Yap vs. Yap: "John Carter"

With the opening of the long-awaited film adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' "John Carter of Mars," Disney's "John Carter" offers the hardcore sci fi/space story junkie a prize the likes of which they haven't seen for years. It is, for a small segment of the population, one of those "holy grail" properties that is often at or near the top of "great sci fi movies which haven't been made" lists...until now.

Yappers Austin Lugar and Joe Shearer were at the same screening of "John Carter" and have differing opinions on the film, a live-action yarn starring Taylor Kitsch ("X-Men Origins: Wolverine"; TV's "Friday Night Lights") as John Carter, a 19th-century Confederate veteran who finds himself whisked to Mars and finds himself torn between three warring factions of "Martians" and the beings who are manipulating their fight.

EDITOR'S NOTE: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE FILM. THE MOST EGREGIOUS OF THESE SPOILERS HAVE BEEN MASKED WITH "INVISOTEXT" (INVISIBLE TEXT THAT BECOMES VISIBLE WHEN YOU CLICK AND HOLD YOUR MOUSE, THEN DRAG THE CURSOR OVER THE SEEMINGLY EMPTY SPACE). YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO READ MOST OF THIS WITHOUT HAVING THE MOVIE SPOILED, BUT THE COMPLETE DISCUSSION WILL REVEAL MUCH OF WHAT HAPPENS IN THIS FILM.

Joe: Austin, I've never read a "John Carter" book, but this film was a mess. It has an epic feel to it, but I feel like Disney was afraid to let it be epic and serious, things were rushed, the editing was spotty to horrific, and the acting was terrible. Taylor Kitsch was the least charismatic lead in a major action film since Channing Tatum blank-stared his way through "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra," and the story was almost impossible to follow. I'm STILL trying to figure out why these races were fighting, and why two of them appeared to be distinctly human, while the third was decidedly alien in origin, being much taller than humans with two pairs of arms and green skin.

Also, the dialog was at times horrific. That seems like a minor quibble, but they use that stilted, overly formal language that they use when they want dialog to sound pompous and heady and British, but here is just felt contrived, like they had to talk this way because they were aliens and that's how aliens talk. I am glad they didn't use any Will Smith-type smarmy, cynical attitude language, but I just found myself annoyed a lot by the way they spoke.

The more I think about it, the more disappointed I get, because I really wanted to like this film. There are a lot of things I really liked about it. Some of the action was very good, I liked the Tharks a lot as characters, and I really liked the meta-reality story with Edgar Rice Burroughs. But everything was so rushed. If done properly this could have been "Lord of the Rings" huge, but it turned out like a forgettable March action piece that I won't remember any more than the "Clash of the Titans" remake.

Also, I have a major problem with at least two major developments in the film, but we will get to those issues shortly. For now, Austin, what did you like so much about this film?

Austin: Joe, I like ya, I respect ya, but I have no idea what you're talking about. You did bring up one of my few complaints about the movie and it's just about the first 10 minutes. I went into this movie knowing about the prestige of the book, but none of the details. So I was very disappointed by the Willem Dafoe information dump voice over at the very beginning. It reminded me too much of "Green Lantern," which is never a good thing, but at least the visuals during the voice over were much better than that crap. Yet the scene ended, I saw two British actors killing stuff and by Hollywood logic I knew they were the bad guys and it all fell into place.

While I was watching (and grinning) throughout "John Carter," I thought about a number of movies. I thought about those I fondly was comparing it to like "The Thief of Bagdad" (the silent version with Douglas Fairbanks), "The Thief of Bagdad" (The colorful one from Powell and Pressberger), oddly enough "Gunga Din" and then of course "Star Wars." Those are all movie structured around the spirit of adventure in a pure and uncynical way. If we want to get technical, the book "John Carter" was based on ("The Princess of Mars") came out before any of those in 1912.

Then I thought about the recent "Star Wars" prequels, "Prince of Persia" and "Clash of the Titans." Those all follow the same sort of structure of hero/princess/war. So why are those so terrible, but I loved "John Carter"? It always comes down to the filmmakers. Those other movies were so lifeless. So artificial, so cynical, so...dry. It was never about "Look look look, our hero is about to storm the castle!" But "Look at how much money this castle costs. Watch as we give you the same exact arial shot you've seen a thousand times. Bleh." (I imagine they just spit up a bit at the end.)

