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Made in us
[MOD]
Solahma






RVA

One thing I absolutely loved about the movie, or rather the way the movie managed to capture an idea from the book, was the notion that John was super strong on Mars thanks to coming from a world with higher gravity. The huge jumps and feats of strength feel exhilarating - this is "fantasy" in the most elemental sense.

   
Made in us
Bonkers Buggy Driver with Rockets






When I watched the movie (god, it feels so long ago) I had a very strong understanding of the source material. I came into the theater with high expectations and left less-than awed. It wasn’t a faithful adaptation, it didn’t have a powerful message to deliver, and while some of the scenes were visually inspiring I can’t think of any specific examples I remember except for some shots of the moving city. Overall it was just average.

40k drinking game: take a shot everytime a book references Skitarii using transports.
 
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





West Michigan, deep in Whitebread, USA

 Vulcan wrote:
 AegisGrimm wrote:
The movie wasn't true enough to the books, what with the total lack of rampant nudity, John didn't talk enough about Negroes, or disparage Dejah Thoris' actions as being not her fault because she's "just a woman'", lol.




I did say I realized large portions of it would have to be rewritten for the modern audience. Obviously those parts would have to go.

Don't put words in my mouth that were never there.



???

Uh...I didn't? Those are my own words, being snarky and joking about how the books are very, very 1900's in writing style, with a little bit of how everyone always complains how movies from books (any of them) are never 'true enough' to the books, and how this movie literally would be a horrorshow if made true to the books, lol. Like raising questions about the birth of John and Dejah's child involving her laying it as a big egg?

Chill! You have taken way too much offence at a post not even aimed at you. I actually had to go back and read what you wrote, I was so confused. I was reminiscing out loud about how crazy and 'sign of the times' the books were/are, disconnected to your post, in fact.

This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2018/01/18 00:09:50




"By this point I'm convinced 100% that every single race in the 40k universe have somehow tapped into the ork ability to just have their tech work because they think it should."  
   
Made in us
[DCM]
-






-

You'll run into similar 'issues' with Lovecraft (obviously!) and Howard's stuff too...

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/01/18 13:44:20


   
Made in it
Waaagh! Ork Warboss




Italy

The movie is the typical american blockbuster, I really don't understand why it was highly criticized while things like marvel movies or the new star wars episodes are considered successful. They're all enjoyable and none of them is actually a great movie.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/01/18 14:20:13


 
   
Made in us
[DCM]
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What's a typical Italian Blockbuster look like?

   
Made in it
Waaagh! Ork Warboss




Italy

 Alpharius wrote:
What's a typical Italian Blockbuster look like?


There are no italian's blockbusters. Only dramas, demential comedies and another type of comedies which is something more sofisticated on paper but usually deals with the same things

I meant no offense when I talked about american blockbusters, I watch and enjoy tons of them. But most of them are just movies for children, with bad acting, bad screenplay, too much politically correct, they only have amazing special effects. Movies lilke Mad Max Fury Road or Blade Runner 2049 are exceptions, pretty much every blockbuster is now influenced by Disney.

John carter was considered a flop but it wasn't that terrible compared to other things that grossed hundreds of millions, if not over a billion.

 
   
Made in us
Secret Force Behind the Rise of the Tau




USA

Whether or not a film is considered a flop has nothing to really do with it's quality, but completely with how effectively it earns back its budget. John Carter barely managed to earn back its budget in the end (a budget in excess of a quarter billion dollars). Throw in the marketing expenses the film certainly lost money, so it is rightfully considered a flop.

   
Made in au
The Dread Evil Lord Varlak





There seems to be a common thread here of people saying they personally liked the movie, and blaming the marketing for the film's failure. While that was part of the problem, there's a lot more to the story.

Thing is, Disney had huge hopes for John Carter. It was made at the start of their 'nothing but huge blockbusters' model. Idea being that they would stop with the middle tier movies because they made okay money but had little to no marketing value. What Disney wanted was to create only blockbusters that would set up franchises and merchandising lines.

So they put $200m in to John Carter. During production the first bad sign came when some of the merchandising team took a bunch of their creature designs to some toy expos, looking to drum up interest from manufacturers who'd want to make toys based on their designs. They got almost no interest, no-one could see profitable lines coming out of this.

Next Disney started showing early cuts to test audiences. People didn't hate the movie. It was worse. They didn't give a gak. There were no strong feelings at all. Disney film execs started to worry. This was $200m committed to start off a whole new business model, and they couldn't get any interest at all. There just wasn't much interest in a pulp fantasy about a guy on Mars who jumps high.

