So I saw the movie John Carter over a month ago but I’m still going over what was wrong with it in my head, it had so many problems that it seems like a good model of what not to do when crafting a story. I was so irritated by the missed opportunity of John Carter that I read the book it was based on (A Princess of Mars) to see if the problem was the source material. The book turned out to be pretty good with richly developed relationships and clear motivations for the characters. You can read that for free on Project Gutenberg.
I’m reading a lot that people think the movie flopped because of bad marketing, which is just logically false. Enough people saw the movie in the first week, myself included, that positive word of mouth could have saved the box office for this film. If you look on Facebook, only a shade under 8,000 people care enough to want to go back. The movie failed because it skimped on logic, motivation, and developing sympathy for the characters. I think I need to see it again just to make sure that what I thought was wrong with it was actually wrong with it but here’s my list. SPOILERS AHEAD:
The primary problem is the omnipotent shadowy villain controlling events but making extremely bad decisions. It seems that if you write a story involving an all powerful mastermind directing events, there should be some discernible reasoning behind his/her/their actions, and their actions should have some menace to them.
I’m not sure if knowing the names of the characters in the movie is any help because the movie never stays with one character long enough for you to care what they’re named, but the primary villain is Matai Shang played by Mark Strong. Mark Strong is an able actor and very capable of conveying a sinister presence, but he’s failed almost completely by the story.
Matai Shang is a Thern, who according to the movie are a race of shape shifting, super weapon wielding, planet/galaxy hopping baddies who get off on destroying a planet’s natural resources and then moving on to the next planet and doing the same, rinse/repeat. The Therns didn’t appear at all in A Princess of Mars, and from what I can gather weren’t shape shifting, super weapon building, planet hopping people either. This is an element that Stanton and Chabon introduced on their own, and it could have worked but it didn’t because they were incompetent.
Almost all of their actions are convoluted. Dejah Thoris is presented as a threat to their plans because she’s about to discover the key to the Ninth Ray. This isn’t gone into in any depth, and her attempt is sabotaged by a Thern who has shape shifted and throws a figurative monkey wrench into the machine she’s devised. So at this point, you’d expect that the Therns, who can shapeshift, would simply kill her. This could be done at any point… they can shape shift, they can vaporize people with their Ninth Ray power gloves – if it came down to it and they were cornered they could leave the planet entirely and chill out on Earth or any other planet in the galaxy until the hubbub died down.
This is exactly not what they choose to do. Instead, they craft a plan to have Dejah Thoris marry the supposedly villainous Sab Than, who they have given a Ninth Ray power glove to, so that they can kill her after they’ve married so they can destroy Helium for some inexplicable reason. If there was something in the movie explaining why this plan made sense it didn’t register. This was nowhere in the original book, and seems very flimsy and tacked on. The movie should probably have emphasized that Dejah Thoris and the Heliumites were at war but wanted to have peace with all the peoples of Barsoom, setting some sort of contrast between the peoples of Barsoom.
Again, Sab Than has been given a super weapon Ninth Ray power glove, with which he can vaporize entire air ships and with which he, as the movie depicts, successfully wages an onslaught against the cities of the Heliumites. If the Therns want him to destroy Helium, HE’S ALREADY DOING IT. Why do they want him to force a marriage to Dejah Thoris? He’s alread doing EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT. You can kill Dejah Thoris at your leisure, or you can have him defeat Helium and have her killed after the city’s been conquered. This is the big overarching flaw with the movie, and it’s the same problem that Battlestar Galactica reimagined had – a seemingly all powerful race that you’re told has a plan who, as the story progresses do totally illogical things and end up not having a plan.
Why does anything happen in this movie? Stanton takes the time out to explain that it’s because of the Therns. The Zodangan moving city that eats up the environment? Thern driven. The marriage between Sab Than and Dejah Thoris? Thern driven. The removal of John Carter from Mars? Therns. Expecting an epic sword fight between John Carter and Sab Than? Er, no… just as the fight begins the Therns kill Sab Than.
