THE RANT: ‘JOHN CARTER’s’ MASSIVE FALLOUT: Who’s to blame for Disney’s ‘$200-million’ bomb (THE RANT)

THE RANT: ‘JOHN CARTER’s’ MASSIVE FALLOUT: Who’s to blame for Disney’s ‘$200-million’ bomb By Michael Cavna

SOMETIMES BAD FLOPS happen to good people. Even those hideous, avert-your-eyes flops that cause you to question how so much talent can go to so much disgraceful waste. Amid the commercial carnage that follows the CGI blood-splatter, even Hollywood’s best coroners are sometimes stumped by the precise cause of staggering box-office death.

They walk away, shaking their heads, chalking it up to fickle audiences or muddled plots or who-knows-what-exactly? Commercial death comes, as it must, to all serial big-spenders backing gargantuan movies. But in the case of “John Carter,” it didn't have to be this way.

Disney still has its Imagineers. But where in the Martian world were the studio’s marketeers? “John Carter” may go down as one of Hollywood’s biggest movie flops ever. But it should rightly go down as one the town’s biggest marketing flops ever.

Did someone at the Mouse House dial the E.R. instead of PR? The Mouse House announced this week that it anticipates that “John Carter” — its new film about Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Civil War “Martian” — will “book a loss of $200 million” for the quarter. Meaning in Hollywood dollars, it’s on track to be one of the biggest money-losing ka-booms ever. “John Carter” had grossed nearly $190-mill globally as of last weekend — but had a whopping production budget of about $250-million, plus its $100-million marketing price tag, the AP reports.


READ WHAT MAY HAVE GONE WRONG:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/comic-riffs/post/the-rant-john-carters-massive-fallout-whos-to-blame-for-disneys-200-million-bomb/2012/03/19/gIQAOKf6VS_blog.html

Foreign Box Office: 'John Carter' Repeats as No. 1 for Second Consecutive Weekend But Slips in Key Overseas Markets (THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER)

1:32 PM PDT 3/18/2012 by Frank Segers

Getting a gentler box office reception on the foreign theatrical circuit, Disney’s John Carter took the No. 1 spot overseas for the second consecutive weekend, grossing $40.7 million from 54 offshore markets and lifting its international gross total to $126.1 million.

Weekend action for the $250-million-plus live action animation fantasy-adventure directed by Andrew Stanton was down more than 40% from its foreign debut last round. It slipped from first place to No. 4 in the U.K., where it took in an estimated $1.8 million from some 460 spots for a market cume of an estimated $6.3 million.

In Australia, where Carter also opened No. 1 last round, the film placed second this time, dropping about 51% to an estimated $1.6 million on the weekend. Carter also dropped from No. 2 to No. 3 in South Korea and Germany, from second to fourth in France, and from third to fifth place in Italy.

Overall, Carter’s overseas reception remains considerably kinder so far than the comparable $13.5 weekend tally and $53.2 million cume-to-date meted out in the U.S. and Canada.


READ MORE:  http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/foreign-box-office-john-carter-dr-seuss-lorax-21-jump-street-301492

Movie Review: John Carter (FIREFOX NEWS)

By Aubrey Ward III
Published Yesterday


Look Out Luke Skywalker. There's A New Galactic Savior In Town.

John Carter opens with a brief overview of Barsoom (aka Mars) and the civil war that has raged between the righteous city of Helium and the tyrants of Zodanga. The scales are tipped in Zodanga's favor when “Zodangan” Prince Sab Than (Dominic West) is given a powerful weapon by a mysterious figure named Matai Shang (Mark Strong). With new technology and Matai Shang's remarkable resources Sab Than's conquest of Barsoom looks promising.

We then head back to Earth, circa 1800's, where John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) has passed away and left his fortune to his nephew, Edgar Rice Burroughs (Daryl Sabara). Edgar begins to read John's memoir that explains how John managed to get to Mars and his adventures there upon his arrival.

I'm not an Edgar Rice Burroughs expert so I don't know how faithful this film adaptation was to the original series of novels. I watched the film as a total virgin to the John Carter saga so my view is of someone who likes Disney films, special effects extravaganzas, and science fiction adventures.

I found John Carter to be interesting. It's easy to say the plot is familiar because there have been plenty of flicks that featured a human being as the unlikely savior of an alien race. Then I have to put into perspective that the source material for this film was written in the early 1900s. So it's probably a more fitting claim that films like Avatar (2009), The Last Starfighter (1984) and Green Lantern (2011) were actually inspired (unintentionally or not) by Mr. Burroughs' works.

Nevertheless, the theme has been done before so John Carter is the same kitchen sink but with a different polish; new guy lands on foreign soil through extraordinary circumstances, quickly learns the customs and then becomes the unlikely hero that rallies the troops into a victorious frenzy. Despite the familiarity of the basic plot I enjoyed John Carter's adventures both off and on Mars. John's efforts to escape from his military duties leads to some thrilling yet amusing episodes with Colonel Powell (Bryan Cranston) and his troops.

