John Carter
DIRECTED BY ANDREW STANTON
When it comes to adapting exotic, unabashedly pulpy material like Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars—think swords and sandals and space bikinis—an enormous budget can be a mixed blessing. Witness John Carter, Disney’s $250 million take on Burroughs’ 1917 science fantasy saga about a Civil War veteran transported to the titular Red Planet. On one hand, a quarter billion dollars grants director Andrew Stanton considerable freedom to convincingly recreate Burrough’s Martian vistas and the planet’s fanciful, four-armed inhabitants. On the other, the triple-A budget seemingly militates against the B movie irreverence the subject matter demands; what should be a tawdry good time is instead watered down in service of wider appeal.
This tension, between John Carter’s pulp roots and the polished, PG-13 end product is just one of the film’s many dilemmas. Stanton, who co-wrote the screenplay with Mark Andrews and Michael Chabon, must also contend with the fact that some of pop culture’s most iconic adventure stories—including Star Wars, Superman, and Avatar—have borrowed heavily from Burroughs in the century since his Mars books were first published. The result is a film that can feel derivative, and often inferior to much of what’s come before. The romance that blossoms between the roguish Carter (Taylor Kitsch) and a rebellious royal hottie (Lynn Collins), for example, strongly echoes the amorous antagonism shared by Han Solo and Princess Leia, albeit sans the charisma of Fisher and Ford. Similarly, Carter’s superhuman powers recall those of the Man of Steel: though he’s a mere mortal on his native planet, Mars’ atmospheric conditions grant him the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound.
The issue of overfamiliarity is perhaps excusable in light of John Carter‘s seminal source material, but Stanton’s film falls prey to some more fundamental issues—a surprise, given his near-flawless Pixar pedigree. Pacing is another area where his story feels at odds with itself, as it attempts to be both a breathless thrill ride, packed with a cacophonous CGI set pieces, and an epic hero’s journey, wherein Carter bids to end a centuries-long conflict by winning the hearts and minds of a tribe of noble savages. Despite the film’s 137-minute running time, some plot elements feel rushed, and it fails to elicit the emotional investment that makes for a truly rousing climax. It also doesn’t help that we’re never quite sure what the bad guys (a race of shape-shifting immortals, lead by go-to Hollywood villain Mark Strong) hope to gain from their nefarious machinations.
Still, $250 million buys plenty of spectacle, as well as flashes of the wit that Stanton brought to previous projects Finding Nemo and WALL-E. And if that doesn’t tickle your pulp purist fancy, there’s always the option of the recent straight-to-DVD adaptation of A Princess of Mars, starring Antonio Sabato Jr.