This wasn't helped by the marketing campaign, that's true. Apparently the name was changed from John Carter of Mars to John Carter so it appealed to a broader audience. Apparently there's a large audience of people who interested in random strangers called John Carter, but who don't care about Mars, or something.

The third nail in the coffin is that the final movie is pretty meh. The villain and the plot are bleh, but that's okay because this is an adventure film, so if the film moved quickly, the leads were fun and had good chemistry, and there were some good action scenes then it can be great fun even with a dull story. Unfortunately the film's pace was inconstent, turgid at time, the leads were bleh and and most of the the action forgettable.

So really that was three nails in the coffin and that was it. The film has fans, I've met a few before and there's some in this thread, but most of them love the concept, and so bought in to the rest of the movie. Unfortunately the number of people who loved the idea were nowhere near enough to carry Disney's investment, marketing couldn't make that concept appeal to more people, and the film itself couldn't overcome any of that because it wasn't strong enough for people who weren't in to the concept.

In terms of assigning the blame... the Disney head of marketing guy left immediately after John Carter, 'to spend more time with his family'. The director was more shielded, because it Andrew fething Stanton, who'd made everyone piles of money directing Finding Nemo and Wall-E, and playing a role in just about every other Pixar animation, so he kept working, but only in animation, he's never returned to live action.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/01/19 09:02:46


“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”

Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something. 
   
Made in us
Secret Force Behind the Rise of the Tau




USA

There just wasn't much interest in a pulp fantasy about a guy on Mars who jumps high.


Snarky response;

Can't imagine why. Who doesn't want to see a guy jump high? That's awesome.

Non-Snark;

I feel like John Carter honestly falls into a category of fiction that is simply becoming out of fashion, and not just because of it's old fashioned attitudes on race or women. Other things I'd put in this category are Tarzan, Conan the Barbarian, and Journey to the Center of the Earth.

While once adventurous and edgy this kind of story is now seen as cheesy and cliche by a lot of people "Guy gets transported to mars and become a hero" isn't a pitch for a serious action adventure film today. It's a pitch for a comedy or a parody. It's not even that these works are bad, it's just that they generate a response from potential audiences that's something along the lines of "that's stupid" before they've even had a chance to try and sell themselves. Their premises have not only been done to death, but have been done so many times in so many better ways in the years since they first came out that people look at them as derivative and bland, regardless of how original they were in their own time. People are simply uninterested from the get go unless they they already had prior experience with it and the number of people in the later category seems to be ever shrinking.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/01/19 09:13:54


   
Made in it
Waaagh! Ork Warboss




Italy

 LordofHats wrote:


While once adventurous and edgy this kind of story is now seen as cheesy and cliche by a lot of people "Guy gets transported to mars and become a hero" isn't a pitch for a serious action adventure film today. It's a pitch for a comedy or a parody.



We can say the same things about movies like transformers, jurassic world or the entire marvel cinematic universe. The latest MCU one, Thor Ragnarok, is actually a comedy/parody, not a real action movie. What about Spiderman Homecoming?

And yet those films got a lot of love by the audience, not only great profits for the producers.

Maybe the problem about john carter lies in its setting? I mean the civil war is one of the most iconic historical periods for the americans and mixing it with science fiction could be too much. I'm just guessing.

 
   
Made in us
Secret Force Behind the Rise of the Tau




USA

 Blackie wrote:
We can say the same things about movies like transformers, jurassic world or the entire marvel cinematic universe. The latest MCU one, Thor Ragnarok, is actually a comedy/parody, not a real action movie. What about Spiderman Homecoming?


I'm talking about tone more than I'm talking about content. Guy gets super powers, saves the world. It's a classic premise, so classic its older than dirt and has survived the test of time. Sure the MCU contains lots of humor and comedy (haven't seen Thor but Homecoming is basically "teenage dramady with superheroes"). But they're serious films. As in people take them seriously, willfully buy into their premise, and go in and continue to buy into their premise even when they're being ridiculous. They're not quite the same as Meet the Spartans, a film that is ridiculous from its outset and treated and engaged in as such. If Piranha 3D had tried to play itself as a serious film, even one with lots of comedy and laughs, it probably would have flopped completely instead being regarded as fun and campy because Piranha 3D knows its a stupid movie and just rolls with it.

Maybe the problem about john carter lies in its setting? I mean the civil war is one of the most iconic historical periods for the americans and mixing it with science fiction could be too much. I'm just guessing.


