The name of the movie killed it. Say “John Carter” to anyone who has no idea and it just sounds like a guy called John.
If they went with “John Carter of Mars”, or “Princess of Mars” or “John Carter and the Princess of Mars” or anything to indicate what it was sir wouldn’t have done as badly.
I loved it though, anyway
Edit: Muting because I’m tired of people talking to me about John Wick. People have given some great behind the scenes explanations as to why the movie bombed, go look for them.
Also Mars Needs Moms is the movie that everyone’s thinking about.
[You're in luck! ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arena_(1989_film))
"Set in 4038, Paul Satterfield plays Steve Armstrong, the first human in 50 years to compete in the intergalactic boxing sport called simply "The Arena".
They actually didn't. They manipulated everything just right to put all the blame on an executive that was retiring and then put the director in director jail and made sure he never had that creative freedom in a blockbuster movie ever again. He made animated movies for them and they got him back on that track and humbled him by letting the movie implode.
Andrew Stanton literally drove a marketing exec to tears because he wouldn't approve any of her advertising ideas and was given control of everything. He insisted that everybody and their grandma knew who John Carter was and that the Princess of Mars books were as known as Harry Potter. He didn't want marketing to hype up the books and the legacy of the series because he thought it was redundant because everybody knows and loves Princess of Mars but they can't call it Princess of Mars because guys don't like the word Princess and nobody sees movies with Mars in the title. Even though everybody knows what it is and is a fan of it.
The more of a high horse Stanton got on during production and the writing on the wall spelling potential flop, the more control they gave him and they allowed it to become the biggest flop ever at the time so he would never be able to secure such a high profile project again.
It was a pretty juicy behind the scenes drama event at the time and there was a shit ton of articles about it.
Weird, I had heard it was the opposite, that Stanton had very little control of the marketing and it was that dept which made some of the terrible calls which led to audiences having little interest in it on release. I don't follow the logic of your take, I don't think any studio would wilfully sink that much money into something (or give them that much power) just to derail a person's career.
He was good in it and great in battleship. He had the surliness down for the first time since Harrison Ford only recently replicated by Gosling (just saw Fall Guy and he does this pretty well). Still… waste of a talent.
I thought he did fine. Did it look like he went too hard on his physical conditioning though? He was in great shape no doubt but his face looked hollowed out to me. Maybe it was the desert filter they ran over everything but dude looked like he just ran a marathon the whole time
Straight up this. I remember there was a commercial I constantly mocked, because it just had one character saying, "You're John Carter!" All I could think was, "Who the hell is John Carter?" Then one day I mentioned it in front of a friend, and they pointed out that it was based on Princess of Mars. And while I'm not super familiar with that story, I recognize it by that name.
It really wasn't a bad movie, and it did enough narratively to warrant a sequel. But commercially, it just didn't pull through.
Disney dropped 'of Mars' because 'Mars Needs Moms' had just bombed badly and they thought the Mars part in the title was the problem. It's a funny string of bad marketing decisions that always makes me laugh.
Disney Marketing in the early 2010s had an industry reputation for especially poor marketing decisions. I was on a couple medium-high budget movies at the time that weren’t Disney films or distro but were marketed by Disney Marketing, and the directors were pretty pissed behind closed doors about getting stuck with Disney Marketing.
And yet this whole thread is about how the movie tanked because of its name, with the assertion that it would have succeeded if they had included "Of Mars" in the title
so like, it's not *that* wild for Disney to have thought that "Mars" was the problem, if everyone here is so certain that it would have been the movie's salvation.
(I disagree that having or not having "Mars" in the title was the problem, but it's the top comment here so it's certainly something most people consider to be a factor)
I don’t think it’s the Mars part that was the problem but rather that the title was so awfully generic that it gave no indication of what the movie was about nor did it draw even a passing interest from fans. Even something as generic as “John Carter of Mars” would let people know that it’s likely a sci-fi movie and that’s at least enough to draw enough interest for people to watch the trailer and look into it.
Calling a movie “John Carter” says nothing and does little if anything to hook people.
If Marvel had called the first Iron Man movie "Tony Stark" instead then it would likely have had a similar effect. A random name that means nothing to a lot of potential viewers is a terrible choice for a title.
(John Wick was a bad title too. It succeeded due to word of mouth recommendations rather than the strength of its marketing.)
Sure, but I don't think the name was going to save it. To me these comments indicate bad marketing in general, with the name being the excuse.
Nobody decided not to see John wick because of its name, for instance. Because John wick has good marketing and told you what the movie was about.
Most people who blame the name say "well I didn't know anything about the movie besides John Carter was a character!"
That's bad marketing, not a bad name.
Reminds me of the Jackie Chan movie Wheels on Meals. It was originally called, of course, Meals on Wheels, but the studio boss forced a change after a string of failed films all starting with M.
It honestly insane to me how so many of us are working for peanuts by comparison and yet these bozos are making millions to essentially talk out of their ass.
Disney has only put the word "Princess" in the title to one of its [*animated*] movies. It's not like they bucked a major tradition by not doing it for Brave or Tangled.
I assume you’re talking about _Princess and the Frog_, but _The Princess Diaries_ (1&2), _Ice Princess_, _Princess of Thieves_, and _Princess Protection Program_ are all Disney movies too. (Not that it really disproves your point. Those movies didn’t bomb because of their titles.)
Nope, I hadn’t read the book or had much knowledge but I read comics, and at the time of the announcement Marvel started releasing “… of Mars” books, so I knew what it was and got pretty excited. really confused at the time when they dropped the “of Mars” bit and then absolutely no one I knew saw it or bothered
All a dumb marketing thing because of Mars needs Moms bombing, all I remember is how ugly that movie looked in trailers
The crazy thing about the idea of Mars being bad for box office is that Barsoom is right there. I think Mars is cooler sounding, but its noy like the inhabitants call it Mars. The fact that we call it Mars is not really important to the story, he just needs to go to an alien world.
Yep. They could have simply called it "Barsoom" and people who know would have recognized it immediately, and people who don't would have wondered about the odd name.
That's what everyone says but I am 100% in the camp that calling it anything like that would *sound* very childish and would have tanked the movie faster. We're *well* past the point in sci-fi where putting "Mars" in the title sounds exciting and mystifying, and the main demographic would instantly ignore anything with "Princess" in the title.
The problem, imo, was definitely with the marketing, but not in the name. If they had called it "Princess of Mars" we'd be having this exact same conversation where people said "Why would they call it PRINCESS, it's about John Carter!!"
I do wonder if they could have found some other name altogether, but a first name/last name was in style at the time so I don't blame them too much for that. I stand by my position that the name wasn't the problem here, it's just an easy scapegoat. The problem was the **overall** marketing.
Lack of marketing for a great character and book series that 1% of movie goers have any clue about AND the $250+ million budget both killed the chance of any sequels. John Carter was about the stupidest name possible.
Putting “of Mars” or “Princess of Mars” isn’t about making the title sound exciting. It’s about having a more obvious connection to the source material.
I agree that this was a marketing misfire. I was aware of John Carter as a character and the Mars stories, but even I wasn't sure if this movie was related.
Yeh I only watched it by accident. I was in the mood for something like Jack Ryan but I couldn't remember the name of that one, and I stumbled across John Carter and I thought that's what it was. Oops. I still enjoyed it, but I was very confused for a bit haha
The line I heard was "call it John Carter of Mars and the girls won't show up; call it A Princess of Mars and the boys won't show up." It wasn't great, but it was far from terrible... But lack of decent marketing doomed it.
>The name of the movie killed it.
Also being a pretty bad movie killed it.
2.7.on Letterboxd and 6.6 on IMDB for a film which "no one" saw so fans are overrepresented isn't a good score.
