The problem is the target audience (teens) have no interest in anything that was in a book older than they are.
The problem is the target audience (teens) have no interest in anything that was in a book older than they are.
Not adding Mars to the title becasue of the failur of other Mars in the title movies is stupid. Lest look at a few:
Mission to mars. I liked it, but it was a rather slow pace no real action flick
Red Planet Yeah, no mars in the title and that movie sucked.
Mars needs moms I liked it, but man, Milo was the fugliest kid I've ever seen in a movie.
John cart Come on! total action flick. John Carter OF MARS would have been better. Warlord of mars or John Carter and the Princess of mars would have been catchier.
Just my 2 cents worth. Looking forward to the Blu ray
That’s cool. We’ll just have to agree to disagree. With all due respect to both you and Stanton, I thought John Carter was a mess.Alan Cross said:
Burroughs’ book was simple enough: Confederate soldier winds up on Mars and has to make his way amongst the bizarre natives. Stanton chucks that appealing simplicity in favor of too many creatures, too many battles, and too many repetitive episodes. I was lost practically from the get-go, and I’ve read the source material.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m delighted the movie hit home for the people it hit home with. I’m just not one of those people.
“Quit?” Carney didn’t quit any more than Richard Nixon quit.Nwerke said:
It may seem harsh, but when a studio takes a $200 million write-off on a picture heads are going to roll. Production chiefs and marketing presidents aren’t paid insane amounts of money to open good mega-budget movies; they’re paid insane amounts of money to open bad mega-budget movies, and stockholders are not interested in excuses a la “I couldn’t get the director to take my advice.”
Don’t feel too sorry for MT Carny and Rich Ross though; their combined severance packages could fund a real life mission to Mars.
To me it doesn't look like they're experiencing low gravity at all, rather all manner of body motions are happening now too suddenly, now too slowly, all too often, wholly inconsistently. etc. a limb goes from A to B too quickly and with the wrong dynamic (on any planet!), and in that sense they carry unconvincing weight. It's at its worst in the fight scenes. When the creatures aren't doing anything much, they do look better.Chrisisall said:
I know what you're talking about here, thing for me is that since they're on Mars, I don't expect perfect looking Earth norm gravity motion.
Personally, I'd only use CGI on scenic stuff and ships. Remember the Rancor in Jedi?
You might counter that stop motion was jerky and imperfect. This is true but the problem I'm talking about - and it's much more offensive than anything in stop-motion - was never present. Dennis Muren identified the same issue. In an interview done around the prequels he said ILM was still struggling to achieve correct weight and mass in their cg creature motions, and that this was something that was always much easier to achieve in stop-motion because you already had a physical object that had weight. Well, it was a problem they solved ten years earlier in Jurassic Park. Why it became a problem they increasingly failed to solve again is perplexing...
As for the Rancor, it was great, but insanely, I missed the stop-motion strobing, lol - Harryhausen was right when he said the strobing was what gave stop-motion such dreamlike magic! I had always thought that myself but was thrilled to hear him say the same thing in explanation as to why latterday cg creatures seem so often oddly banal.
Last edited by Colin Droidmilk; Apr 22, 2012 at 3:15 AM.
Huh, I must have misread something. I'd have sworn in court that I recalled reading she had jumped before she could be pushed.Carson Dyle said:
Oh *that* isn't what seems harsh; that's just business. I meant what would be harsh would be for us ordinary mug punters to hold her chiefly responsible, when she was given no tentpole shots to sell a tentpole movie with.It may seem harsh, but when a studio takes a $200 million write-off on a picture heads are going to roll.
Don't I know it. One of my old jobs was calculating those packages for bigwigs. That task was a mofo in every possible way.Dont feel too sorry for MT Carny and Rich Ross though; their combined severance packages could fund a real life mission to Mars.
Bingo. It's not gravity and weight, it's mass and inertia. Hint to Hollywood: THEY DON'T CHANGE!!!Colin Droidmilk said:
My surmise: nobody wants to spend what it takes to build DiDs - and hire Phil Tippett to operate them - any more.Why it became a problem they increasingly failed to solve again is perplexing...
Oh, I'm sure you did.Nwerke said:
Like Washington, Hollywood has a time-honored tradition of spinning high profile firings to the least detriment of everyone. It's the "I'm resigning to spend more time with my family" scenario.
Rare is the film executive (or politician) who willingly surrenders power.
Understood - the saving of face is universal, but I meant quite some time ago. Well before the **** could reasonably have been said to have hit the fan, some time last year I thought. Probably a brain fart.
Oh, I saw the art book the other day. NICE.
Except that not all the shots were done with DiDs by Tippet and his team. The shots of the T-Rex chasing the jeep, for instance, were done entirely with a mouse and keyboard by a non-stop-motion guy, and are as good as anything in the film. Admittedly he worked for weeks and weeks on these brief seconds-long shots, revising and revising and revising...so your point holds; in all likelihood they don't have the time or money to go for perfection - or anythng much like it - any more. Still, Muren didn't actually give this as the reason, though....Nwerke said:
I don't think in the history of movies anyone has had the time and money to take as long as they need to perfect their movies or any parts. You can just keep at it until you're broke and go from there.
Well, by 'perfection' I mean 'to all intents and purposes, flawless' which the cg dinos in JP are, and which the JC creatures aren't.
I agree. I still think, though, that no one at the Mouse House knew how to market it, even though they had connections to the Burroughs estate through Tarzan.tain669 said:
I am completely new to John Carter. This film was horribly marketed. The previews were a complete turnoff, but I had a day off in the middle of the week and my wife and I wanted to see a movie. Nothing was really playing at the time, so we went to see John Carter with the expectation it would suck. I gave up caring about the CGI, and thought the movie was really funny. I'd say it's rated as one of my favorites, now.
