John Carter - Review

Based on a series of books written 100 years ago, John Carter is about a man living in the early 1900 who is transported to Mars.  With parallels to his time of fighting Indians in the Wild West, he finds himself fighting for a society's survival. When I told my friend Anne this, who didn’t go to see the movie with us, she asked, “If he’s from the 1900’s why is he wearing a loin cloth in the commercial?”

I will admit, I was confused when the movie started in the 1900’s on earth, because the awful commercials make the movie look like a sequel to 300 taking place on Mars.  As TJ said, "It was a lot better than expected." It was an enjoyable movie that kept my interest the entire time.  I do think the leading actress was over dramatic at times. This seemed to lessen as the movie went on.  The CGI effects looked similar to the style of Avatar with a Mars color scheme.  You will never know that it is Willem Dafoe who is playing the lead alien.  If you like big blockbuster type action movies, you will like this one. 

So how does he get into his loin cloth?  You will have to watch the movie to find out.  Believe me ladies, you will not mind watching him in this outfit throughout the rest of the movie.  I will tell you that the scene was actually funny.  There was a lot of humor written into the script.  When he was first transported to Mars, he didn’t just transform into the half naked war hero.  John Carter had to go through the unfamiliarity of walking on a new planet and then encountering alien life forms.  It’s not something you can just strip down for.

What's amazing to me is that someone had this idea of such a futuristic world 100 years ago.  Juan who was with us had read the books, and said a lot was added to the movie that wasn't originally written, but the same ideas are there.  This story was the spark for Sci-fi movies and stories as we know them today.  Apparently George Lucas originally wanted to make these books into a movie, he was told no, and so he went on and created Star Wars.  After seeing the movie, I really want to read the entire series.

Overall:  The movie gets 3 stars and Disney should find a new company to produce their trailers.