john carter

everything you've heard about this one is true: this thing stinks!  the story follows john carter, a man who left the fighting in the civil war to go out west, as he miraculously transports to mars!  why?  well, never mind that, lets just get to the strange martians!  he meets up with some strange four armed green aliens and tries to learn their ways.  if the film would have stopped there and just dealt with the story of 'a stranger in a strange land' as he learns about them, it may have had a chance at being ok.  but no no no!  they go on to introduce two other races on mars that are feuding for control of the planet (which, by the way, doesn't really seem to have any impact on the green guys at all, one way or another).  these two races seem to be exactly the same as humans, except that they have have tattoos and wear red or blue to distinguish them from each other.  john carter, of course, is the 'chosen one' that all the prophecies are about, so he steps in as their leader and works with the green guys to get rid of the bad guys, which are the red ones.  or is that the blue ones?  does it really matter?  nope.  i kind of feel bad for the movie, its based on the old book 'a princess of mars', written in 1917 by edger rice burroughs (the guy who created tarzan).  its got a bunch of great ideas that were ahead of their time, but unfortunately it has been pillaged by every other author and film maker since, so any ideas that were creative and new back in 1917 are old and worn out by 2012.  sorry, i'm sure this was an interesting story with amazing ideas back then, but today it just seems cliche.  the effects look pretty good, but all of it is meaningless because of the overly complex and predictable storytelling.  i'm sure this would have been an amazing story to turn into a film back in the 1950's, but it just doesn't hold any interest today.