After decades of exposure to Science Fiction elements in Cinema and literature, it has become easier for the present-day script-writers to imagine different types of Sci-fi concepts in their stories… Why writers? Even ordinary people like you and me can sit back & cook up stories that involves aliens, death rays and interstellar travel.. Our mind has witnessed so many Science fiction elements from all the movies that we discuss the details of the technology or flaws in the logic behind these Sci-fi concepts after watching the movies…
But imagine the world 100 years before now, in the land of steam-driven engines and gas-powered street lights , it must have been the least encouraging environment to imagine science fiction stories… But still classics like the Time Machine, War of the Worlds, Journey to the Center of the Earth were conceptualized back then…. John Carter is one such character born in the literature of the early 1900s….
Just like how H.G.Wells’s fascination of Mars gave us “The War of the Worlds”, Burroughs’s fascination of the Red Planet led to the creation of the “Barsoom” series of novels. John Carter is based on the 1917 novel from the Barsoom series, “The Princess of Mars” written by Edgar Rice Burroughs(also Creator of the Tarzan character)….
–>
John Carter is an ex-army man who, after the loss of his family, is obsessed with the search for gold(just like any other wild west movie character)… While trying to escape from a group of Native Americans, John Carter stumbles upon a ‘cave of gold’ where he gets ‘transplanted’ to the planet Mars/Barsoom. Due to the lesser gravity, John Carter has extraordinary strength and the ability to jump high..
The Hero encounters two intelligent alien life-forms, the green martian race “Tharks” and the red-tanned human-like martians… Though the terms between these two species are not well, the main tension is between the humanoid kingdoms of Helium and Zodanga…
The Thark "Jeddak"/leader with John Carter..
Now this is were the movie diverts away from the original book… In the book, John Carter is stuckup in the battles between these 3 kingdoms due to his attraction towards the Helium princess .
In this movie however, ‘The Therns’, a god-like race from the later books of the Barsoom series are mixed into this plot… Here, they try to influence the outcome of the war by giving special weapons to the Zodanga king and are hell bent on successfully conducting the Marriage of the Zodanga king and the Helium princess…. Their exact motives behind their actions are not explained well in the movie..
At first I wondered why “The Therns” were forcibly introduced into the plot.. But in the Climax, I understood why… The movie has a small “Sherlock Holmes” touch to its climax. This ending could only be achieved with the presence of the Therns in the plotline…
This movie may look like a mix of many sci-fi movies like Avatar, Planet of the Apes, Clash of the Titans etc. , but The Barsoom series of novels is said to be the inspiration behind the concept of The “Hero in strange land adopting & adapting to a new culture/species”…
Why me?
Where the movie doesn’t work?
The villain department: The story lacks a strong villian… The leader of the god-like Therns is the closer to the main villain role than the Zodanga King or the evil leader of the Tharks(unlike the Novel)… The green Martian segments are more enjoyable than the other human-like Zodanga villain sequences..
Too much talking: After some sequences of Action in the first 30 minutes, the movie goes into ‘dialogue mode’.. John Carter and the Helium princess talk for far too long… There were so many loud yawns from the audience and some even fell asleep… A few guys from my row walked out just before the Interval and never came back… They could have reduced this sequence significantly..
The movie was visually spectacular.. The Martian landscape is portrayed in an excellent manner.. The director ‘Andrew Stanton'( director of Finding Nemo and Wall-E) could have edited down the talking portions in the middle of the movie considerably. He could have introduced more fight scenes and could have forced out more emotions from the lead characters…
Even with its flaws, its hard for me to hate this movie.. But still I don’t recommend watching this on the big screen as the 3D effects were not satisfying and the slow-paced portions in the middle of the movie may get to your nerves … So unless you are a big fan of Heavy CGI effects, you can wait for the DVDs.. But being one of the original century-old Sci/Fi stories, it is a must watch for Science Fiction fanatics…
Overall- 7/10
whitegrapes 