Review of John Carter (2012) by Andrew N — 12 Mar 2014

I am tempted to get on this forum and mock the critics as M Night Shyamalan did in "Lady in the Water" enacting their terrifying demise with my own pros dripping with both sarcasm and truth. I won't, but I want you to know I'm tempted to treat you just like you treated this movie.

It's ironic, but John Carter is what fantasy used to be. A step into the imagination that doesn't compromise with the current pop culture fan base. The themes feel and are original. Can you even imagine a time when man could not fly and a trip to Mars in spirit if not in person was your only way to discover this phenomenon? Instead of relishing the chance to see a fantasy world as it may have been viewed a hundred years ago, we dared to compare the movie to recent attempts in fantasy, examples often as tasteless as tasty-wheat... I'm sure it's far better to let them blend our food and serve it to us with a spoon, rather than give us something original. Something where the main course involves a different look at human biology than our mainstream science has done, or a look at how Mars might have been before we landed a rover on its surface.

John Carter wasn't perfect, but it was well done. It's the sort of tale I'll enjoying sharing with my kids as they get older...one of many. As an old school geek and tolkeinite, I feel I should mention that being mainstream may have increased budgets and attention to our genre, but they've done us very little favors otherwise. Still, I'm glad Disney made the attempt here. I encourage them to try again.

If they don't, we still have half a dozen teeny bopper vampire flicks to fill the void....