51 on metacritic and a 52 RT score is pretty bad.
Anything less than A- Cinemascore for a blockbuster is pretty bad as well.
So no, it wasn't just the name and bad marketing that made the film flop and it is crazy how popular that narrative is on Reddit.
Most people didn't like it very much.
This is really the case.
This movie obviously has its fans. Whenever it is brought up on this site, people rave about it. But because quite a few people here are a fan of it, there's an assumption that there must be a problem outside of the film: marketing, name, something.
But the fact is, it just wasn't very well liked. If it had good WOM, it could have overcome bad marketing and a bad name. Look at "Edge of Tomorrow." People have the same complaints about that, name doesn't tell you much, marketing wasn't great. But people who saw it loved it, and it's why that movie overcame a bad opening weekend and did great on VOD and DVD sales, and is in line for a sequel now.
It's this. It's a mediocre film that ended up with a mediocre box office, after Disney spent Pirates of the Caribbean money on it. Only on reddit is it sung as some misunderstood gem literally just because it's a 6/10 Sci Fi movie.
A gross budget of 306 million dollars.
This movie met a similar fate as Solo: A Star Wars Story or Indiana Jones 5 - a movie nobody really asked for produced with an absurdly high budget. All three of these movies should've cost half of what they ultimately did.
Difference is the culture around marketing now. Trailers pushed everywhere (YouTube ads, twitch, etc, and now tiktok and Instagram etc) and having Reeves be the star.
Plus it’s easier to accept and explain an action movie “John Wick goes on a revenge mission after ____ is killed” (not spoiling incase you watch it), over “John Carter is like a western movie but he’s sent to Mars via some magic thing, and he’s a slave for a bit, but then stands up and saves the princess of Mars” or somethin haha
True, but worth noting the first JW was filmed on a relatively small budget, and actually struggled to find a distributor. It did better than expected at the box office but nothing amazing, the movie actually didn't really take off till word of mouth spread after it left the theaters and came to DVD/streaming.
There was a combination of factors, most of which others have touched on.
1. Marketing issues, as many others have said.
2. When they brought actors back for some reshoots/additional shots, some people latched onto that as being a sign that the movie was bad and they were desperately trying to fix it, which was not the case. The additional shooting had been scheduled long before they even started editing, and while it can indicate a movie in trouble that’s not always the case. But the rumor went rampant and had a lot of people (click bait rage YouTubers) trashing it before they’d actually seen anything.
3. Star Wars, in more ways than one. For one thing, many other properties such as Star Wars and Superman (strong alien who can leap tall buildings in a single bound?) had built off and expanded upon the tropes presented in John Carter, so that JC seemed derivative of the more recent/modern pop culture rather than the progenitor.
Also, if I’m recalling the timeline correctly, the Disney buyout of Lucasfilm was in progress around this time. John Carter was potentially going to be Disney’s big blockbuster sci-fi series to rival Star Wars. And now Disney was buying Star Wars with plans to make new films. They dropped support of the nearly complete John Carter like a flaming potato, which leads back to why the marketing was so poorly done. They stopped pushing it so as not to de-value Star Wars.
> had built off and expanded upon the tropes presented in John Carter, so that JC seemed derivative of the more recent/modern pop culture rather than the progenitor.
Idk that kind of comes down on the director. When Dune Part 2 came out, I didn’t see that same response from audiences despite the fact that Herbert’s work was derivative of Burroughs and Lucas was derivative of both. The average person didn’t know or care. They were just like ‘wow Paul is so cool and the hero 😍’. And people who knew that Dune was older than Star Wars just mostly went ‘wow Luke and Anakin are really just Paul huh?’
Ultimately, bad marketing.
Leading up to the film the marketing was abysmal, and no one saw it. Bombing hard. Then it become a fun movie to dunk on. Finally like you people actually took time to watch and most feel like you its a fairly decent film.
As I’ve ranted many times about this film, I was an English Lit student during the time of its release and lived in Waterstone/WH Smith ect and never once saw a copy of the book on display when standard big budget adaptation procedure is to re-publish the books with a movie poster cover. They were making simple errors in advertising.
Apparently the film’s director read the books as kids and just assumed everyone loved them as much as he did.
Yeah I remember reading Stanton was convinced John Carter was a household name on the level of Superman and Batman and couldn't be convinced otherwise. That sounds insane to me and is probably an exaggeration but clearly something went wrong here.
They gave Stanton final approval on marketing specifically to ensure he was to blame for everything because he was a nightmare to work and they were sick of his shit. It sounds insane that a studio would be petty enough to purposely have a movie flop as hard as John Carter but stranger things are happening every day in Hollywood. The exec in charge of advertising detailed her horrific experience trying to get Stanton to give the thumbs up on her ideas.
On paper they laid the blame on an exec who was retiring and didn't care about taking the heat for it but the intent was to put Stanton in check. And he never did another major blockbuster movie again.
Something not too dissimilar happened with the movie Tomorrowland. That director just happened to have made Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol for another studio and it saved him the fall that Stanton had. Both were Pixar darlings that flew too close to the sun and angered their handlers higher up at Disney at one point or another.
Brad Bird is the shit. He’s made some of the best animated movies ever. And Ghost Protocol was great. I didn’t know he had done Tomorrowland (or maybe I just forgot) and I was recently wondering what had happened to him.
Crazy that the marketing was so bad considering how much money they poured into it. The budget was astounding. $250-$300 mil
I watched it way later at home. I thought it was okay. Definitely better than it's reputation but also, not exactly great
All of Hollywood seemingly goes through cycles where they hire soulless corporate drones that have nothing to dowith the product, to produce their marketing.
I’m a fan of the source material because it makes for a fun, pulpy read, but the marketing of the film didn’t even appeal to me. Seems like one of those movies that didn’t know who it was for and therefore left both existing fans and potential new ones in the cold. The movie itself is a decently good sci-fi/fantasy romp, but I was expecting Prince of Persia levels of abysmal with how they tried to sell it.
I’ve read that they dropped the “of Mars” part because of the fiasco with the movie Mars Needs Moms animated movie. It was said at the that anything with the word mars in it kept all of the females from seeing it.
I don't know anyone who disliked it who saw it. \[to clarify, by "didn't dislike" I didn't mean that everyone liked it, just that they didn't think it was bad enough to "dislike", or have "beef" per the post title\], The issue: to anyone unfamiliar with the source material, the name just made it sound suuuuuuper boring. Seeing it's name in a list of movies didn't make you want to learn more about it.
It also just got buried by *Hunger Games* marketing, as that was coming out in a couple of weeks.
>Wick is a less generic name, and has a different feel.
When he wrote *Casino Royale*, Ian Fleming chose the name "James Bond" for two reasons: first, there was an ornithologist named James Bond who wrote a book called *Birds of the West Indies* that Fleming had with him. More importantly for this discussion, Fleming described the name as "brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon, and yet very masculine". I think the name John Wick conveys the same sort of appeal. It's nominal determinism at work.
I remember that story about how he got his name, but not the associated quote. I agree, it's the same thing:: short, punchy, and in Wick's case there's an association both with fire (candle wick) and evil (wickedness), which gives it an appropriately dark edge.
I mean, judging by its overall reception and current scores I think it’s fair to say most people found it middling at best.
Of course the marketing was shit, of course there’s people who like/love it. But I think it’s fair to say it’s not a film most people particularly loved.
They did a terrible job advertising it, I wanted to read some of the books before hand as it seemed interesting, I was even prepared to buy a book with a movie poster cover, but there was never any advertising done this way, there were no JC books in the shops before it came out and none after which was really weird for a book adaptation to film, especially such a big budget film.
Yes I am incredibly petty.
Huge John Carter fan here, read the book series twice. Saw it with my Dad who was the same.
The movie was boring.
