Review - "John Carter"

This one will be shorter since it's late, I already wrote one review and it's been a week or so since I've seen it.

Let me start out by saying that I've not read the books, so I'm just looking at this as a film person. Let me also remind you that Andrew Stanton, the director, is a big time Pixar guy, and that Michael Giacchino, the composer, won an Oscar for Pixar's "Up" (he also did "The Incredibles," "Super 8," and a bunch of other good stuff).

I like the movie. It has MASSIVE issues, but I like it and I want them to do more.

I like the cast. I like the characters. They are all of them likable. Plus, both sides get their eye candy. I like the dog thing--A-freaking-DORABLE. Sure, the lead isn't...you know, the best thing since sliced bread, but he does a good, likable job. The girl is basically Leia from "Star Wars." I liked Leia. She was cool. My only two complaints in this area are the fact that the minor baddie, the one who wanted to marry the princess, looked EXACTLY like the aid to the princess' father. Seriously. Confusing. Also, Mark Strong (one of the few names I remembered because he's amazing) as the main villain was severely underutilized. I didn't get to know his motivations or anything.

Lets see, special effects? AWESOME. Really brilliant.

The universe? Sick. Loved it. It why I want more movies.

The green aliens? Brutal society. Loved that bit. A bit annoying, but not so annoying as the Gungans.

The tech? Cool stuff. Not explained as well as I'd like, but good.

Costumes? Swell.

I just like the place they created on screen and the characters. It's enough to make me want to see more films. but they do have some serious issues.

Marketing. It had none. Big ol' problem there.

Music. So. Much. Fail. And I like Giacchino. I love his stuff. It just sucked. It was flat, thin, devoid of all epicness, boring, not stirring enough, not...big enough, dramatic enough, emotional enough. The scene where Carter gets buried by the other green aliens after they discover the tech? Bad. Very bad music. Totally disappointed.

Pacing and structure. I got confused in the film. I got confused 5 minutes in. The very opening was great. But once they got  to modern day--I got lost. I don't get lost in films. Not if I'm paying attention, and I was paying attention. I paid for a ticket--I was paying attention and got confused. They jumped around a lot. They took too much time with a lot of stuff. They neglected the villains in order to talk a lot about the green aliens or his back story. They spent too much time on his back story and then resolved it rather lamely emotionally. They jumped around geographically without telling us. Characters did things without them explaining or setting it up. They didn't explain stuff. The pacing and structure was rubbish. Stanton should know better. He DOES know better. Pixar makes sure everything is 100% perfect before any animation. They edit the film BEFORE they animate. Why? Because it's so expensive to animate. This film was poorly written.

It's really annoying, because I like the cast, the story itself, and the universe. It was just really badly executed. It gets a C+/B.

good night.