This has been a passion project of Andrew Stanton's for many years. He's my favorite among the Pixar braintrust having co-written some masterpiece scripts and directing "Finding Nemo" and "WALL-E." Who does he bring in to help him with the script? Michael Chabon, one of my favorite novelists working today!

When I watched this, I never saw anything that felt rushed or not from the vision of the filmmakers. (Aside from the nice but really unnecessary 3D). This was an impressive feat of capturing the serial nature of adventure stories, something I really haven't seen successfully since "Star Wars" and early Indiana Jones movies. It's tapping into a nostalgia that not too many people are still familiar with, but those who are thrive on it. I think it's because it's not about the trickery of a script or a focus on the direction, but purely about the spirit and the story. Why does the hero save the princess at the very last second, in the nick of time? For that's when you stand up and cheer.

Also Taylor "Riggins" Kitsch was impressive, but I'll let you talk since I rambled for too long.

Joe: I'd have to say that maybe you liked this film and not those because of the hit of ecstacy you took before the screening? Okay," John Carter" IS better than all of those movies you mentioned as being bad, but in a way "John Carter" fails for much the same reason "Green Lantern" did: an awkward juxtaposition between the Earth and Mars scenes. It was too odd and random that he shoots back to Earth for awhile (though the sequence of him getting used to his new/old body was pretty cool), I was too busy figuring out what was going on to be able to enjoy everything properly. There is a sequence at the end that could have been its own movie, where Carter is back on Earth trying to get back to Mars, but it passes in just a minute or two. John Carter could have been a fantastic study of a character bouncing around among different environments, if Disney had the gumption to give it a real shot. A full movie of Carter mostly on Mars, followed by sequel of Carter mostly on Earth? How awesome would that have been to see him spend a movie wanting to get to Earth, then in the sequel he's on Earth wanting to get back to Mars? Also, the humans/aliens. They were generic British aliens number 6,426 and 6,427...or were they the same species? I don't know the answer to that question. They certainly looked the same, except one had a blue capes and tattoos and the other had red capes and tattoos, but other than Lynn Collins, they were virtually indistinguishable from each other, and it wasn't until half way through the movie that I even noticed that the bad guys wore the red. Or did they wear the blue? Ah, screw it, it doesn't matter anyway. Okay, I'm going to get into my plot hole quibbles, and note {SPOILER ALERT!!}. There's a big sequence where two characters are getting married, and Carter wants to break up this marriage (note that honestly this isn't really scintillatingly original material, though I'll give you Austin that the books came out long before any of these other properties that have been cribbing it for decades). So he leaves the scene of this wedding as the wedding procession is beginning (presumably on the wedding day) to travel back to the Tharks' home, which is presumably a LOOONG way away. He gets back, is captured by someone, jailed and sentenced to death, thrown into a public execution by giant gorilla monster, slays said monsters, challenges for control of the tribe, wins, convinces his new army to fight with him against these all-powerful people, marches them BACK to the WRONG TOWN, then finally gets them to the correct town just in time to interrupt the I Dos. IN ONE DAY. And what about these all-powerful beings that give Dominic West's character the funky meshy-laser weapon thing they give him? We don't really know WHY they give it to him or want to solidify power on Mars, or why they care about Martian politics to begin with. When Carter asks Mark Strong (who, perhaps not-so-coincidentally is in both "Green Lantern" and this film), he more or less says "eh, because that's what we do." Again, we're not given any indication of real motivation...if they want to take over, they have these meshy funky laser weapons. Why don't THEY just use them against the aliens? Why pick this guy that they obviously don't care one bit about, to do it? I'll say I was most disappointed in "John Carter" at the end credits, when I saw that Stanton directed iot. It was mystifying to me that he could helm so many fantastic Pixar movies, then poop out this average-at-its-best crud. Austin: Again, I have problems with the first few minutes. I would much rather always start with John Carter and his discoveries as our focal point into this world. Yet once I saw how things were moving, it was important for timing