John Carter MOVIE REVIEW

John Carter (originally supposed to be titled 'John Carter of Mars') is the first live-action film from one of my favorite names at Pixar: Andrew Stanton.  Stanton directed both Finding Nemo and WALL-E, which are not only two of the best all-time animated movies, but I'd consider them among the all-around best movies (at least in the past 10-15 years).  So when I first heard about this project I was super-excited to see what this guy was going to do with a live-action adaptation of a classic Edgar Rice Burroughs sci-fi story that was the original inspiration for movies like Star Wars and Avatar... and then the trailers came out.  The acting looked totally lifeless, the CGI seemed dull and uninspired, and there wasn't really anything to latch any hopes onto.  It looked like garbage and despite Disney's overhaul of advertisements I don't think anybody was hugely interested.  I still believed in Stanton though, and I was still trying to reassure myself that the man who prides himself on delivering quality stories over anything else would deliver in the end.  But I was wrong.

John Carter may not be the worst movie of all time, but as the trailers foretold, it was just sadly lacking.  I kept trying to grasp onto anything positive, but I just could not connect with this movie at all.  The plot is confusing, the characters really don't have much personality (except maybe for this weird dog/dinosaur thing), and it just seemed totally muddled and cheesy on a level that stands toe-to-toe with Clash of the Titans.  The story is basically about this military captain from the late 1800's who by chance is transported to Mars (which is called "Barsoom" by the natives).  He learns that due to gravity differences that he has a Superman-like ability to jump really high and has increased strength.  He is captured by tall green martians with big horns protruding from their face and eventually John finds himself in the middle of a war where there are a lot of shitty side characters that I didn't really care about.  There was also a sexy love interest played by Lynn Collins who plays the Princess of Mars.

Every once in a while the movie presented a cool idea, like when John first learns how to use his "power," but between the really campy costumes and dialog, and the uninteresting and boring action, this film was a huge disappointment.  Considering how well fellow animator Brad Bird made his transition to live-action with the very entertaining Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, it's a bummer that for whatever reason Stanton just dropped the ball on this one.  It may depend on how much money this makes, but I think this may be the last time we see him work on a non-animated feature, at least for a good amount of time.

Rating: D