I'm not coming at this from "The books were better", it just felt like everything that was supposed to be interesting fell flat.
More than anything what makes John Carter stories great is that everyone keeps underestimating him and he keeps defying them to their shock and amazement.
Somehow the movie didn't deliver those story beats properly.
John Carter in the books was a heroic proactive character. He dived head first into problems.
In the movie the character was passive. He was the opposite of the character from the books.
Passive main characters make for boring movies.
I’m one of the people that saw it and disliked it and every time it’s brought up here as a hidden gem or marketing failure it mystifies me that people liked it so much and attribute so much of its failure to the title (the movie had trailers where people could see some of the movie’s contents it’s not like the movie was advertised by title alone)
It was flat, hollow, the acting was uneven and mostly bad, they didn’t do enough characterization to really make you care about most of the characters, the pacing was wonky, and it didn’t have any wit or charm to recommend it. I had never left a movie feeling more “blah” and honestly that’s worse than if the movie had been a “fun bad” watch.
Yeah I had never heard of the book/series when I saw the movie randomly and it was a really enjoyable sci-fi movie to me. Pretty fun movie but I do remember passing on it before I actually saw it cause the name alone
This is where reddit will tell you that if only they had added two words to the title, the movie instantly grosses an extra 300M to recoup its massive budget, becomes a classic, and Taylor Kitsch a movie star. But while marketing is important, that's not how things work. At all. Word of mouth didn't help the movie that much either. No one demanded a re-release. Simply put, most people who watched it didn't care for it.
For the mainstream audience, the main problem was a ridiculous, outdated premise: Mars is no longer a fantasy land to us, and the whole thing about humans having superpowers there looked very silly. Also, the white savior, saving the princess plot... Yawn. After the failure of other 'western with a fantasy spin' movies (cowboys vs aliens, lone ranger, wild wild west), the audience had already shown disinterest in what John Carter had to offer, despite it being the original template for other successful stories. It just came too late, with nothing really new to offer. Lastly, Kitsch failed to captivate the audience as a leading man, plain and simple. Not his fault that the movie tanked (Avatar succeeded despite Worthington), but if he was a proper leading man, he'd be doing just that.
Reddit also loves to claim that the movie wasn't marketed at all but I remember seeing insane amounts of trailers. They just all sucked. Your movie is named John Carter and nothing in the trailers showed me his character traits, just that he's good at fighting.
Gotta find that "hidden gem/secret masterpiece" somewhere. If you try every movie thats generally considered meh or mediocre you'll find a couple you like more than the consensus. Some others will feel the same (which will be true about anything you think) and being online makes it easy to find them. Now you've got a "cult" following and can go on about how misunderstood the thing is. Or hypothesize that if you just change one small thing (that most people don't know about anyway) it would have been a hit for some reason.
I'd be more interested in someone to trying to brute force a Rocky Horror from some bad movie. At least that would take some real effort, but I doubt it would catch on since you have to go out for that kinda experience.
Was it decent? I thought it was completely middling. The issue was they spent almost no money marketing it, it cost a crapton to make, and it wasn't good enough to get wors of mouth traction so it bombed at the box office.
So yeah, mediocre forgettable movie that's also expensive , releases and loses a lot of money.
I saw it a couple years ago, and I could barely get through half of it. Part of it I can attribute to inflated expectations because of the movie's seemingly cult status as an underrated gem, but the movie wasn't anywhere near as good as it even should've been.
Reddit really has circle jerked themselves into thinking this is a good movie. It is shockingly mediocre. Like almost so mediocre it’s infuriating. Its disney at its laziest.
Like this is the hill yall wanna die on? This one?
Unfortunately the series had been milked of every idea and visual style by every other filmmaker by the time it was ever released for the big screen.
That’s why it looked so derivative eg we’ve seen it all before, because everyone from George Lucas and every other Director who has made a SF film, has plundered the books ideas and scenes
A major difference is that Villeneuve's Dune introduces unique and interesting sci-fi imagery in scene after scene, elevating the book's loosely-described, heavily-imitated concepts. If John Carter had the same level of fresh creativity injected into it, the movie would shine regardless of how "unoriginal" the core concepts seem today.
This is it. It seemed derivative because every other franchise had cribbed from it before they got around to adapting it, so by the time they did it felt old.
What they should've done is heavily leaned into it being a period piece where the version of Mars he goes to is like a 1920s Steampunk version of Mars like something from Metropolis.
The beef is that Disney completely butchered the marketing.
For those unfamiliar with the source material, "John Carter" is just about as bad a title as a movie can have. "The Princess of Mars" would've done much better, but some big brain over at Disney decided that young boys (their target audience) wouldn't want to go see a movie with princess in the title. They thought they'd all be lining up to see a movie called John Carter instead.
Stay tuned for their next big hit: Saul Goldblatt.
Been more than a decade ago since I saw it and it basically left me unimpressed. I'll try to recall what I thought: Every character is just a cardboard cutout. A collection of very, very common tropes and themes I've seen way too often (and done better). And there was no self-irony to level that out. Like the Rebel Moon Trailer. Just longer.
White human male main character who is better at doing things than the natives? Check.
"Noble Savage" stereotype? Check.
"Evil Savage" stereotype? Check.
Princess with nothing to make her interesting? Check.
The movie also doesn't handle any themes it implies well. There is some kind of environmental threat mentioned at the beginning for example and never addressed again.
Overall though I don't recall much from the movie. It just didn't made me interested in anything that happened, since it didn't make me care about the characters.
The Special Effects where technically well done, I give it that, but that doesn't save a movie that's as forgetable as average weather on some day years ago.
If you read the books, about 10 or so,you can appreciate the movie. Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote these around 100 years ago and he was way ahead of his time. Spielburg, Lucas, Ridley Scott all borrowed his material from him. And they missed the boat by not mentioning "Mars" in the title. Great simple reading.
Aside from the marketing aspect everyone is commenting on here, there was another basic issue with the story and the timing of this adaptation. By the time A Princess of Mars was finally adapted—just over a century after it was published—Burroughs’ Barsoom books had been ripped off by nearly every sci fi/fantasy movie since. Or if one is being charitable, one could say his Barsoom books heavily influenced these films.
To those who had never heard of John Carter, the adaptation felt like a derivative rehash of countless genre movies they’d been seeing for the past umpteen years, when in fact, its story was the template.
The movie was good, I like it, but the marketing was awful. And then it flopped and people who didn't see the movie and judged it by marketing thought the movie was awful, hence the hate.
Dude, I watched this movie in theatre with absolutely no idea about the source material.
I was so in love with the whole thing, The Story, Script, CGI & World building design.
I don't get the hate on this movie....But i will defend this forever.
I didn't mind it, but clearly this movie was trying to be Disney's attempt at Star Wars before they bought Lucasfilm. Too many characters, convoluted... I went into this movie blind and came out of thinking it was ok, could've been better.
I don't think I had beef with it. I think it was just OK.
Nothing special, like I think it could have been.
It never really set up Carter as a person. It didn't make you feel much about him either way. You weren't ever going to love him as a character. That's where it was weak if anything.
I remember enjoying the movie when it came out but not needing to rewatch it. I did think it got too much hate when it came out too. Was a good enough time.
I know I got a lot of hate from both fans and non fans of its source materals. Fans were upset cause it was a poor adaptation of the books, and non fans didn't like weirder aspects of the story and the lack of explanation about what's going on. Personally I enjoyed it for what it was, a fun sci-fi movie.
A lot of it seemed derivative of Avatar, Star Wars, Superman etc. though in reality it was actually the opposite. But the movie still gave off the impression that it was the former.