There have been plenty of movies that didn’t have airtight plots that still were excellent movies. This wasn’t one of them. There are plenty of movies that have no strong villains that are still hella enjoyable because of dialogue and character development. This wasn’t one of them.
The relationship between John Carter and Dejah Thoris is flat, unbelievable, and lacking in any magic. In the book, Dejah Thoris was captured while on a scientific expedition charting the air currents of Mars, captured by the Tharks with whom a constant state of war existed. And when captured, she gives a speech talking about how the two factions should strive for peace, a speech that John Carter overhears which, along with her exceptional beauty, makes John Carter fall in love with her – and Dejah Thoris falls in love with John Carter because of his kindness and noble, heroic bearing. He does the right thing because he’s a stand up type of guy, and the story builds on his character from situation to situation where he demonstrates his innate heroic nature.
In the movie, John Carter and Dejah Thoris somehow end up getting married. John Carter is sort of this listless character, Dejah Thoris is sort of manipulative. At some point John Carter has a flashback to how his family died because he was OFF FIGHTING TO PRESERVE SLAVERY. And here’s where the writers could have totally changed things up and had them make more sense. Instead of John Carter not wanting to fight because while he was away his family got killed, they could have set it up so that we understood that he didn’t want to fight because he realized that when he fought before, he was fighting for the wrong reasons. Nobody knows why Dejah Thoris and John Carter end up getting married because the relationship never showed any spark beyond the “a man and a woman are on an adventure so obviously they’re in love by the end” trope.
As annoying is the undeveloped relationship between Tars Tarkas and John Carter. We are asked to accept that, after seeing John Carter jump really high, Tars Tarkas is willing to accept John Carter as his right topmost arm. This is an extreme jump to ask the audience to make. Instead of depicting Tars Tarkas as one of the few Tharks who was able to break through his Thark conditioning and be and have a friend, we’re left with the impression that Tars is kind of a kooky idiot who is easily impressed.
And here it should be pointed out that an hundred year old book had better character development than a $250 million dollar movie. In the book, Tars is a secondary chieftain, not the supreme leader of Tharks. He has an actual motivation that is developed – his hatred of Tal Hajus for killing the woman he loved, and a desire to have revenge upon him and become the “Jeddak” or the Tharks. In the book, he actually exacts his revenge on Tal Hajus and by right of combat becomes leader of the Tharks. In the movie he’s robbed of motivation, and he’s robbed of becoming leader of the Tharks by virtue of his fierce combat skills. Instead, John Carter kills the enemy Thark and Tars becomes leader because why? No reason. It makes no logical sense that John Carter killing Tal Hajus leads to Tars Tarkas becoming Jeddak, and no sense that the Tharks would follow John Carter into a war against Zodanga because John Carter killed their leader.
Also, in the book we understand that John Carter is actually in danger initially while with the Tharks. The Tharks want to put him in the arena where he’ll fight until he’s dead, they don’t immediately make him the first lieutenant of the tribal chief. The relationship is allowed to develop and overcome obstacles and roadblocks.
The third failed relationship is Woola. Why is Woola the faithful sometimes savior of John Carter? In the movie he just is. No explanation given. If you read the book, you’ll see that this the third most important relationship is developed in a believable manner – John Carter saves Woola from death, treats him with more kindness than a Thark would, and wins his affections. In the movie he is simply another deus ex machina appearing to save John Carter when the screenwriters painted themselves in a corner.
The movie had other problems. Yes, having earth strength won’t help you pull a chain to break a boulder in half. Yes, the pacing was off, and the character reveals all happened in all the wrong spots. Yes, the arena fight scene looked a bit fake, and all the other fight scenes were unmemorable at best. On the bright side, the movie had an excellent cast – all of the people in it were enjoyable in something else. Lynn Collins was very pretty, the creature and special effects and 3D scenery were quite good, but overall this movie was sunk by the items listed above. Is it Wolverine Origins bad? No. Is it walk out of the theater bad? I would say yes, and a number of people did just that at the screening I attended. In sum, this was a movie sunk by the movie and not the marketing.