Then comes the trip to Barsoom where John gets a crash course on Martian etiquette from a tribal race known as the Tharks. The green skinned, four-armed peoples are pretty brutal and aggressive but have a strong sense of honor when it comes to religion and customs. Thankfully, the Tharks are much closer in concept to the Navi in Avatar (2010) than the Gungans in Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace (1999). The Tharks are presented in a mostly serious tone. They are a tough, rugged people and the combination of CG and voice acting is done well enough to make the Thark people a very natural part of the cast rather than just a dazzling gimmick.


READ THE ENTIRE REVIEW;  http://firefox.org/news/articles/3674/1/Movie-Review-John-Carter-2012/Page1.html

John Carter Movie Review (VISALIA TIMES DELTA)

“John Carter” is one wacky movie. It features an unwieldy plot that throws in elements of “Flash Gordon,” “Star Wars,” “Indiana Jones,” “Avatar” and “Conan the Barbarian” for good measure.

And even though it clocks in at well over two hours, the film feels over-stuffed and rushed because of all the disparate story lines. Still, in spite of its crazed plot and at-times bloated running time, it’s mostly entertaining.

This is a movie aimed at the 13-year-old boy with a healthy imagination and a thirst for action. “John Carter” features visits to other worlds, sword fights, gun battles, 12-foot-tall, four-armed green creatures with a propensity for violence and a scantily clad princess whose outfit would make even Princess Leia via “Return of the Jedi” blush.

The movie, directed by Andrew Stanton of Pixar “Finding Nemo” and “Wall-E” fame, is based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “John Carter of Mars” series, which was first published starting in 1912. The novels obviously influenced a wide swath of future sci-fi series, including the aforementioned “Flash Gordon” and “Star Wars.”

To describe the plot is almost a losing proposition. It revolves around a Civil War veteran transported to Mars, which is the middle of a civil war between the kingdom of Helium and the mobile city of Zodanga. Turns out the civil war in manipulated by malevolent spirit forces led by Matai Shang (Mark Strong).

To stop the civil war, Helium’s leader (Ciaran Hinds) agrees to marry his lovely daughter Princess Dejah (the scantily clad Lynne Collins) to the evil Zodanga warlord Sab Than (Dominic West).


Read further:  http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/article/20120307/ENTERTAINMENT02/120307015

Film Review: John Carter 3D (Coventry Telegraph)

(12A, 132 mins) Action/Sci-Fi/Romance. Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Mark Strong, Dominic West, Ciaran Hinds, James Purefoy, Daryl Sabara, Willem Dafoe, Samantha Morton, Thomas Haden Church, Polly Walker. Director Andrew Stanton.

INTENDED as the first instalment of an action-packed trilogy, John Carter is a fantastical and fantastically dull battle beyond the stars based on the novel A Princess Of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Oscar-winning director Andrew Stanton, who collected golden statuettes for Finding Nemo and WALL-E, makes a lacklustre live action debut with this sprawling epic.

The miasma of digital effects, which hopes to emulate Avatar by immersing us in an eye-popping alien world, feel flat in 3D and the quality of the computer trickery doesn't match the ambition of Stanton's own script, co-written by Mark Andrews and Michael Chabon.


Read further:  http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/whats-on-coventry-warwickshire/cinema-film/2012/03/06/film-review-john-carter-3d-92746-30472281/

'John Carter' will be difficult to pull off, says Ciaran Hinds (Digital Spy)

Published Friday, Jan 6 2012, 9:34am EST | By Simon Reynolds and Morgan Jeffery |

© ITV

John Carter star Ciaran Hinds has said that the forthcoming Disney blockbuster will be a difficult movie for director Andrew Stanton to "pull off".

The Northern Irish actor appears as Tardos Mors in the science fiction epic alongside Rome co-stars Polly Walker and James Purefoy.

Hinds told Digital Spy that Stanton first approached him to star in the movie after seeing him perform in a stage production of Burnt by the Sun.

© Disney

"Andrew Stanton came to see a play I was doing three years ago at the National. God love him, he sat through a big Russian epic," he said.

"I met him afterwards and he'd seen [HBO drama] Rome and he wanted to use some of us, because he wanted these people on Mars - Jeddaks - to be almost Roman."

"I [then] realized that this is the Andrew Stanton who did Finding Nemo and WALL-E. Those were two of the most beautiful films I know - they touch adults and children alike."

Hinds confessed that Stanton has a challenge on his hands juggling the movie's huge visual effects demands.

© Disney

"I think John Carter is going to be a difficult thing to pull off, but he's a very brilliant man," he commented.

"It's moving three different things. It's moving animation with computer digitalisation and real live-action. How you do that seamlessly I've no idea, and then how that reads through this big interplanetary story... it remains to be seen."

> Ciaran Hinds Above Suspicion Q&A: Silent Scream is a rollercoaster'

Watch the John Carter trailer below:

       


http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/news/a358573/john-carter-will-be-difficult-to-pull-off-says-ciaran-hinds.html