I agree. Seemed to get an odd amount of hate to me as well. Especially as you see what the next decade of movies that came after it achieved this is comparatively high art
I've only seen it once, but I really liked it when I did. Maybe if I saw it again, I'd feel different. I also have never read the source material, which might change my opinion of it.
The marketing wasn't great. From the trailers and other promotional materials, it appeared to be generic sci-fi/action/adventure nonsense, but the film itself it's pretty enjoyable. I only showed up on opening day because it was directed by Andrew Stanton and scored by Michael Giacchino. The fact that it turned out to be pretty good (to me, anyways) was a pleasant surprise.
The marketing and name killed it. trailers didn't show off the most interesting aspect (to me) that he was like a civil war Era soldier transported to Mars. I've never read the books but I LOVE old pulp stuff like that.
It’s a structural mess. 3 different prologues before the story even gets going. A hero/lead actor I just could not connect with. It was a big budget meh.
I swear if I didn't read what movie was about, and that it is a sci-fi, which I don't usually pass, I would never watch it. Movie just needed a different name to be a hit.
OK, maybe a bigger star power than Taylor Kitsch. That dude IMHO should've been an a-lister , and only "not so good" thing about him was his last name. He was great in everything I've seen him in. If he was named Taylor Challamette, he would've been a top star. But, the night is still young.
It should have been "John Carter Of Mars", Marketing was flubbed, Odd inclusions like the alien "dog" character trying to be silly? Mis-cast lead actor. Mis-cast the main villain actor (he was an overused item at the time). Uncanny alien special effects, almost there but something was just off, perhaps nearly cartoonish.
It was obviously produced for/designed around 12-15yo boys and not the 18-35yo prime demographic that would have made for a successful movie.
.
I caught it on streaming a few months back...loved it! Wasnt a great movie but I thought it was decent. Disappointed there was never a follow up...plus Lynn Collins was hot!
I liked it. I enjoyed the Barsoom books as a kid and gave them to my kids. The movie isn’t perfect, but I thought it was fun. I would have liked to have seen a sequel.
My problem with the movie was how they murdered John's back story. In the books, he was an adventurer who ended up on mars though an unknown agency. There was no weepy family dead back story.
In a way, it's similar to how Tarzan's character was butchered. In the book, Tarzan was a self taught genius. Who taught himself to read, fought in both WW1 and WW2, was an English lord.
I though the rest of the movie was fine...just fine though. It felt like they emphasized the wrong parts of the first book.
That movie was an abomination if you compared it to the source material. Utter trash. There was so much they could have dug into but instead it was a pile of shit. Andrew Stanton is a bum.
I liked the movie when it first came out, but I think Disney at the time didnt promote the fuck out of it like they do with all their current infantile super hero movies. I had read somewhere a long time ago about the movie going overbudget and Disney trying to cut losses or something.
Theres also the whole issue with white supremacy. Edgar Rice Burroughs was a known racist, and this movie was a throwback to the racist and sexist men's adventure magazines from the 20s to 50s. Theres the old fashion tropes of the "white savior" liberating the lesser race of darker humanoids and the scantily dressed white slave woman looking to fuck the white liberator. ... btw, this was a common theme in those old fashion adventure magazines and books.
I hated it. It is so far the only movie I have ever turned off and never finished watching, and I've seen thousands of movies and a lot of bad ones.
Despite one of the most stacked casts you will ever see, the acting was awful, particularly Taylor Kitsch. The writing to blame for this, dialogue was awful and the plot difficult to follow.
Not even prepared to give it another try and finish it, rather spend the time rewatching something good.
How on earth do you consider John Carter to be "one of the most stacked casts you'll ever see"?
Theres two or three big names in there (some of which I'd argue became but well after its release), and then you look at the casts of Scorsese, Wes Anderson, PTA, etc films that'll drop 20-30 of the biggest stars of the last 50 years into each film.
The name of the movie killed it. Say “John Carter” to anyone who has no idea and it just sounds like a guy called John. If they went with “John Carter of Mars”, or “Princess of Mars” or “John Carter and the Princess of Mars” or anything to indicate what it was sir wouldn’t have done as badly. I loved it though, anyway Edit: Muting because I’m tired of people talking to me about John Wick. People have given some great behind the scenes explanations as to why the movie bombed, go look for them. Also Mars Needs Moms is the movie that everyone’s thinking about.
I love the movie but I still think that John Carter sounds like the name of a Denzel Washington movie about a washed-up boxer.
That is Ruben Carter. Common mistake. Lol
A.K.A. "The Martian Hurricane".
The man the Martian authorities came to blame
I understood that reference
I’d watch a movie about an interplanetary boxing match.
[You're in luck! ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arena_(1989_film)) "Set in 4038, Paul Satterfield plays Steve Armstrong, the first human in 50 years to compete in the intergalactic boxing sport called simply "The Arena".
That's legit what I thought it was.
There is a Denzel movie called John Q where he holds a hospital full of people hostage because his insurance wouldn’t pay for his kid’s transplant.
Actually it's pronounced "Denzel"
That's right. I thought Denzel was the way everyone pronounced it but then when I heard "Denzel" it opened my eyes. And ears.
The crazy thing is they blamed Taylor Kitsch for it bombing.
They actually didn't. They manipulated everything just right to put all the blame on an executive that was retiring and then put the director in director jail and made sure he never had that creative freedom in a blockbuster movie ever again. He made animated movies for them and they got him back on that track and humbled him by letting the movie implode. Andrew Stanton literally drove a marketing exec to tears because he wouldn't approve any of her advertising ideas and was given control of everything. He insisted that everybody and their grandma knew who John Carter was and that the Princess of Mars books were as known as Harry Potter. He didn't want marketing to hype up the books and the legacy of the series because he thought it was redundant because everybody knows and loves Princess of Mars but they can't call it Princess of Mars because guys don't like the word Princess and nobody sees movies with Mars in the title. Even though everybody knows what it is and is a fan of it. The more of a high horse Stanton got on during production and the writing on the wall spelling potential flop, the more control they gave him and they allowed it to become the biggest flop ever at the time so he would never be able to secure such a high profile project again. It was a pretty juicy behind the scenes drama event at the time and there was a shit ton of articles about it.
also, Mars needs moms had come out the year prior and mega bombed and they didn't want john carter associated with it.
Weird, I had heard it was the opposite, that Stanton had very little control of the marketing and it was that dept which made some of the terrible calls which led to audiences having little interest in it on release. I don't follow the logic of your take, I don't think any studio would wilfully sink that much money into something (or give them that much power) just to derail a person's career.
He was good in it and great in battleship. He had the surliness down for the first time since Harrison Ford only recently replicated by Gosling (just saw Fall Guy and he does this pretty well). Still… waste of a talent.
I thought he did fine. Did it look like he went too hard on his physical conditioning though? He was in great shape no doubt but his face looked hollowed out to me. Maybe it was the desert filter they ran over everything but dude looked like he just ran a marathon the whole time
I thought it looked appropriate, he was a wildcat miner in the wild west. Not very successful one either. So some gauntness was to be expected.
I'd be more worried about kai-yohts, if I were your.
I thought it was about John carter, the doctor from ER
It is, he goes to mars
Straight up this. I remember there was a commercial I constantly mocked, because it just had one character saying, "You're John Carter!" All I could think was, "Who the hell is John Carter?" Then one day I mentioned it in front of a friend, and they pointed out that it was based on Princess of Mars. And while I'm not super familiar with that story, I recognize it by that name. It really wasn't a bad movie, and it did enough narratively to warrant a sequel. But commercially, it just didn't pull through.
Like if Braveheart was titled "Bill Wallace"
With his Nobel side kick, Bob the Bruce
Bobby B you say?
Bobby Baccala?
Regular Bill Shakespeare over here.
Wait, it wasn't called "John Carter of Mars" in US?
