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At the time, even having not seen it, it seemed like everyone hated this movie.
But the more I hear here and there from folks, it seems more like 50/50.
What did you think?
I enjoyed it when I saw it on DVD. Didn't catch it in theaters. I couldn't quite understand why it underperformed at the box office. It was a good enough flick. Might be one of those movies that has to "find it's audience"...
+1
It's 10 am at the morning.
I am drunk.
I am going to listen for new DIF before sleep..
Trey and Mike start to speak how much John Carter-books/movies sucks.
I am listening for that and start to scream: "No no! It was good when I was 12! I have 10 books of those.."
I then realize: it is 12 hours too, late, I only have mp3-player, my mic is off..
I keep screaming..
P.S I didn't like the movie either..
JCOM was never gonna fly for one simple reason. No-one already wanted to see Space Tarzan.
A film where giant transforming robots beat the crap out of each other? There are people with cash in hand for that right now. You could even make it good if you wanted to. But Space Tarzan? Sorry no. It didn't even matter if it was good, there was no hunger for that film. And to make back that much money, people already had to be hungry for that movie, sight unseen.
That fact that they utterly borked the promotion didn't help, but frankly it was always gonna be an uphill struggle with a finite chance of success.
I think Stanton made a good movie, but that wasn't enough.
Last edited by Malak (2012-08-20 08:37:15)
As I mentioned in another thread, I don't understand why this bombed and Avatar made more than a billion. I therefore challenge someone to come up with a justification of why Avatar is "1 billion dollars better".
Thanks for the commentary, really looking forward to listening to it.
As I mentioned in another thread, I don't understand why this bombed and Avatar made more than a billion. I therefore challenge someone to come up with a justification of why Avatar is "1 billion dollars better"
I'd take JCOM over Avater every time. It's a far better movie.
It is definitely not worse than Avatar.
Last edited by Scooperfield (2012-08-20 12:50:56)
I don't know if you guys asking why it bombed are being serious, have you seen the trailer?
I think they're looking at the movie and asking why it bombed, when obviously whether or not something bombs does in fact have more to do with the marketing and trailers. I thought the books were great fun, even though I didn't get to them until I was an adult (as a kid, I was "above" SF that wasn't realistic). The ads just looked stupid, so I avoided it.
As for why Avatar did well and this didn't... well, a couple things.
a) Avatar was first. Don't discount this. The Avatar experience was new, exciting. Audiences often give the first to do something a pass, coming down harder on later versions that yes may be better.
b) Nobody saw it, so nobody knew John Cater was better. This is the more important thing. The movie doesn't matter if people don't want to see it. I went to a free preview of Titan A.D. years ago. The audience liked it, the comments coming out being things like "Well, it was better than the live action SF we've been getting". But, it bombed. Why? Animated SF just didn't get people into theaters to even see if it was any good. Disney's Treasure Planet suffered the same fate.
I agree that the main difference between John Carter and Avatar's box office was marketing, but Avatar's marketing featured James Freakin' Cameron talking up the New Technology he had invented for the movie. Plus it had Sigourney Weaver and other name actors.
John Carter had the voice of Willem Dafoe and very little else going for it. Nobody is going to see a giant blockbuster action movie based on the tagline "From the director of Finding Nemo", nor is the Disney name going to help an action blockbuster get traction.
Looked at that way, it really is a tragedy. I didn't hate John Carter the way hated Avatar. It was like rooting for the Special Olympics as opposed to watching a champion in the real Olympics when he's just been exposed as a doper.
"Go little blockbuster, go! You can tell a coherent story! Yea you! [applauds, turns to friend with broad smile] Most of that made sense."
Listening to the commentary now. My first though is about the Get Carter of Mars re-imagining. They had a load of Mars left over after rebooting Total Recall, might as well put it to good use on our Get Carter remake...
The Tharks were indeed not mocap - the bodies were hand animated (I think this came from Stanton specifically, due to his background). There was facial capture, which the animators had access to, but could also animate over.
Last edited by Malak (2012-08-21 08:14:58)
nor is the Disney name going to help an action blockbuster get traction.
Maybe they thought 'well, those Pirates movies had our name on them', missing the point completely.
The DVD is waiting in the mailbox, so I've only listened to the intro so far, but... really? Nobody read at least the Tarzan books as a kid? It's amazing how something can keep going for a century as adaptations and the originals become ignored...
I've read the first Tarzan novel as well as Princess of Mars (or, as established previously, had them read to me by my manservant Lyle). PoM was kind of terrible, but Tarzan was pretty good.
I think Burroughs intended the "apes" to be thought of as homo erectus, or something. He says pretty clearly that they aren't gorillas. That's an interesting twist, to be sure.
Last edited by Zarban (2012-08-21 19:37:32)
Anti Joke Chicken? nah.
How about Anti Joke Kitsch! 
Just finished listening to this one and I counted no less than four internet memes being created:
I mean, seriously guys, the Internet can only keep up with so much 
Director Andrew Stanton looks back on 'John Carter's' rocky path
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