Setting I think is part of it. Mind you this could someday happen toTtransformers, Jurassic Park, or super hero comics as well. I don't think the failure of John Carter to succeed is fully a matter of how bad or good it was, but that entertainment culture has simply moved on from the kind of story John Carter is. Could happen to any of the stuff currently in mainstream in 100 years.

Part of it is also I think that no one really finds the premise of the story on Mars as remotely believable anymore, but that wasn't true when the story was first published. When John Carter of Mars was first published there was all kinds of speculation among the masses and the public that there might really be, or have been, life on Mars. Barsoom was a late arrival to the trend cause stories with similar premises were being published in the 1880s. Basically John Carter was the product of a cultural fascination that is now long dead, and with that fascination dead so to is the premise of John Carter. It's not even just a matter of the audience. The stories of John Carter themselves were crafted in a now distant cultural mindset by their author, one certainly not shared by modern film making machines like Disney studios, who picked up the name for the sake of the name, not to carry on any sort of thematic of cultural legacy the story might have had.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/01/19 09:47:11


   
Made in it
Waaagh! Ork Warboss




Italy

 LordofHats wrote:


I'm talking about tone more than I'm talking about content. Guy gets super powers, saves the world. It's a classic premise, so classic its older than dirt and has survived the test of time. Sure the MCU contains lots of humor and comedy (haven't seen Thor but Homecoming is basically "teenage dramady with superheroes"). But they're serious films. As in people take them seriously, willfully buy into their premise, and go in and continue to buy into their premise even when they're being ridiculous.


IMHO john carter's tone is the same one of MCU movies, probably even more serious than those ones.

 LordofHats wrote:


Part of it is also I think that no one really finds the premise of the story on Mars as remotely believable anymore, but that wasn't true when the story was first published. When John Carter of Mars was first published there was all kinds of speculation among the masses and the public that there might really be, or have been, life on Mars.



That's something I don't get. The examples I made before are not more believable. Kid that becomes a superhero after being bitten by a spider? Robot aliens that becomes vehicles (yes, this is the silliest of all)???? Dinosaurs in the 21st century? Scandinavian alien god with a hammer? All those premises look way more silly than john carter's one.

I think the setting was the main problem. Other movies that mixed western and sci-fi genres were huge flops as well: Jonah Hex, Cowboys and Aliens... Maybe in the USA mixing western and sci fi doesn't interest the public. Considering my perspective, it would be ok here in Italy to consider believable something set in middle-age or 19th century that also has steampunk influences or is mixed with science fiction, but it would look like a parody, no matter the tone of the movie, doing the same things for something set in the ancient Rome or during fascism.

 
   
Made in se
Dakka Veteran






Wasn't there some inhouse fighting at Disney that helped sabotage the movie?
   
Made in us
Secret Force Behind the Rise of the Tau




USA

 Blackie wrote:


IMHO john carter's tone is the same one of MCU movies, probably even more serious than those ones.


I'm talking about how the audience approaches the material as well, not just how the material regards itself.

That's something I don't get. The examples I made before are not more believable. Kid that becomes a superhero after being bitten by a spider? Robot aliens that becomes vehicles (yes, this is the silliest of all)???? Dinosaurs in the 21st century? Scandinavian alien god with a hammer? All those premises look way more silly than john carter's one.


In a literal sense probably, but this is the fluid and abstract willingness of suspend disbelief we're talking about. It's a bizarre thing that's hard to define because it tends to simply be determined as things happen. People grew up with superheroes, dinosaurs, and mythology. It's something they know and are aware of. I don't think there's many people my age who grew up reading John Carter. The willingness to buy into a premise may in part be a matter of familiarity?

Jonah Hex, Cowboys and Aliens...


Well to be fair these movies were gak of the gak class XD Although I did kind of like Cowboys and Aliens for what it was.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/01/19 12:40:38


   
Made in au
Axis & Allies Player




Film Crit Hulk wrote an interesting article about John Carter a few years back.

(He wrote in all caps back then, HULK STYLE, so you may want to use ConvertCase if it makes your eyes bleed.)

TL;DR - He makes some telling points about the difference between Finding Nemo and John Carter. In Nemo, Andrew Stanton supposedly wanted to put the dramatic sad backstory reveal about the deaths of fish-dad's wife and the other eggs in the middle of the movie. That way the audience would be curious to find out what happened. But the other writers insisted that it should go right at the start. This ensured we would care about Marlin and empathise with his overprotectiveness immediately, instead of finding him annoying as hell for half the film. Because he's pretty much our viewpoint character, it's important to care about him and understand his... you know... viewpoint.

