it also did a bit of a neat trick in terms of exposition in particular.  There's a bit of a tendency in films like this for them to have bit wodges of terrible exposition where the McGuffin is explained and things like that.  Here they basically didn't bother - we got enough of a sense to know that certain things were important and there was an explanation behind them, but the focus was on the characters and the preventing the bad guy winning side of things, rather than blasting loads of ridiculous pseudo-science at us or similar.

Of course I'm not saying it was perfect, but if you look at some of the rubbish that gets produced, it's a shame this has been perceived to fail as some more John Carter films wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.