John Carter. Interplanetary traveler, Martian loyalist, tycoon. An epic love story that spans two planets, with the lives of everyone concerned in peril were it not for the actions of our intrepid hero. One would be led to expect that the movie would be spectacular. Unfortunately, it was not.
John Carter is a typical story of a traveler who is thrown into a foreign culture, struggles to assimilate, but eventually manages to help protect it against its foes. Of course, the hero always tries to return to that culture in the end. Last Samurai, Dances With Wolves, etc etc. It's a common enough narrative, and is not inherently original in any form. What makes such a narrative memorable and truly enjoyable is the immersion where the viewers think they understand what's going on, what the cultures stand for, and wind up rooting for the hero. This was not to be.
The movie falls short when it substitutes CGI for narrative, where the foreign culture happens to be alien looking beings, and the enemy is just another form of human. On Mars. Yet, throughout the narrative, it is unclear just why they are fighting, why it's even possible for an earthling to romance a martian, what the stakes of the fighting truly are, and basically anything that matters that isn't part of the romance or combat. None of these are made clear in the story.
The overall incoherence of the narrative prevents the viewer from truly appreciating the high budget production, and it is actually disgusting to see all that money splurged to basically reskin an old tale without adding anything particularly special. I'd say this movie deserves a 4/10.
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