that Dominic West had that weapon already. So that once John Carter is on Mars it all keeps moving forward. A bit of exposition that was difficult and was never that smooth. This is the problem with encountering a whole new rich world. "Game of Thrones" took me a few episodes for me to figure out all the warring sides. I always much rather be confused for a portion of the movie than to be awkwardly spoon-fed in a way that betrays the characters. That's what I liked about "John Carter". There were a lot of names and tribes and whatnot. About 20 or so minutes after he arrived to Mars, I got it. I knew who they all were, what they wanted and who were the biggest threat. All I knew about the book before going in was "A civil war veteran goes to Mars and becomes a hero". It took a few minutes, but I now feel I can easily talk about everyone's part in the complicated story. In fact, I found the ultimate villain a rather great adversary and I like they left that story thread open. Those all powerful beings do give an explanation for why they give McNulty the technology and I think that answer makes them even more of an intriguing foe. As for your complaints that it all happening on the same day, I'll argue that they said the wedding will take place when the moons are in the sky. Also a day on Mars is a bit longer than a day on Earth due to its distance from the sun. (According to Google, a whole 37 minutes!) Thankfully all of those ships go really really fast. While I rather enjoyed the Earth sequences, I'm fine with there not being more of them. Too many filmmakers make the other world look visually ugly, usually by giving it too blue of a tint on the camera. This just felt a bit claustrophobic and restricting in a subtle way. John Carter is more comfortable with minimum clothing rather than the many layers of the time. The only time he really felt at home was during the fantastic western sequence early on in the movie. Where I really liked "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol" I could rarely tell that director used to work in animation. With "John Carter" I really saw that flair for detail. When they show John Carter's room of research, there are so many things filling the frame with perfect detail. Most movies would act like a cheap video game for that scene; have the whole room be a wash except provide detail to the one thing you need to focus on. Every frame really felt full, especially the use of CGI. The Tharks really looked incredible, one of the few creatures I really felt I could touch. I peaked on Wikipedia wondering what the next book was about. As cool as an Earth bound movie would be, "The Gods of Mars" sounds really awesome. (SPOILERS obviously) Wikipedia says, "The Gods of Mars beings with his arrival back on Barsoom after a ten-year separation from his wife Dejah Thoris, his unborn child, and the Red Martian people of the nation of Helium, whom he has adopted as his own. Unfortunately, Carter materializes in the one place on Barsoom from which nobody is allowed to depart: the Valley Dor, which is the Barsoomian afterlife." If you evoke any feeling of "The Odyssey", I'm sold. For that's the level of adventure I really respond to. For some upcoming projects I'm watching classic episodes of Doctor Who. They were also in the serial format where one story usually took about a month to tell with half hour episodes each week. Usually the cliffhanger for the episode ends with The Doctor's life being in danger. Yes. I get it, The Doctor is not going to die on Episode 2/4 of the middle of the season. That honestly doesn't matter. It's more about "Oh my God! His foot is stuck on the tracks, there's a train coming! He's doomed!" You don't have to lower your intelligence, but just embrace the fun. The odds of dying on a roller coaster are insanely low and yet people still yell and scream with every turn. Films are continuing to suffer because they restrain themselves too much with reality. That is too limiting to the power of storytelling. I love "Casino Royale" but "Goldfinger" is equally as good. Yes, the former has the emotional nuances of James Bond dealing with the ramifications of him killing people, but the latter has Oddjob being electrocuted from his own hat! Both films immediately establish what kind of world they were and then did inventive things in them. That's what "John Carter" did. It's a very difficult balance, but it's not set in realism. This is an old film with much better special effects. There are no winks, no cynicism, no false moments. The only meta element is having the story being passed to its author Edgar Rice Burroughs, but look at that intent. It's just like Dr. John Watson sending his stories to that Arthur Conan Doyle chap. If the author is in on the adventure, then the stories are real and the imagination can flourish.