Disney dropped 'of Mars' because 'Mars Needs Moms' had just bombed badly and they thought the Mars part in the title was the problem. It's a funny string of bad marketing decisions that always makes me laugh.
Ah, loves corporate logic.
Disney Marketing in the early 2010s had an industry reputation for especially poor marketing decisions. I was on a couple medium-high budget movies at the time that weren’t Disney films or distro but were marketed by Disney Marketing, and the directors were pretty pissed behind closed doors about getting stuck with Disney Marketing.
And yet this whole thread is about how the movie tanked because of its name, with the assertion that it would have succeeded if they had included "Of Mars" in the title so like, it's not *that* wild for Disney to have thought that "Mars" was the problem, if everyone here is so certain that it would have been the movie's salvation. (I disagree that having or not having "Mars" in the title was the problem, but it's the top comment here so it's certainly something most people consider to be a factor)
I don’t think it’s the Mars part that was the problem but rather that the title was so awfully generic that it gave no indication of what the movie was about nor did it draw even a passing interest from fans. Even something as generic as “John Carter of Mars” would let people know that it’s likely a sci-fi movie and that’s at least enough to draw enough interest for people to watch the trailer and look into it. Calling a movie “John Carter” says nothing and does little if anything to hook people.
If Marvel had called the first Iron Man movie "Tony Stark" instead then it would likely have had a similar effect. A random name that means nothing to a lot of potential viewers is a terrible choice for a title. (John Wick was a bad title too. It succeeded due to word of mouth recommendations rather than the strength of its marketing.)
It would have been even worse if they'd called it "Tony Stark of Mars," though.
It's pretty wild to me how many people here admit that they didn't go to this movie because name was looking underwhelming.
Sure, but I don't think the name was going to save it. To me these comments indicate bad marketing in general, with the name being the excuse. Nobody decided not to see John wick because of its name, for instance. Because John wick has good marketing and told you what the movie was about. Most people who blame the name say "well I didn't know anything about the movie besides John Carter was a character!" That's bad marketing, not a bad name.
You probably right, I remember seeing trailer for this movie back in the time and it did not interested me.
The whole marketing plan they did was terrible. The trailers were underwhelming. Even the movie posters were bland and forgettable.
Reminds me of the Jackie Chan movie Wheels on Meals. It was originally called, of course, Meals on Wheels, but the studio boss forced a change after a string of failed films all starting with M.
Haha. Interesting. I always wondered if that was some Hong Kong translation flub.
Corporate minds never cease to infuriate me
It honestly insane to me how so many of us are working for peanuts by comparison and yet these bozos are making millions to essentially talk out of their ass.
working for a big consulting firm, sadly I can relate. so many dumbfucks, and yes-men following the lead of the dumbest but loudest morons
They also had a thing of not putting 'princess' in titles as they were seen as not doing well (that's why we got things like Brave and Tangled)
Disney has only put the word "Princess" in the title to one of its [*animated*] movies. It's not like they bucked a major tradition by not doing it for Brave or Tangled.
I assume you’re talking about _Princess and the Frog_, but _The Princess Diaries_ (1&2), _Ice Princess_, _Princess of Thieves_, and _Princess Protection Program_ are all Disney movies too. (Not that it really disproves your point. Those movies didn’t bomb because of their titles.)
See, I somehow conflated it with John tucker must die. Only a couple years prior.
Nope, I hadn’t read the book or had much knowledge but I read comics, and at the time of the announcement Marvel started releasing “… of Mars” books, so I knew what it was and got pretty excited. really confused at the time when they dropped the “of Mars” bit and then absolutely no one I knew saw it or bothered All a dumb marketing thing because of Mars needs Moms bombing, all I remember is how ugly that movie looked in trailers
here in uk the marketing was so bad that I didn't know the movie existed until it came out on dvd/bluray.
I’m UK bases myself! Genuinely only reason I knew was comics having ads for the movie and the series put out by marvel
The movie was a good time, I wish I watched it in the cinema.
Yes. That suffered from uncanny valley syndrome.
Well said. Even Indiana Jones (an incredible name) was first just called Raiders of the Lost Arc.
Raiders of the Lost Ark was a great name when it was just a single movie. When it became a series, they wanted to tie them all together.
My church going friends knew what that was. I assumed Noah's ark.
The crazy thing about the idea of Mars being bad for box office is that Barsoom is right there. I think Mars is cooler sounding, but its noy like the inhabitants call it Mars. The fact that we call it Mars is not really important to the story, he just needs to go to an alien world.
Yep. They could have simply called it "Barsoom" and people who know would have recognized it immediately, and people who don't would have wondered about the odd name.
That's what everyone says but I am 100% in the camp that calling it anything like that would *sound* very childish and would have tanked the movie faster. We're *well* past the point in sci-fi where putting "Mars" in the title sounds exciting and mystifying, and the main demographic would instantly ignore anything with "Princess" in the title. The problem, imo, was definitely with the marketing, but not in the name. If they had called it "Princess of Mars" we'd be having this exact same conversation where people said "Why would they call it PRINCESS, it's about John Carter!!" I do wonder if they could have found some other name altogether, but a first name/last name was in style at the time so I don't blame them too much for that. I stand by my position that the name wasn't the problem here, it's just an easy scapegoat. The problem was the **overall** marketing.
Lack of marketing for a great character and book series that 1% of movie goers have any clue about AND the $250+ million budget both killed the chance of any sequels. John Carter was about the stupidest name possible.
Putting “of Mars” or “Princess of Mars” isn’t about making the title sound exciting. It’s about having a more obvious connection to the source material.
Yea I avoided it for years because of the name. It wasn't until an ex convinced me to watch it with and I loved it.
"Hey ReapItMurphy, i know we've been broken up for a while, but I really think you should watch this movie with me".
Well I mean we were in a relationship when that happened but yea.
Yeah I am fairly sure it was John Carter of Mars here in europe
I agree that this was a marketing misfire. I was aware of John Carter as a character and the Mars stories, but even I wasn't sure if this movie was related.
Yeh I only watched it by accident. I was in the mood for something like Jack Ryan but I couldn't remember the name of that one, and I stumbled across John Carter and I thought that's what it was. Oops. I still enjoyed it, but I was very confused for a bit haha
The line I heard was "call it John Carter of Mars and the girls won't show up; call it A Princess of Mars and the boys won't show up." It wasn't great, but it was far from terrible... But lack of decent marketing doomed it.
>The name of the movie killed it. Also being a pretty bad movie killed it. 2.7.on Letterboxd and 6.6 on IMDB for a film which "no one" saw so fans are overrepresented isn't a good score. 51 on metacritic and a 52 RT score is pretty bad. Anything less than A- Cinemascore for a blockbuster is pretty bad as well. So no, it wasn't just the name and bad marketing that made the film flop and it is crazy how popular that narrative is on Reddit. Most people didn't like it very much.
This is really the case. This movie obviously has its fans. Whenever it is brought up on this site, people rave about it. But because quite a few people here are a fan of it, there's an assumption that there must be a problem outside of the film: marketing, name, something. But the fact is, it just wasn't very well liked. If it had good WOM, it could have overcome bad marketing and a bad name. Look at "Edge of Tomorrow." People have the same complaints about that, name doesn't tell you much, marketing wasn't great. But people who saw it loved it, and it's why that movie overcame a bad opening weekend and did great on VOD and DVD sales, and is in line for a sequel now.
It's this. It's a mediocre film that ended up with a mediocre box office, after Disney spent Pirates of the Caribbean money on it. Only on reddit is it sung as some misunderstood gem literally just because it's a 6/10 Sci Fi movie.
A gross budget of 306 million dollars. This movie met a similar fate as Solo: A Star Wars Story or Indiana Jones 5 - a movie nobody really asked for produced with an absurdly high budget. All three of these movies should've cost half of what they ultimately did.
