Rating: 13//20
Plot: A confederate soldier named John Carter is whisked away to Mars where he finds himself in the middle of another Civil War. He encounters mysterious shape-shifters, long blue acrophobic guys, and a hot princess. Oh, and thanks to his bone density and the weaker gravity on the planet, he has a 400-foot vertical leap. Unfortunately, there's not a basketball hoop in sight.
I think I might have really liked this as a kid. As an adult, I really just liked looking at Lynn Collins' skin. It didn't take me very long to lose track of what the fuck was going on in this, that's for sure. This is essentially a really really expensive B-movie, and it's a movie with an almost intimidating amount of ideas. I'm not familiar with the Edgar Rice Burroughs book, so I can't be sure whether some of these creatures and settings are from his brain or the minds of the Disney magicians, but at times, some of what you're seeing seem like they could have come from William S. Burroughs instead. I liked the look of the blue, four-armed Martians who were kind of cool in a Jar Jar Binks kind of way. Bald floating guys, sand storms, Martian eggs, insect-like flying machines, abominable arena bears. There's definitely a lot to look at, but they probably should have spent a little more time on the titular hero's running and hopping around because he looked as stupid as Christopher Reeve running in that 1978 Superman movie. The biggest problem with this, the thing that really keeps it from being a good movie, is that the characters aren't interesting at all. This might sound racist, but I can't tell the blue guys apart from each other, even when they talk since Willem Dafoe and Thomas Haden Church kind of sound the same. Princess Dejah Thoris only looks good, and the Martians who look human are almost devoid of personality and don't make villains who are intimidating, menacing, or really anything. I suppose the bald guys are the most interesting, but I never really understood what was going on with them and their personalities were lifted directly from Agent Smith in those Matrix movies. John Carter's worst offense is that the hero is unlikable. Actually, maybe unlikable isn't the right word. The character doesn't really do anything to make him unlikable, but he's just so dull. I blame Taylor Kitsch who delivers every line like it's a chore or like his voice is another muscle to flex. He plays the character largely free of emotion, and for some reason, that made it hard to root for him. That and his voice although I have developed a pretty mean impression of that voice. I don't understand why science fiction dialogue and intonation has to be so stilted.
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