John Carter
Mar. 15th, 2012 08:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackJohn Carter was surprisingly good. It was unashamedly a cheesy, pulpy story, but it did a good job at being enjoyable and funny without being completely goofy. I never read any of the books, so I don't know how it compares -- I have the impression it jetisoned a lot of stereotypes that shouldn't be acceptible today, although I don't know for sure what the books were like.
Race
If you look at it objectively, the plot with the Thark tribe is very similar to Avatar, except "worse" in that the natives are brutal instead of wise: socially and technologically unsophisticated tribe is warlike and brutal, except for wise leader and his daughter who are more compassionate because they happen to share humans' One True Social Bonding, but are overthrown by brutish second in command who hates the human interloper, but the human interloper returns and with a giant feat of bravery takes over the tribe in single combat with a wild beast, and then uses them against his enemies, who are also their true enemies, except they were too stupid to see it until he forced them to.
And it's even worse than that, because I didn't mention some of the brutality: seriously, ritual mass infanticide in a 12A rated movie? I don't want to judge, but good idea or not, I'm surprised "green people kill babies" made it past the censors.
I hear in the book it was even worse (although some people say it was progressive for it's time, which I doubt, but can't comment), with them being described as inherently brutal.
But in the film, they come across to me really well. There's stuff that would squick many people, so I don't know if I should say that it worked for me. But to me, the major Thark characters came across very well. Tars Tarkas was very sympathetic: acting switfy, compassionately and competently to communicate with John Carter when the other Tharks saw him interfering with the nursary. Even the broken-tusk guy seemed very plausible: he wasn't portrayed as just randomly brutal and stupid and selfish (was he in the book?), but it's very plausible that he might want to be in charge, not have a foreigner trampling all over their laws and traditions, and not get dragged into a war between two human kingdoms that so far haven't interfered with them, and at the end when John challenges him, he's not afraid to meet it even though John's just killed two giant yetis in the arena.
I cared about the Thark characters, and they didn't feel just like a plot device, it felt like John had to care about their politics as much as the humans, and that they had genuine occasion to make decisions and do stuff.
Alien CGI
I thought they were animated very well. When they moved their upper arms together it looked a bit too slick to me: it's plausible both arms would move entirely syncrhonised, but deliberate or not, it looks like they'd simplified the body capture a tinge more than ideal. But they didn't always do that, and in general they did a good job of looking realistic and alien at the same time. It's nice to see big budget films embracing this sort of thing: it gives me hope for more scifi with photorealistic less/non-humanoid aliens.
Gender
The film very nearly passes the Bechdel test. John Carter sends the human princess off with the green princess when they're being pursued, and one says something to the other, and IIRC again in another fight scene, but they don't actually _exchange_ words in the same scene.
In general the film scores about half marks. The princess is not just scantily clad, everyone is scantily clad, and the princess is also a head scientist and excellent swordfighter. So she doesn't just sit around waiting to be rescued. But OTOH, she does spend about _half_ the time being rescued.
It has two important female characters, which is pretty good for a swords and sorcery film. But they could easily have made a lot of the background warriors into women, but they didn't. The bad conquerer wants to wed the princess to cement his empire. And to be fair, this is portrayed as something bad that happens, not just "what princesses are for". But they could easily have come up with something even less stereotypical, but they didn't.
The princess isn't dismissed out of hand when she develops Science That Will Win the War, or when she says she shouldn't marry the bad guy. But on the other hand, she _is_ dismissed.
Physics and biology
Unsurprisingly, these made absolutely no sense. I can't think of any plausible arrangement that would let everyone else walk around like on Earth, but let John Carter jump hundreds of feet in the air. But I think the film did very much the right thing in establishing them quickly and leaving them alone. There's a great temptation to add some technobabble bullshit to try to explain why Mars LOOKS dead but isn't, when it normally matters a lot more than you establish your premises implicitly, but then don't violate them later.
Humour
I thought this was done very well. A lot of scenes were very funny, but without driving the humour into the ground.
Plot
This wasn't terrible. No glaring plot _holes_ jumped out at me, and what the characters did mostly made sense, which is pretty good for any major motion picture, let alone a swords and scorcery mars flick.
But I was left feeling somewhat unsatisfied by the light blue cloaked guys and the origin of the world-jumping magic -- I felt we never had any idea where they really came from or what they really wanted, even after they tried to explain it.
