Over Spring Break, I found the time to see both John Carter and the Lorax in theaters. Regarding the Lorax, I thought it was a well made kids film that delivered on the cuteness and musical factors, but these elements were a detriment to the original source's message. The environmentalist themes were better conveyed in Wall-E, which despite being a kids film took the risk of setting the first act in a post-apocalyptic Earth and had no dialogue. Honestly, will pop songs and forest animals being fed marshmellows convince kids to care more about the environment? Probably not.
The voice work was good, I particularly must give praise to Ed Helms as the Once-Ler, since his redemption arc was the only aspect of the film I thought they pulled off perfectly. Other than that, what we have here is Dr. Seuss's seminal work on environmentalism vs. consumerism bogged down and sugarcoated for nine-year-old's. Not a bad movie, really, just an average CGI kids flick that lost Seuss's original message in the attempt to create a full-length film. It's a good film to take the family to, but there's nothing else about the film that would convince you to start "caring a whole awful lot", as the film would say.
Now for John Carter. This film I found to be very interesting, for several reasons. After doing some research on the film and how the book it was based on inspired such sci-fi storyellers as Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury, Frank Herbert, George Lucas, and James Cameron, I knew that this series was something worth looking into. The fact that the author also created Tarzan was also something worth noting. I read the book, and found it fascinating even if the science was dated by a century. Walking out of the film, I found it to have a great respect for its source material. The Martian culture that Edgar Rice Burroughs invented was up there on screen, everything from the warlike nature of the Green Martian Tharks to the civil war between Helium and Zodanga.
I know the Therns were taken from the later novels, as was Carter's voyage down the River Iss. Other than that, the film kept most of the key moments of the first book, A Princess of Mars, even if the context of those moments were different. I liked the change in Carter's backstory with his dead wife and kid, as it gave him more of a narrative arc when on Mars/Barsoom. The idea that he regretted fighting in one Civil War only to be thrust into another one (albeit on an alien planet) made his actions more dramatic when he agrees to fight. In particular, the scene where he leaps headfirst into an oncoming tribe of Green Martians while recalling the burial of his family was both exciting and moving.
Before John Carter, I only knew Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins from their roles in the solo Wolverine movie. They weren't terrible in that film, but not very memorable. In this film, I thought both actors got a chance to show off their potential as leading protagonists. For what it's worth, they do a great job as Carter and Dejah Thoris, the Princess of Mars. They have considerable acting chops and convey great chemistry together, even though their romance wasn't given enough time to develop.
The best performances come from the CGI aliens in this film (not a surprise given director Andrew Stanton's experiences on Finding Nemo and Wall-E). Willem Dafoe, Samantha Morton, and Thomas Haden Church all give off magnificent performances as the Green Tharks, and to me felt like fully realized creatures. On a side note, the alien dog Woola was both hilarious and honorable, the way a CGI sidekick should be (looking at you, Jar Jar).
Numerous critics have said the plot is hard to follow, but I don't see what's so difficult to grasp. Carter is an ex-Confederate turned Indiana Jones style treasure hunter who is transported to Mars, where he becomes involved in another civil war between the nation states of Helium and Zodanga and learns that cosmic gamemakers called Therns have been manipulating the war in an effort to speed up the planet's death, before moving onto Earth afterwards.
If there is anything to really criticize with this film, it's the familiarity. As people have already pointed out from the trailers, various points of the film feel like the writers were ripping off Avatar or Star Wars. But the thing is, John Carter was around long before those films, and the scenes that feel like ripoffs are really the inspirations. And the fact of the matter is, the film didn't play out like a blatant rip off of those films, the way Avatar blatantly ripped off Dances with Wolves or the Eragon movie blatantly ripped off the plots of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. John Carter played out in a way that felt both familiar and at the same time fresh, and was solid enough as a film to make an entertaining experience.
I won't say that it's perfect, because again some story aspects were either too familiar or could have been played out better (did we really need a prologue explaining that Mars wasn't a dead planet when Carter was about to figure that out for himself?) but overall the film was a fun time at the theater. Stanton crafted a love letter to a book that filmmakers have been trying to adapt for the last century, and on screen it really shows. I find fault not so much in the film as in the marketing decisions, such as dropping "Of Mars" from the title and not making it clear to moviegoers the legacy of the film's source material or the talent behind it. The movie recalls those swashbuckling adventure movies from the '70s and '80s that weren't trying to be intelligent or groundbreaking so much as they were trying to entertain an audience with a good story and likable characters. If that is the type of film you would go for, John Carter is worth checking out.
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