John Carter (2012)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2012
	Director: Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, Wall-E)
	Actors: Taylor Kitsch (Battleship), Lynn Collins, Willem Dafoe (Spiderman, The Grand Budapest Hotel)
	Country: USA
	Genre: SF
	Conditions of visioning: 20.07.2014, Blu-ray, Home cinema
Synopsis: Deserting American soldier in the confederate army, John Carter (Kitsch) find himself propelled in the middle of a civil war on Mars.
Review: The big blockbuster of 2012, one of its most expensive movie with 200 million dollars, ambitious like Avatar, with hopes for the same success.... turns out to be the biggest flop of the year. You can tell it is an expensive movie by the amount of special effects (there is at least one CGI creature in all the shots on Mars) and their quality. I cannot deny that the aliens look as good as in Avatar (details of the faces and accuracy of the motion capture), the animals look good as well, and the flying ships are beautiful. The Martian landscape is different from what we know it to be, but probably fits with the imagination of the early 20th century, when the novel from which is adapted the movie was written (by Edgard Rice Burrough). When watching John Carter I was thinking about what George R. R. Martin said at his masterclass at the NIFFF2014: recent Action movies keep you interested by throwing things at your face during the whole movie, but they are nothing without a good story and structure, and this is where where John Carter fails. Indeed something is wrong in the storytelling, the presentation of the stakes, the editing... all making the movie look like a patchwork not really self-consistent. I don't know if this failure is imputable to Disney trying to make a movie for everybody in the family to enjoy, or to the director Andrew Stanton who didn't succeed in the transition from directing Pixal animated movies, unlike John Lasseter (Toy Story, Mission Impossible 4). And this is without mentioning trendy actors that are not really playing well. I didn't get bored during the two hours and twelve minutes of the movie, but didn't feel involved either, in spite of the grandiose scale of things. This is the kind of movie I will watch every 6 months when too tired to think. I am surprised a sequel John Carter: The God of Mars is even in development, it will probably never see the light.
Rating: 4 /10