Review of John Carter (2012) by Andrew M — 20 May 2016

Pulp fiction has always focused more on elaborate worldbuilding and zany characters and settings over actual character development. Seeing as John Carter is based heavily on that kind of storytelling, the film follows that same pattern, and attempts to use that as an excuse for this film's convoluted story and poorly written characters.

Unfortunately, it just isn't good enough of an excuse. The film is needlessly complicated in telling a simple, cliché-ridden story about warring armies and an outsider's involvement in the struggle, and the film suffers greatly from that. The lack of an engaging narrative causes the film to drag, and at 130 minutes, that's far from ideal. The acting here is all over the place, but consistently underwhelming. Taylor Kitsch's John Carter is too stoic to convey any emotions his character may have, while Lynn Collins completely overacts as the Princess of Mars: their contrived romance doesn't help much either. The rest of the cast is relegated to roles as the varying species on Mars, and the likes of Willem Dafoe, Mark Strong, and Bryan Cranston are completely wasted.

Well, at least the worldbuilding is nice, right? Well, despite being pulpy, this is not necessarily the case. There's plenty of nice visuals on display, but these species lack any kind of distinguishable lifestyles that gave life to, say, the alien race in Avatar. The film is instead relegated to standard creature and setting designs that are pretty run-of-the-mill in terms of worldbuilding.

It's not all that hard to see why John Carter was an infamous box office bomb for Disney: it just isn't a very good movie. Andrew Stanton has proved capable to directing amazing films, but maybe he should stick to animation.