A long time ago, Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote the Barsoom series, which inspired many other movies and books like "Star Wars". For a long time, the film was in development hell for years until now. The film is directed by Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo), and stars Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Mark Strong, Willem Dafoe, Samantha Morton, Dominic West, Ciarán Hinds and Thomas Haden Church. Set in the 1800s, Civil war vet John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) gets accidentally transported to Mars a.k.a. Barsoom for some reason. Here, there are two alien races that have been at war for a long time. Now, the planet is dying and it is up to Carter to save them and must also stop a princess (Lynn Collins) from marrying another man.
Now, I was kind of excited but mostly due to the special effects which made me thought that this would be a good movie. I haven't read the series but I heard it inspired films like I said "Star Wars" and "Avatar". And also, it was directed by Andrew Stanton of Pixar fame. Now I'll admit, while I don't think this is a masterpiece, this is a really fun action movie. Now I KNOW this movie has problems, but I just accepted it as a fun matinee action sci-fi movie.
One of the best things about the movie is Andrew Stanton's imagination. Every scene looks great and beautiful. The green screen, production design and some parts looked like it was filmed on actual locations (maybe not really), I mean Stanton directs this movie well. I love the way the world is built and it is so detailed. You can believe that he tried his best to create a cool sci-fi environment and it does feel like a sci-fi environment from a long time ago.
And the budget for the movie is $250 million, THAT'S HUGE. While I don't think these are the best special effects of all time, they are great. The creature designs are all detailed and are nice to look it, from a guy who has been working on CGI films really does it well here. Yeah there are some effects that look poor like one scene where John Carter is trying to jump onto a giant building that looked kind of iffy. The action is excellent, it is filmed well, Andrew Stanton does a great job shooting the action. They're cool, inventive and fun to look at.
I like the tone of the film which I think the movie is a cross between "Star Wars", "Avatar", "Pirates of the Caribbean", "Planet of the Apes", "The Lord of the Rings" and "Jason and the Argonauts" (which some of them were inspired by the book series). The first half was the part I especially liked because it was like a western-sci-fi-action-comedy just like what "Star Wars" did. The comedy in the first half worked mostly because one of the jokes I liked was that the aliens kept calling Carter "Virginia" several times even though it's not actually his name and that it's the place he lives in. The second and third half were good but not bad.
The acting is all around descent. Taylor Kitsch is good, he looks a lot like Jason Momoa from "Conan the Barbarian". While some of his lines are cheezy, he still delivers a performance that he tries his best to do. Lynn Collins as the princess is awful and annoying. Her dialogue is bad and there are times where they try to give her humor and it fails. The rest of the cast like Mark Strong, Willem Dafoe, Thomas Haden Chuch, Samantha Morton and Ciarán Hinds all do a fine job.
Lastly, the score by Michael Giacchino is fantastic. It's very adventurous and an Indiana Jones type too. It's also really intense music and it puts you into the right mood of the environment.
Now like I said before, there are A LOT of problems with this movie. One of them is the romance between John and the princess and I didn't feel the chemistry at all and whenever they tried to have chemistry it felt totally forced. Also, while the script is not bad and it has some good ideas, there's nothing special about it and it's not Oscar worthy like there's a subplot that involves the princess being forced to marry another man to save Barsoom and I thought that was goofy and I couldn't take it seriously. And there were some things that I don't understand like why is Mars called Barsoom? Maybe they explain that in the books.
The biggest problem that I have is that it is a bit long like 2 hrs. 30 something min. and there were some scenes that were kind of slow or boring or not really needed.
So overall, I really enjoyed the film. It's no masterpiece, but it's worth seeing in theaters especially in IMAX 3D because the 3D was really good. Like if this movie was made before "Star Wars" and "Avatar" and it had a better screenwriter, I would've been blown away saying "WOW, THIS IS THE MOST ORIGINAL AND IMAGINATIVE THINGS I'VE EVER SEEN!". But for what it's worth now, It's a fun movie. It is goofy and cheezy at parts. But if you just go in thinking about the problems and nitpicks you have, just try to enjoy it. Maybe I should read the books after seeing this.
