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On the run from the law, Civil War veteran John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) stumbles into a cave, finds a strange medallion - and is teleported to Mars. Due to the lower gravity on Mars, Carter is much stronger here and is able to leap over great distances. But he's taken captive by a bunch of Martians, the Tharks - who are twelve feet tall, all green and have four arms - led by Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe), who somehow takes a liking to John Carter and gives him as a pet to Sola (Samantha Morton), a bit of an outcast in the community but secretly Tars' own daughter. Apart from the city of the Tharks (which is rather desolate, really), there are only two other cities left on this fallen planet, Helium, led by benign but weak (and surprisingly humanoid) king Tardos Mors (Ciarán Hinds), and the moving city Zodanga, ruled by evil Sab Than (Dominic West), who has just gotten his hands onto some kind of ray gun, and now wants to once and for all take over Helium - but he gives Tardos Mors an ultimatum, should he give him the hand of his daughter Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins) in marriage, he will make peace with Helium. Reluctantly, Tardos Mors agrees, without even asking his daughter - upon which she flees by airship, with Sab Than in hot pursuit. And just when the two airships engage in battle with Dejah Thoris losing, enter John Carter, who saves the princess, and the Tharks manage to chase away the Zodangan soldiers. Dejah Thoris sees John Carter as a mighty weapon they could use in Helium, but he refuses to go to war, and somehow he persuades Dejah and Sola to accompany him (and the monster dog he has made friends with in Thark city) to the river Iss, where Martians of all species suspect the holiest of holiest to be which is somehow linked to the medallion that brought him here. They do find the place, too, only it's not some temple or whatnot but a place of scientific mysteries that seems to be somehow linked to Sab Than's mighty ray gun. When leaving the place though, our heroes are attacked by hordes of renegade Tharks, and while John Carter takes on the Tharks, killing many of them single-handedly, Dejah Thoris runs into her father and Sab Than, who claims to have come to rescue her (and still insists for her to marry him). She uses her position to at least make sure John Carter is rescues and brought to Helium to be healed, but while she's soon prepared to be married, Carter is intercepted by Matai Shang (Mark Strong), who poses as Sab Than's right hand, but really he's a planet hopping warmonger with almost Godlike powers who has given Sab Than the ray gun in the first place, just to make sure that Mars is laid to waste once and for all. And now he wants to make sure John Carter won't interfere - but Carter's dog monster and Sola save him and take him back to Thark city, that has taken a turn to the worse though as Tars Tarkas' chief adversary Tal Hajus (Thomas Haden Church) has taken over and has thrown Tars Tarkas into a dungeon, where Carter is soon to follow. And now the two are thrown into an arena to be torn apart to pieces - while the princess is to be married off to Sab Than and needs desparate saving, and it's apparently a job only John Carter can do ...

John Carter became a big box office bomb for Disney when they tried to create a male-friendly franchise of their own (remember, that was before they acquired Lucasfilm and shortly after the acquisition of Marvel Comics and the properties that came with both) to better reach that peer group - and it's easy to see why the movie failed: John Carter of Mars was just not a popular enough character to buiild a franchise on (after all, he had been created in 1911, his creator had long died, and thus he was not a household name anymore). And frankly, the movie and its themes seem very old fashioned (and not in a good way - just hero saves princess), with a somewhat clunky, over-convoluted and at the same time simplistic script helpint little, while Taylor Kitsch isn't enough of a leading man to really carry the movie. And in all honesty, there is very little in the movie that hasn't been seen before (even if that's true for quite a few blockbusters).

That all said, John Carter really isn't a horrible movie, it's very well made, the effects work is very slick (even if the movie's a bit over-stuffed with effects), and at least some of the props, sets and setpieces will put a smile on those into vintage science fiction, if mainly for nostalgia reasons. The main problem with this one, I guess, is just it isn't special enough, anbd frankly falls a tad short of the fun it could have been, expecially witht that big a budget involved (allegedly North of $250 million).

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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