Actually, John Carter goes from being only out for himself to caring about someone other than himself. Furthermore, there aren\'t any Mighty Whitey overtones. This film most definitely should have left the drawing board because A Princess of Mars is very deserving of a film adaptation considering it started a number of things in the sci-fi genre.
Actually, John Carter goes from being only out for himself to caring about someone other than himself.
Well done for him! Should we give him a pat on the back? Or a standing ovation?
Mighty Whitey overtones are definitely there. Pretty much the entire Thark subplot was about him knowing better than their tradition, and both supplanting their authority (killing that one-horned chief) and being the only reason why the former one could reconnect with his daughter.
And I\'ve already said that the book could probably make for a good adaptation, but now that this film has failed so badly, it\'s likely that no-one else will be interested in doing it for the foreseeable future. That is why this one movie shouldn\'t have left the drawing board.
...I could not disagree more, but that\'s what writing my own review is for.
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Should never have left the drawing board
I don’t know much about the original Princess of Mars, besides its status as a grandfather of nearly all modern sci-fi (or at least soft “mythical” sci-fi). I’m sure it can adapted into a good film, but John Carter is not that adaptation, and I absolutely hated the final product.
Firstly, there is John Carter himself, who has to be one of the least sympathetic protagonists in cinematic history. He enters the story as a drunken, violent, unhelpful dullard, and doesn’t change much throughout the film. He is unwilling to take part in the war and other events around him because he wants to get home, but the film never establishes anything worthwhile he has to come back to, and so there is no attachment to his quest. Director even thoroughly ruins a major fight scene where he single-handedly dispatches 50-100 Tharks (or whatever their name is) by intercutting it with flashback of him burying his wife and daughter. This has zero impact because they’re hardly even mentioned before, much less shown on-screen or get any lines in flashbacks that would foster attachment. To be fair, there wasn’t really much to ruin. Even with good cinematography, it would've still been a battle with thugs we never heard of before that come practically out of nowhere, thus lacking dramatic impact. The major fight scenes against known antagonists are just as dull and unengaging, lacking even basic choreography: nobody even bothers to block when fighting in melee. In the absence of good action and interesting protagonist, the film has to support itself through secondary characters and overarching plot, and it fails there as well.
The Princess of Mars herself is mainly reduced to delivering exposition and lacks screen presence, their romance lacking all chemistry. Thark allies are two-dimensional: primary villain does get greater depth, but only through tortured attempts at moral ambiguity that ultimately come to naught because of Therns. Their villainy is the worst of both worlds: they have thoughtful, non-menacing manner befitting stories with White and Grey Morality, yet their goals are no deeper than “destroy the world… slowly”. The final nail in film’s coffin are the over-long, tremendously annoying scenes with alien babies and the unapologetic Mighty Whitey overtones that make Avatar seem like Mississippi Burning.