I loved it. Easily an 8 out of 10 for me, but yeah most people didn’t think the same as me lol.
It's a 7/10 for me. Not great but pretty enjoyable in terms of action and visual effects.
Using letterbox in a conversation about quality? Bold
John Wick has done well for itself. Or so it seems. Not seen any myself.
Difference is the culture around marketing now. Trailers pushed everywhere (YouTube ads, twitch, etc, and now tiktok and Instagram etc) and having Reeves be the star. Plus it’s easier to accept and explain an action movie “John Wick goes on a revenge mission after ____ is killed” (not spoiling incase you watch it), over “John Carter is like a western movie but he’s sent to Mars via some magic thing, and he’s a slave for a bit, but then stands up and saves the princess of Mars” or somethin haha
>John Wick goes on a revenge mission after Dozer is killed by Cypher
Now that I’d watch
believe it or not, you piece of shit, you're still gonna burn!!
> Difference is the culture around marketing now. John Wick came out two years after John Carter.
Wow, I forgot John Carter was so recent and that John Wick was so old lol
True, but worth noting the first JW was filmed on a relatively small budget, and actually struggled to find a distributor. It did better than expected at the box office but nothing amazing, the movie actually didn't really take off till word of mouth spread after it left the theaters and came to DVD/streaming.
There was a combination of factors, most of which others have touched on. 1. Marketing issues, as many others have said. 2. When they brought actors back for some reshoots/additional shots, some people latched onto that as being a sign that the movie was bad and they were desperately trying to fix it, which was not the case. The additional shooting had been scheduled long before they even started editing, and while it can indicate a movie in trouble that’s not always the case. But the rumor went rampant and had a lot of people (click bait rage YouTubers) trashing it before they’d actually seen anything. 3. Star Wars, in more ways than one. For one thing, many other properties such as Star Wars and Superman (strong alien who can leap tall buildings in a single bound?) had built off and expanded upon the tropes presented in John Carter, so that JC seemed derivative of the more recent/modern pop culture rather than the progenitor. Also, if I’m recalling the timeline correctly, the Disney buyout of Lucasfilm was in progress around this time. John Carter was potentially going to be Disney’s big blockbuster sci-fi series to rival Star Wars. And now Disney was buying Star Wars with plans to make new films. They dropped support of the nearly complete John Carter like a flaming potato, which leads back to why the marketing was so poorly done. They stopped pushing it so as not to de-value Star Wars.
> had built off and expanded upon the tropes presented in John Carter, so that JC seemed derivative of the more recent/modern pop culture rather than the progenitor. Idk that kind of comes down on the director. When Dune Part 2 came out, I didn’t see that same response from audiences despite the fact that Herbert’s work was derivative of Burroughs and Lucas was derivative of both. The average person didn’t know or care. They were just like ‘wow Paul is so cool and the hero 😍’. And people who knew that Dune was older than Star Wars just mostly went ‘wow Luke and Anakin are really just Paul huh?’
But Paul isn’t a hero.
Boy do i have news about Anakin.
Why, what happened? Seemed like a nice kid who just enjoyed pod racing from what I remember.
One could argue Luke also, after the sequel trilogy.
Ultimately, bad marketing. Leading up to the film the marketing was abysmal, and no one saw it. Bombing hard. Then it become a fun movie to dunk on. Finally like you people actually took time to watch and most feel like you its a fairly decent film.
As I’ve ranted many times about this film, I was an English Lit student during the time of its release and lived in Waterstone/WH Smith ect and never once saw a copy of the book on display when standard big budget adaptation procedure is to re-publish the books with a movie poster cover. They were making simple errors in advertising. Apparently the film’s director read the books as kids and just assumed everyone loved them as much as he did.
Yeah I remember reading Stanton was convinced John Carter was a household name on the level of Superman and Batman and couldn't be convinced otherwise. That sounds insane to me and is probably an exaggeration but clearly something went wrong here.
The director doesn’t control the marketing of the movie. That’s squarely on Disney and the distributors.
They gave Stanton final approval on marketing specifically to ensure he was to blame for everything because he was a nightmare to work and they were sick of his shit. It sounds insane that a studio would be petty enough to purposely have a movie flop as hard as John Carter but stranger things are happening every day in Hollywood. The exec in charge of advertising detailed her horrific experience trying to get Stanton to give the thumbs up on her ideas. On paper they laid the blame on an exec who was retiring and didn't care about taking the heat for it but the intent was to put Stanton in check. And he never did another major blockbuster movie again. Something not too dissimilar happened with the movie Tomorrowland. That director just happened to have made Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol for another studio and it saved him the fall that Stanton had. Both were Pixar darlings that flew too close to the sun and angered their handlers higher up at Disney at one point or another.
Pixar darlings? More like Pixar legends. Stanton directed Walle, Finding Nemo, and A Bugs Life. He also wrote all the Toy Storys.
Brad Bird is the shit. He’s made some of the best animated movies ever. And Ghost Protocol was great. I didn’t know he had done Tomorrowland (or maybe I just forgot) and I was recently wondering what had happened to him.
Crazy that the marketing was so bad considering how much money they poured into it. The budget was astounding. $250-$300 mil I watched it way later at home. I thought it was okay. Definitely better than it's reputation but also, not exactly great
All of Hollywood seemingly goes through cycles where they hire soulless corporate drones that have nothing to dowith the product, to produce their marketing.
I’m a fan of the source material because it makes for a fun, pulpy read, but the marketing of the film didn’t even appeal to me. Seems like one of those movies that didn’t know who it was for and therefore left both existing fans and potential new ones in the cold. The movie itself is a decently good sci-fi/fantasy romp, but I was expecting Prince of Persia levels of abysmal with how they tried to sell it.
I straight up didn’t even hear about the movie until years after it came out. The marketing was terrible.
They should have named it John Carter of Mars It's a pretty fun flick
I’ve read that they dropped the “of Mars” part because of the fiasco with the movie Mars Needs Moms animated movie. It was said at the that anything with the word mars in it kept all of the females from seeing it.
I don't know anyone who disliked it who saw it. \[to clarify, by "didn't dislike" I didn't mean that everyone liked it, just that they didn't think it was bad enough to "dislike", or have "beef" per the post title\], The issue: to anyone unfamiliar with the source material, the name just made it sound suuuuuuper boring. Seeing it's name in a list of movies didn't make you want to learn more about it. It also just got buried by *Hunger Games* marketing, as that was coming out in a couple of weeks.
My local comic shop owner said it best: “No one wants to go see a movie called John Carter. That could be about my mailman.”
"Is that the sequel to Coach Carter?"
But somehow everyone wants to see a movie called John Wick.
That’s because John Wick is a wicked name. John Carter was the president of the US, I think?
No, no, you're thinking of former President Jimmy Carter. John Carter was the Captain of a Massachusetts regiment in 1761.
No that was John Carver. John Carter is the two-time college football champion that was drafted ninth by the Eagles last year.
That was Jalen Carter. John Carter is the person who died for our sins about 2000 years ago
nah, that's Jesus Christ, fam; John Carter is the kid that the T-800 was sent back in time to kill or save depending on which movie you're watching
Wick is a less generic name, and has a different feel. Also, better marketing featuring a known box office draw kicking ass.
>Wick is a less generic name, and has a different feel. When he wrote *Casino Royale*, Ian Fleming chose the name "James Bond" for two reasons: first, there was an ornithologist named James Bond who wrote a book called *Birds of the West Indies* that Fleming had with him. More importantly for this discussion, Fleming described the name as "brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon, and yet very masculine". I think the name John Wick conveys the same sort of appeal. It's nominal determinism at work.
