John Carter (2012)

I saw half of this on a plane and forgot most of it. You'd think that would be the end of my experience, but an acquaintance has insisted that the flick was underrated, thanks chiefly to a poor marketing campaign. Granted, dropping "of Mars" from the title was a big mistake: You should never try to hide your genre to draw in unsuspecting viewers, especially with something as bland as a common name. So when I had time to kill, I decided to stream the whole thing and judge whether I had been simply too jet-lagged to appreciate it before.

Most of the story is told in flashback as A Princess of Mars author Edgar Rice Burroughs himself (Daryl Sabara) reads the account of his uncle, former Confederate captain John Carter of Virginia (Taylor Kitsch). In 1868, Carter's search for gold leads him to alien technology, with which he unwittingly sends himself to Mars or, as the inhabitants call it, Barsoom. Being built for stronger gravity, he can leap farther and punch harder than either the green Martians, called Tharks, or the more human red Martians. Thark leader Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe), tho relatively friendly, wants to coerce him into being a personal champion, against the wishes of ambitious Tal Hajus (Thomas Haden Church). Red Martian princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins) can think of a more pressing need for Carter's services: stopping Sab Than (Dominic West), another Red Martian leader, from conquering her city.

Sab has been turning the ungodly long intercity war in his favor with the help of high tech from the same group that enabled Carter's interplanetary transportation, the Therns. Even other Martians know little about them, many thinking them gods or sheer myth. I'm not entirely clear on why Therns do what they do, but their actions are decidedly not in the best interests of anyone else on Barsoom or Earth. And Carter's newfound superpowers don't seem enough to stop them or even just Sab.

Fans of the Burroughs literature know that Dejah has traditionally worn a lot less, but this is a Disney feature. She does retain plot-important attractiveness: Sab has offered peace at the price of her hand in marriage (tho he plans to kill her either way), and Carter falls for her eventually, having initially mistaken her for an Earth woman. I'm relieved to say there's more to her than beauty, as she conducts a science project, has studied Martian history rather well, fights even better than Carter does, and has an edge that can get in the way of their mutual feelings.

Of course, this is still Carter's story first and foremost. He is the first character to change in any appreciable way, from a despicable habit of looking out only for himself, even back on Earth, to a legit heroism. By caring, he inspires improvement among at least the Tharks, who previously considered red Martians' problems wholly separate from their own. (In retrospect, it's somewhat poetic in an old-fashioned way that a translator for the Apaches should become a liaison for another "red" people.)

I'll give the film some credit for not being racist -- not like it could have been, anyway. For all their societal problems and greater alienness, the Tharks are hardly loathsome as a rule; we sympathize with them, not least Tars' Carter-supporting daughter, Sola (Samantha Morton), just as easily as with the red Martians or the humans. The only folk who come across as primarily if not all bad are the Therns, who strike me as more of a conspiracy than a race.

I suppose I should mention Woola, the super-speedy pseudo-canine who appoints himself Carter's loyal companion in no time. As a signature mascot, he's more ugly than cute and doesn't provide much comic relief, but he serves well in battle, always knowing friend from foe. Of course, foes are never hard to spot in a picture like this.

By now, you've noted just how retro the setup is. Retro works fine for some properties, like Indiana Jones, but this one requires more suspension of disbelief nowadays. A human breathing on Mars? Martian natives who are practically indistinguishable from humans? The only sci-fi element that comes anywhere close to real-universe science is the gravity factor, and judging from the footage I've seen of astronauts jumping on the moon, Carter should not have made nearly that distance on a planet larger than the moon.

I'd be more willing to suspend that much disbelief if JC were especially spectacular or intriguingly written. As it is, the CG characters didn't look that impressive post-Avatar, and the action sequences present nothing I haven't seen before. Philosophically, it's shallow. Emotionally, it's not very engaging, and the relationship between Carter and Dejah shifts too darn fast. The best I can say is that the plot occasionally surprised me and a handful of moments kinda tickled me.

I was about to advise writer-director Andrew Stanton to stick with Pixar, but it's not really his fault. I doubt if anyone could truly bring new life to this stale tale. We'd have more respect for a screen adaptation from half a century earlier.