Joe: I don't feel like a story has to mire itself in stark reality to work. I typically only ask that movie characters fit within the reality of the story they work in. As most readers probably know, I'm huge into superhero movies, so a guy doing superhuman things doesn't bother me, and I think that, excepting that rather unlikely one-day coup he stages,"John Carter" does at worst a passable job of maintaining its own reality. "John Carter" doesn't become the end of "Superman II" and start shooting lasers out of his eyes or anything.

Let's address that romance between Carter and Dejah. I never felt connection with the two of them. It felt like they developed a romance because they were supposed to. I think that had a lot to do with 1) Kitsch's underwhelming performance, and 2) the fact that their relationship was rushed a bit. They never really had time to develop a relationship. One moment he was annoyed with her, perhaps playing coy with this incredibly hot Martian woman, then as soon as he finds out she's set to get hitched he gets all antsy about it.

I also thought Carter's character was a little underdeveloped. I get he had a wife and child that he lost, and that he wanted his cave of gold, but it struck me as a bit odd that, given that, you know, he just transsubstantiated to Mars and all, that he was still worried about his gold. It was like "Yeah, maybe I did just make the most important discovery in human history, but hey, I got some gold to find."

Which brings me to my other problem with the story: as much as I like the Burroughs arc in the film, it also begs another question. {SPOILER}

The Burroughs character, we find out, is John Carter's nephew. At the film's end, he is charged with protecting his secret, because Carter's enemies are constantly searching for his body on both planets. If they kill him on Earth or on Mars, his other body dies as well. So what does Burroughs do? He writes a series of novels on the character, exposing every one of these secrets, including the way he hides.

I think I've had enough say here, so I'll wrap up by saying that I don't think "John Carter" is a terrible movie, but it missed its mark significantly. The best thing I can think of to say about it is that it is better than the "Star Wars" prequels, and working backwards you can see Burroughs' influence on George Lucas. The arena scene is VERY similar to the Geonosian arena scene from "Star Wars: Episode II," from heroes fighting giant furry beasts to a villian getting decapitated in swift, decisive fashion. I appreciate that Stanton wanted to make this film, and I wanted to like it quite a bit. With a bit more tinkering it could have become one of the classic sci fi/fantasy franchises, which makes it all the more disappointing that it will likely be just another forgettable one-off.

Austin: I've noticed a lot of critics have been dogging on my man Riggins and, once again, I just don't see it. I think his performance isn't necessarily a Hollywood lead performance but that's more of a positive than anything else. In "Friday Night Lights" he never asked anybody to like him, but he's one of the more sympathetic on the show. There are too many hero types being played as "I don't care about anybody but myself!" but since that's such a selfish value they always give wisecracks and smiles to the camera to gain the audience's approval. Kitsch doesn't do that; he's basically the anti-Ryan Reynolds. So when he saves the princess for the first time, it is a bit of a shock.

He says he just wants his "cave of gold"--by the way, coolest wealth goal I've heard in awhile. He used to pride things like honor and family but once those were stripped away from him, he just wanted to measure his life through isolated riches. As for his arc to bring him toward "John Carter of Mars", I thought that was handled rather well. No need to reinvent the wheel since the movie is just playing upon the structure of a classic serial adventure.

As for the romance, I thought it was fine. It wasn't a WALL-E/Eve relationship like Stanton did before, but that's okay. All that matters is when tragedy strikes near the end, I feel something, and I did. I was just impressed that her princess role was really secondary to being a scientist, which is what pushes forward so much of the plot.

As for Edgar Rice Burroughs of the Apes, I was even fine with that. Like I said, I like the idea of telling the readers of stories that it could all be real. Then within of the context of their world, all of the novels can be there so we too can help protect John Carter. Once again it pulls the readers into the spirit of adventure.

This was a movie I was looking forward to for a long time because I adore Andrew Stanton, especially after I did further research on Pixar for a speech I made last year. It seems like the media has been against this movie from the very beginning reporting on its large budget and lackluster trailers. I never minded the trailers, but I recognized I wasn't as invested because I didn't know the characters. I can gasp during The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises trailers because I know who Iron Man, Batman, etc are. Now that I know who John Carter is, the trailers work for me. I think this is a very special and unique movie that I hope audiences embrace. I really want a sequel much more than a Captain America 7 or Transformers 9.