A slew of okay special effects, terrible direction (which is surprising given Andrew Stanton's previous credits) and a couple of humans, apparently called actors, that speak a fatuous form of English, comprise the epic John Carter. Some may recall Disney's sandal saga from 2010, Prince of Persia; high concept, grand in scale but ultimately left wafting in the dust.
Taylor Kitch (lol, whoever came up with that stage name should have their head examined) was the star of this vehicle and I can't say I ever hitched a ride. I do blame the direction somewhat as the movie felt very disjointed and this could be part of the reason I had no connection to him or any other character for that matter. Numerous times I felt like I must have been asleep for an hour only to wake up and find myself still pseudodreaming in this incessant yarn. For example, John Carter arrives on the planet to find aliens that are not speaking English; he is captured, escapes and then suddenly all the aliens are speaking English with virtually no explanation other than John notices! Did I miss something, or was the script writer so lazy that he didn't even bother to throw us a one liner explaining how this could occur. This planet might as well be in some other solar system or another universe altogether because any semblance of high school physics is completely aloof. One minute the 1/10 of Earth gravity on Mars seems to be working but Carter overcomes that rule of the universe in a matter of minutes, apparently you can breath on Mars (no wonder it took Carter half the movie to figure out he was on a different planet especially since the four armed aliens were no clue), etc etc etc etc.
Like other interstellar - or rather interplanetary blockbusters where an Earth man meets and courts his future extra terrestrial spouse and all the while somehow saves the galaxy or at least one entire planet, John Carter comes up short. The best parts of the story take place on Earth if you ask me, but unfortunately that is only about 5% of the movie. I imagine the novel would be a great read indeed because I can see an interesting story here but it is not told coherently in this film which tries to do too much in one go and therefore sacrifices any semblance of good scifi. This isn't even good kitch. Tharks stay home.
Recommended Viewing: WALL E - Star Wars IV - Spaceballs - Solaris (1972)
Bob Scale: Objective: 5.0 - Subjective: 5.5
MetaCritic: 39
Rotten Tomatoes: 50
IMDB: 7.1
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