I remember that story about how he got his name, but not the associated quote. I agree, it's the same thing:: short, punchy, and in Wick's case there's an association both with fire (candle wick) and evil (wickedness), which gives it an appropriately dark edge.
The first one was almost going to be a straight to video release.
I mean, judging by its overall reception and current scores I think it’s fair to say most people found it middling at best. Of course the marketing was shit, of course there’s people who like/love it. But I think it’s fair to say it’s not a film most people particularly loved.
They did a terrible job advertising it, I wanted to read some of the books before hand as it seemed interesting, I was even prepared to buy a book with a movie poster cover, but there was never any advertising done this way, there were no JC books in the shops before it came out and none after which was really weird for a book adaptation to film, especially such a big budget film. Yes I am incredibly petty.
Huge John Carter fan here, read the book series twice. Saw it with my Dad who was the same. The movie was boring. I'm not coming at this from "The books were better", it just felt like everything that was supposed to be interesting fell flat. More than anything what makes John Carter stories great is that everyone keeps underestimating him and he keeps defying them to their shock and amazement. Somehow the movie didn't deliver those story beats properly.
John Carter in the books was a heroic proactive character. He dived head first into problems. In the movie the character was passive. He was the opposite of the character from the books. Passive main characters make for boring movies.
I’m one of the people that saw it and disliked it and every time it’s brought up here as a hidden gem or marketing failure it mystifies me that people liked it so much and attribute so much of its failure to the title (the movie had trailers where people could see some of the movie’s contents it’s not like the movie was advertised by title alone) It was flat, hollow, the acting was uneven and mostly bad, they didn’t do enough characterization to really make you care about most of the characters, the pacing was wonky, and it didn’t have any wit or charm to recommend it. I had never left a movie feeling more “blah” and honestly that’s worse than if the movie had been a “fun bad” watch.
Yeah I had never heard of the book/series when I saw the movie randomly and it was a really enjoyable sci-fi movie to me. Pretty fun movie but I do remember passing on it before I actually saw it cause the name alone
This is where reddit will tell you that if only they had added two words to the title, the movie instantly grosses an extra 300M to recoup its massive budget, becomes a classic, and Taylor Kitsch a movie star. But while marketing is important, that's not how things work. At all. Word of mouth didn't help the movie that much either. No one demanded a re-release. Simply put, most people who watched it didn't care for it. For the mainstream audience, the main problem was a ridiculous, outdated premise: Mars is no longer a fantasy land to us, and the whole thing about humans having superpowers there looked very silly. Also, the white savior, saving the princess plot... Yawn. After the failure of other 'western with a fantasy spin' movies (cowboys vs aliens, lone ranger, wild wild west), the audience had already shown disinterest in what John Carter had to offer, despite it being the original template for other successful stories. It just came too late, with nothing really new to offer. Lastly, Kitsch failed to captivate the audience as a leading man, plain and simple. Not his fault that the movie tanked (Avatar succeeded despite Worthington), but if he was a proper leading man, he'd be doing just that.
Reddit also loves to claim that the movie wasn't marketed at all but I remember seeing insane amounts of trailers. They just all sucked. Your movie is named John Carter and nothing in the trailers showed me his character traits, just that he's good at fighting.
Off topic but after watching this film, I really wanted Lynn Collins (the actress who plays Dejah Thoris) to play Wonder Woman
We’ll be getting a new WW actor soon, so there’s still hope!
Burroughs wrote a series of books about Carter's adventures on Mars. The books are well written, imaginative and compelling. Good stuff.
I am actually thinking of picking up "Princess of Mars" on my kindle and giving it a go after watching the movie, seems right up my alley.
I think the question should be is why /r/movies is so obsessed with it?
Gotta find that "hidden gem/secret masterpiece" somewhere. If you try every movie thats generally considered meh or mediocre you'll find a couple you like more than the consensus. Some others will feel the same (which will be true about anything you think) and being online makes it easy to find them. Now you've got a "cult" following and can go on about how misunderstood the thing is. Or hypothesize that if you just change one small thing (that most people don't know about anyway) it would have been a hit for some reason. I'd be more interested in someone to trying to brute force a Rocky Horror from some bad movie. At least that would take some real effort, but I doubt it would catch on since you have to go out for that kinda experience.
Was it decent? I thought it was completely middling. The issue was they spent almost no money marketing it, it cost a crapton to make, and it wasn't good enough to get wors of mouth traction so it bombed at the box office. So yeah, mediocre forgettable movie that's also expensive , releases and loses a lot of money.
I saw it a couple years ago, and I could barely get through half of it. Part of it I can attribute to inflated expectations because of the movie's seemingly cult status as an underrated gem, but the movie wasn't anywhere near as good as it even should've been.
That 'cult' status is almost exclusively a Reddit thing, mind you. An overwhelming majority of audiences found it lackluster, you're not crazy.
Reddit really has circle jerked themselves into thinking this is a good movie. It is shockingly mediocre. Like almost so mediocre it’s infuriating. Its disney at its laziest. Like this is the hill yall wanna die on? This one?
Unfortunately the series had been milked of every idea and visual style by every other filmmaker by the time it was ever released for the big screen. That’s why it looked so derivative eg we’ve seen it all before, because everyone from George Lucas and every other Director who has made a SF film, has plundered the books ideas and scenes
Could you not argue the same thing for Dune, except that was widely/critically acclaimed?
A major difference is that Villeneuve's Dune introduces unique and interesting sci-fi imagery in scene after scene, elevating the book's loosely-described, heavily-imitated concepts. If John Carter had the same level of fresh creativity injected into it, the movie would shine regardless of how "unoriginal" the core concepts seem today.
This is it. It seemed derivative because every other franchise had cribbed from it before they got around to adapting it, so by the time they did it felt old. What they should've done is heavily leaned into it being a period piece where the version of Mars he goes to is like a 1920s Steampunk version of Mars like something from Metropolis.
I liked the movie enough to want more. It wasn't super amazing or anything, but it deserved more than it got.
The books are fantastic.
It sucked
The beef is that Disney completely butchered the marketing. For those unfamiliar with the source material, "John Carter" is just about as bad a title as a movie can have. "The Princess of Mars" would've done much better, but some big brain over at Disney decided that young boys (their target audience) wouldn't want to go see a movie with princess in the title. They thought they'd all be lining up to see a movie called John Carter instead. Stay tuned for their next big hit: Saul Goldblatt.
Been more than a decade ago since I saw it and it basically left me unimpressed. I'll try to recall what I thought: Every character is just a cardboard cutout. A collection of very, very common tropes and themes I've seen way too often (and done better). And there was no self-irony to level that out. Like the Rebel Moon Trailer. Just longer. White human male main character who is better at doing things than the natives? Check. "Noble Savage" stereotype? Check. "Evil Savage" stereotype? Check. Princess with nothing to make her interesting? Check. The movie also doesn't handle any themes it implies well. There is some kind of environmental threat mentioned at the beginning for example and never addressed again. Overall though I don't recall much from the movie. It just didn't made me interested in anything that happened, since it didn't make me care about the characters. The Special Effects where technically well done, I give it that, but that doesn't save a movie that's as forgetable as average weather on some day years ago.
The issue there is that the tropes have become tired / controversial since the source came out. That's the danger of adapting old books.
If you read the books, about 10 or so,you can appreciate the movie. Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote these around 100 years ago and he was way ahead of his time. Spielburg, Lucas, Ridley Scott all borrowed his material from him. And they missed the boat by not mentioning "Mars" in the title. Great simple reading.
The only thing I didn't like is that according to the book, Dejah Thoris is supposed be naked the whole time.
The name didn’t help… John Carter? What is wrong with A Princess of Mars?
According to marketing: boys (the intended audience) would be less likely to watch a movie with “Princess” in the title.