In John Carter, Stanton had more control, so he put Carter's sad backstory reveal halfway through. Which made him annoyingly maudlin for half the film before we understood where he was coming from.

Basically, the movie withheld information for too long in too many instances. It's hard to care when you don't know enough about a character, or about the situation they're in. You kind of hover on the surface feeling 'hmm' and 'cool' and 'meh', but a story can't really get its emotional hooks into you. (I thought The Force Awakens made the same mistake to a much greater extent. All that 'mystery box' stuff that JJ Abrams likes.)

Whether Carter should have had a tragic backstory and a maudlin character in the first place is another story. I don't think so. I reckon he ought to have been a more derring-do, Indiana Jones / Brendan Fraser in The Mummy kind of guy.

Anyway, personally I thought it was a bit meh. I did really like the bit where Carter decides that he was telegraphed to Mars. That was a clever way to make sense of a very weird plot element in the books.

But while the cliches have been done to death, I'm sure Barsoom could be done right if they could just get a couple of leads with entertaining chemistry and a decent pulp-adventure drama together. When Star Wars came out (the original one), it looked absolutely stunning, but the cliches were ancient and tired even then. The only reason Lucas made Star Wars was because he couldn't get the rights to Flash Gordon, so he invented his own ripoff... er... homage to the old serials. It didn't matter, because the chemistry between Luke and Han and Leia crackled and made for an entertaining ride. (Lots of other reasons too, obviously.)

Edit: BTW, I highly, highly recommend you read Hulk's actual article. It's a bit long-winded at the start, but he knows his stuff.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/01/21 15:07:36


 
   
Made in ca
Fixture of Dakka




Kamloops, BC

 Alpharius wrote:
What's a typical Italian Blockbuster look like?


They typically come from the 80's are usually a blatant ripoff of a much more successful American blockbuster only way worse in terms of production, acting and budget, think of the works of such hacks as Bruno Mattei and Lucio Fulci.

Average Italian Movie (worthless derivative trash trying to entice naïve buyers).


Good wholesome American entertainment.

This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2018/01/22 12:11:04


 
   
Made in us
Legendary Master of the Chapter





SoCal

Zenith, that Film Critic Hulk article taught me all kinds of things even beyond the scope of a John Carter film. Thank you so much for sharing it.

   
Made in it
Waaagh! Ork Warboss




Italy

 Cheesecat wrote:
 Alpharius wrote:
What's a typical Italian Blockbuster look like?


They typically come from the 80's are usually a blatant ripoff of a much more successful American blockbuster only way worse in terms of production, acting and budget, think of the works of such hacks as Bruno Mattei and Lucio Fulci.

Average Italian Movie (worthless derivative trash trying to entice naïve buyers).


The much superior and original American version.



That was not a blockbuster but a low budget B movie. It's like saying that the recent Steven Seagal's or Van Damme's movies are blockbusters.

Those kind of italian trash movies also belong to 30-40 years ago. Sadly nothing like that exists anymore.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/01/22 10:17:22


 
   
Made in gb
Ridin' on a Snotling Pump Wagon






I quite enjoy Italian Giallo films. And dodgy 70's/80's Zombie and Cannibal flicks. Mostly because they're 'pants on head' bonkers.

   
Made in us
Keeper of the Flame





Monticello, IN

Viktor von Domm wrote:Lynn Collins


AegisGrimm wrote:total lack of rampant nudity


That's all the farther I got in reading and remembering what was posted in this thread. These combine to form an absolute travesty.










Seriiously (Since I was so obviously joking about the above...) the movie was good, and much more solid than the average garbage that is touted around the internet as beyond reproach.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Alpharius wrote:
What's a typical Italian Blockbuster look like?


Look up Italian Spider-Man.



Or the Emmanuelle series. That constitutes a blockbuster.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/01/22 10:22:40


www.classichammer.com

For 4-6th WFB, 2-5th 40k, and similar timeframe gaming

Looking for dice from the new AOS boxed set and Dark Imperium on the cheap. Let me know if you can help.
 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Its AoS, it doesn't have to make sense.
 
   
Made in au
Axis & Allies Player




 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Zenith, that Film Critic Hulk article taught me all kinds of things even beyond the scope of a John Carter film. Thank you so much for sharing it.


No worries

The comments on that article are great too, in case you haven't perused them.

It had a big impact on my own writing. I've seen similar 'drama 101' advice from other people too, e.g. Hitchcock's 'bomb under a table' explanation of surprise vs suspense.
   
 
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