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Thursday, March 22, 2012

Kaor!

From Wikipedia
We went to see John Carter today. We were going to go with my parents - A Princess of Mars was my "first grownup sci-fi" - but the timing didn't work out. So Laston and I went alone.

I know it's been pretty much panned in the media, but I have to say I don't really see why. Did it follow canon? No, not really, but far more closely than some movies I could mention (*cough*Starship Troopers*cough*) and certainly not a worse interpretation of an old Edgar Rice Burroughs story than others (hello, Tarzan!).

The Tharks were thinner than I imagined them to be. Princess Dejah Thoris kicked more butt than I remembered. The thoats were done very well. Wolla the calot ("monster-dog-thing", Carter calls him) was excellently done. There were shout-outs to other movies (ha! Carter covered in the blue blood of a White Ape looks very very Braveheart). The people of Helium wore more than the strategically-placed jewelry mentioned in the books, but I imagine that to do otherwise would have pushed it past PG-13 and it is Disney, after all. The airships were beautiful. Sadly, Sola did not get to say, "my father's name is Tars Tarkas".

So it wasn't a great movie, no. But it was a decent action flick, especially when keeping in mind the source material (written a hundred years ago and more than a little dated).

And then there were the previews... between Brave and The Avengers I can see it being a busy summer, movie-wise. And I want to take Abby to see Mirror Mirror.
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1 comment:

  1. QuikLivesMarch 22, 2012 at 8:06 PM

    I feel really sad that this movie tanked in the box office so much. I really, really enjoyed it. It's been a while since I read the books, so I am missing some details, but to me it *felt* very much like the books did. I agree about the strategic jewelry - I suspect that would have been rather difficult to pull off, no pun intended. I really loved Willem Defoe voicing Tars Tarkas.

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