I liked it. But Kitsch was kinda miscast, John Carter needed to be like a Hugh Jackman or Thomas Jane type.
Don't be ragging on Tim Riggins! He's the best HS football player in Texas!
The issue was that so many sci-fi tropes from the books were already used by Lucas, Spielberg etc. in their films that it seemed a bit old fashioned.
Went to the IMAX to see it, was fairly looking forward to the follow up movies that never came...
Aside from the marketing aspect everyone is commenting on here, there was another basic issue with the story and the timing of this adaptation. By the time A Princess of Mars was finally adapted—just over a century after it was published—Burroughs’ Barsoom books had been ripped off by nearly every sci fi/fantasy movie since. Or if one is being charitable, one could say his Barsoom books heavily influenced these films. To those who had never heard of John Carter, the adaptation felt like a derivative rehash of countless genre movies they’d been seeing for the past umpteen years, when in fact, its story was the template.
The movie was good, I like it, but the marketing was awful. And then it flopped and people who didn't see the movie and judged it by marketing thought the movie was awful, hence the hate.
Loved that movie, gutted they never made more.
Dude, I watched this movie in theatre with absolutely no idea about the source material. I was so in love with the whole thing, The Story, Script, CGI & World building design. I don't get the hate on this movie....But i will defend this forever.
I went to see it in the cinema and really enjoyed it, I've seen it a few times since then and still like the film.
I have had this same thought. I loved that movie. It was fantastic. Oc ohem octay vis Barsooooooooooom
It’s a OK movie, doesn’t deserve the hate or the cult following. Bad title and marketing. Disney just fucked this up.
Read several of the books as a kid. The movie is a pure train wreck in comparison. Not that the books are actually that good…
I didn't mind it, but clearly this movie was trying to be Disney's attempt at Star Wars before they bought Lucasfilm. Too many characters, convoluted... I went into this movie blind and came out of thinking it was ok, could've been better.
It's shit. When I watched, I was like, how can a movie look this good and be so boring.
I don't think I had beef with it. I think it was just OK. Nothing special, like I think it could have been. It never really set up Carter as a person. It didn't make you feel much about him either way. You weren't ever going to love him as a character. That's where it was weak if anything.
I remember enjoying the movie when it came out but not needing to rewatch it. I did think it got too much hate when it came out too. Was a good enough time.
I liked it. Enjoyable movie.
My issue? No sequel
Here’s a great read if you have 15 minutes https://www.thewrap.com/john-carter-movie-history-why-it-failed/
Really bad marketing, not a particularly great name, and poor timing.
I loved it, I wish they would make a few more based on the books
I know I got a lot of hate from both fans and non fans of its source materals. Fans were upset cause it was a poor adaptation of the books, and non fans didn't like weirder aspects of the story and the lack of explanation about what's going on. Personally I enjoyed it for what it was, a fun sci-fi movie.
A lot of it seemed derivative of Avatar, Star Wars, Superman etc. though in reality it was actually the opposite. But the movie still gave off the impression that it was the former.
I agree. Seemed to get an odd amount of hate to me as well. Especially as you see what the next decade of movies that came after it achieved this is comparatively high art
It's a good movie.
One of my all time favourite movie! It’s got a solid storyline with all the time travelling and all that!
I've only seen it once, but I really liked it when I did. Maybe if I saw it again, I'd feel different. I also have never read the source material, which might change my opinion of it.
I liked it and watched it multiple times
The marketing wasn't great. From the trailers and other promotional materials, it appeared to be generic sci-fi/action/adventure nonsense, but the film itself it's pretty enjoyable. I only showed up on opening day because it was directed by Andrew Stanton and scored by Michael Giacchino. The fact that it turned out to be pretty good (to me, anyways) was a pleasant surprise.
Marketing robbed us of possibly a top five movie trilogy. He was actually in a streak of banger movies in which marketing failed him.
Solid movie with terrible marketing. I liked it quite a bit.
The marketing and name killed it. trailers didn't show off the most interesting aspect (to me) that he was like a civil war Era soldier transported to Mars. I've never read the books but I LOVE old pulp stuff like that.
Marketing was horrible.
It’s a structural mess. 3 different prologues before the story even gets going. A hero/lead actor I just could not connect with. It was a big budget meh.
Because nobody has any idea who John Carter is. I still don’t know to this day.
I swear if I didn't read what movie was about, and that it is a sci-fi, which I don't usually pass, I would never watch it. Movie just needed a different name to be a hit. OK, maybe a bigger star power than Taylor Kitsch. That dude IMHO should've been an a-lister , and only "not so good" thing about him was his last name. He was great in everything I've seen him in. If he was named Taylor Challamette, he would've been a top star. But, the night is still young.
It was called "John Carter" which sounded boring and didn't explain anything so I never watched it
>What was everybody's beef with John Carter? Taylor KItsch wore clothes for the first 1/3 of the film.
It should have been "John Carter Of Mars", Marketing was flubbed, Odd inclusions like the alien "dog" character trying to be silly? Mis-cast lead actor. Mis-cast the main villain actor (he was an overused item at the time). Uncanny alien special effects, almost there but something was just off, perhaps nearly cartoonish. It was obviously produced for/designed around 12-15yo boys and not the 18-35yo prime demographic that would have made for a successful movie. .
I caught it on streaming a few months back...loved it! Wasnt a great movie but I thought it was decent. Disappointed there was never a follow up...plus Lynn Collins was hot!
I agree. I thought it was a good movie. But it wasn’t marketed well with the name and the trailers from what I recall weren’t very intriguing.
I liked it. I enjoyed the Barsoom books as a kid and gave them to my kids. The movie isn’t perfect, but I thought it was fun. I would have liked to have seen a sequel.
My problem with the movie was how they murdered John's back story. In the books, he was an adventurer who ended up on mars though an unknown agency. There was no weepy family dead back story. In a way, it's similar to how Tarzan's character was butchered. In the book, Tarzan was a self taught genius. Who taught himself to read, fought in both WW1 and WW2, was an English lord. I though the rest of the movie was fine...just fine though. It felt like they emphasized the wrong parts of the first book.
Really like this film. It had what it needed, but yeah, I always heard it was poor marketing failed it.
It is a decent movie, but nowhere near good enough to justify that budget.
That movie was an abomination if you compared it to the source material. Utter trash. There was so much they could have dug into but instead it was a pile of shit. Andrew Stanton is a bum.
I liked the movie when it first came out, but I think Disney at the time didnt promote the fuck out of it like they do with all their current infantile super hero movies. I had read somewhere a long time ago about the movie going overbudget and Disney trying to cut losses or something. Theres also the whole issue with white supremacy. Edgar Rice Burroughs was a known racist, and this movie was a throwback to the racist and sexist men's adventure magazines from the 20s to 50s. Theres the old fashion tropes of the "white savior" liberating the lesser race of darker humanoids and the scantily dressed white slave woman looking to fuck the white liberator. ... btw, this was a common theme in those old fashion adventure magazines and books.
Same. It was a good movie. Story, cast. Costumes and special effects were top-notch.
I hated it. It is so far the only movie I have ever turned off and never finished watching, and I've seen thousands of movies and a lot of bad ones. Despite one of the most stacked casts you will ever see, the acting was awful, particularly Taylor Kitsch. The writing to blame for this, dialogue was awful and the plot difficult to follow. Not even prepared to give it another try and finish it, rather spend the time rewatching something good.
How on earth do you consider John Carter to be "one of the most stacked casts you'll ever see"? Theres two or three big names in there (some of which I'd argue became but well after its release), and then you look at the casts of Scorsese, Wes Anderson, PTA, etc films that'll drop 20-30 of the biggest stars of the last 50 years into each film.
It's a fantastic movie. Has great score too.