There seemed to be a deliberate effort to hugely undermine this film before it had a chance to perform at the cinema. It was tracking with many negative comments without it even being previewed as far as I could tell and then everyone just seemed to pile in. Nobody seemed to have a good word to say about it.But what happened to JC has changed the industry radically.
I actually went to see it on the back of hearing Mark Kermodes reviews on radio and TV. He buried it under such a torrent of abuse I just couldn't understand it, the trailers looked at least adequatly entertaining to me. I read the books as a kid ,long with the Pellucidor and Caprona novels. If he had seen the films they produced in the seventies (The Land that Time Forgot/At the Earths Core) I could have at least understood it but the mans absolute hatred of it made me go see it.
It was one of the most pleasent surprises I've ever had. Even now I wondered if anyone saw the same film I did. It was worth paying to see it in 3D just to see the Princess! I thought Carrie Fisher in her slave costume could never be surpassed but Lynne Collins did it!! The hero was great,the effects were excellent and it really did manage to capture the other worldliness of a romantic vision of Mars a century ago. And the six legged dog made me laugh out loud more than most "comedies" these days. I came out smiling and feeling well happy.
The effect on the film industry has been the exact opposite. The overseas performance of JC has been relatively good and the feedback more positive than at its premier in the States. The vitriol it engendered just because people WANTED to say it was bad without actually seeing it made it a game changer. Studios don't want to risk that kind of negativity. So now most blockbusters are getting released worldwide a week or so before the US so that word of mouth is better and the box office stronger before it goes domestic.
They are also "trailering" the entire film highlights now in an effort to show the audience exactly what they will get. Avengers was pretty well "spoiled" and Prometheus has gone from being totally hushed to virtually a 3 minute movie by plot point. Given the money invested I can understand it, but really its impossible to avoid learning whats going to happen.And thats a sad thing.
But its working. At $178 million in its first weekend Avengers proves the formula works. When it goes State side its going to bust records.
Still I'm glad JC was filmed to be at least a decent standalone. It deserved a sequel but thtas never going to happen now. Just get the DVD when it comes out.
Just saw the trailer for The Avengers - described by at least 3 guys in the Av. thread as the best movie they had ever seen. It had me and the GF crying out "come back John Carter trailer - all is forgiven!"
I thought this movie was terrific! I had low expectations, really, from all the buzz, but I have to say I was surprized at how entertaining it was. I was a little confused with the politics of Mars, not having read the Burroughs book, but other than that, the story, the characters, sets, scenery, CG, actors, etc. all flowed smoothly and seamlessly and kept me completely satisfied. It's so hard to find well made fantasy/sci-fi these days, and I would actually watch this again, which I can't say for many movies. Thumbs up for me!
They've done that for years. And I always say "well, there's no need for me to see the movie now. I've just seen it".CutThumb said:
It takes skill to show something, but not too much. A taste, not a meal.
I don't totally disagree.The main difference between now and then (?) is the internet. Back in 1998 it took an entire night(or so it seemed) to down load the trailer for "The Phantom Menace". Not good (but then neither was the film eventually, thank god the Avengers has beatten it !!).But it at least enabled you to analyse it frame by frame and thats the issue.
A two minute glance at the cinema as one of several film trailers gave you only a fleeting "taste" of the content and you would be hard pushed to remember it after a day or so, apart from a couple of the "money shots".
Today it really is "Total Recall". You can watch it on a continious loop, slow motion, frame by frame and then discuss it at depth. Just look at the Prometheus thread. With that many people speculating about it eventually you're going to hit the nail on the head and pretty much suss the plot.But then I'm as guilty as hell as anyone about that , I want it to be good and I want to find out if it will be.
But thats the new market. To get the film talked about ,argued about but ultimately well noticed in this overloaded informational age. Direct contradiction sometimes helps and studios love to get everyone disagreeing about it so they all hit the cinemas in the first few days of release to see who got it right. The domestic US market certainly seems to respond better to a film that is released worldwide before hand.Just look at what happened to the Avengers in terms of prebookings and opennings. In the States the word of mouth seems more able to polarize a perception of a film as either good or bad and the box office performance on its first weekend of openning seems to set the tone for its reception around the world.
In JC's case it just didn't happen and people just turned on it because everybody was, regardless of whether they had seen it or not and that was really unfortunate because it was, as Potionmistress points out, a highly entertaining film when all said and done. I liked it at least a dozen times more than the Phantom Menace which, against all belief ,has made another $100 million on its 3D release to take it over the billion mark and make it the top performing SW film ever.So I guess the others will be converted now.
Last edited by CutThumb; May 18, 2012 at 2:37 AM.
I still have not seen this movie (or read the book). I probably will eventually, but all that CGI just looks very uninteresting. The story seems very dated too.
That's because it's based off a series of novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs that started over a hundred years ago.rodneyfaile said:
Saw it last night and was pleasantly entertained. I can now see the heavy influence Burroughs' work had on Avatar.
I just saw it too. It was disappointing in a way; I didn't have high expectations but I'd still want more from a Barsoom adaptation, pulp novels or not they were part of my adolescence and I really wanted more world-building and sense of place than we got. There are also some dire plot holes, or so I thought. (Been many a year since I read the books.) Compared against the Prequels? Sure, far better than that. That's a low bar.
The idea of a guy running around Mars breathing air dressed like a gladiator fighting CGI aliens just didn't interest me at all. I'm guessing the previews gave most people the same impression, which is why almost nobody saw it.
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