OTOH, I though the cloaked guy/guys were portrayed quite well: the film correctly portrayed them as extremely powerful and moderately competent, and yet being sufficiently non-omnipotent it didn't seem unrealistic when someone occasionally got the jump on them, and it made just the right amount of use out of their shapeshifting.
Race
If you look at it objectively, the plot with the Thark tribe is very similar to Avatar, except "worse" in that the natives are brutal instead of wise: socially and technologically unsophisticated tribe is warlike and brutal, except for wise leader and his daughter who are more compassionate because they happen to share humans' One True Social Bonding, but are overthrown by brutish second in command who hates the human interloper, but the human interloper returns and with a giant feat of bravery takes over the tribe in single combat with a wild beast, and then uses them against his enemies, who are also their true enemies, except they were too stupid to see it until he forced them to.
And it's even worse than that, because I didn't mention some of the brutality: seriously, ritual mass infanticide in a 12A rated movie? I don't want to judge, but good idea or not, I'm surprised "green people kill babies" made it past the censors.
I hear in the book it was even worse (although some people say it was progressive for it's time, which I doubt, but can't comment), with them being described as inherently brutal.
But in the film, they come across to me really well. There's stuff that would squick many people, so I don't know if I should say that it worked for me. But to me, the major Thark characters came across very well. Tars Tarkas was very sympathetic: acting switfy, compassionately and competently to communicate with John Carter when the other Tharks saw him interfering with the nursary. Even the broken-tusk guy seemed very plausible: he wasn't portrayed as just randomly brutal and stupid and selfish (was he in the book?), but it's very plausible that he might want to be in charge, not have a foreigner trampling all over their laws and traditions, and not get dragged into a war between two human kingdoms that so far haven't interfered with them, and at the end when John challenges him, he's not afraid to meet it even though John's just killed two giant yetis in the arena.
I cared about the Thark characters, and they didn't feel just like a plot device, it felt like John had to care about their politics as much as the humans, and that they had genuine occasion to make decisions and do stuff.
Alien CGI
I thought they were animated very well. When they moved their upper arms together it looked a bit too slick to me: it's plausible both arms would move entirely syncrhonised, but deliberate or not, it looks like they'd simplified the body capture a tinge more than ideal. But they didn't always do that, and in general they did a good job of looking realistic and alien at the same time. It's nice to see big budget films embracing this sort of thing: it gives me hope for more scifi with photorealistic less/non-humanoid aliens.
Gender
The film very nearly passes the Bechdel test. John Carter sends the human princess off with the green princess when they're being pursued, and one says something to the other, and IIRC again in another fight scene, but they don't actually _exchange_ words in the same scene.
In general the film scores about half marks. The princess is not just scantily clad, everyone is scantily clad, and the princess is also a head scientist and excellent swordfighter. So she doesn't just sit around waiting to be rescued. But OTOH, she does spend about _half_ the time being rescued.
It has two important female characters, which is pretty good for a swords and sorcery film. But they could easily have made a lot of the background warriors into women, but they didn't. The bad conquerer wants to wed the princess to cement his empire. And to be fair, this is portrayed as something bad that happens, not just "what princesses are for". But they could easily have come up with something even less stereotypical, but they didn't.
The princess isn't dismissed out of hand when she develops Science That Will Win the War, or when she says she shouldn't marry the bad guy. But on the other hand, she _is_ dismissed.
Physics and biology
Unsurprisingly, these made absolutely no sense. I can't think of any plausible arrangement that would let everyone else walk around like on Earth, but let John Carter jump hundreds of feet in the air. But I think the film did very much the right thing in establishing them quickly and leaving them alone. There's a great temptation to add some technobabble bullshit to try to explain why Mars LOOKS dead but isn't, when it normally matters a lot more than you establish your premises implicitly, but then don't violate them later.
Humour
I thought this was done very well. A lot of scenes were very funny, but without driving the humour into the ground.
Plot
This wasn't terrible. No glaring plot _holes_ jumped out at me, and what the characters did mostly made sense, which is pretty good for any major motion picture, let alone a swords and scorcery mars flick.
But I was left feeling somewhat unsatisfied by the light blue cloaked guys and the origin of the world-jumping magic -- I felt we never had any idea where they really came from or what they really wanted, even after they tried to explain it.
OTOH, I though the cloaked guy/guys were portrayed quite well: the film correctly portrayed them as extremely powerful and moderately competent, and yet being sufficiently non-omnipotent it didn't seem unrealistic when someone occasionally got the jump on them, and it made just the right amount of use out of their shapeshifting.