How the science fiction masterpiece cut Disney into historical overturned
Joshua Tyler | publishing
The company has achieved great success in Disney’s long history, including the historically created Marvel Cinematic Universe and its entire animation output in the 90s. Recently, they have suffered a series of failures, which have been ridiculed by critics and ignored by moviegoers. However, Disney has not yet been released in a box office failure in 2012, when John Carter.
At the time of publication, John Carter The questionable difference between the least profitable Disney movie ever. While recent movies like Snow White may have challenged the record very quickly, John Carter is the epic failure trailblazer.
Rolling sci-fi adventure based on classic Edgar Rice Burrows novels, John Carter It should be a huge success, but it never had a chance. That’s why John Carter failed.
The World of Barsoom
John Carter It’s about a disillusioned civil war veteran who mysteriously transports to Mars. Or as the inhabitants of the Earth say, Barsoom.
On Barsoom, Carter discovered that he possesses superhuman agility and power thanks to the Earth’s gravity reduction and thinner atmosphere. He was soon involved in conflicts between various Martian races, including the humanoid red Martians, the barbaric green Martians and the God-like thethers.
Along the way, Carter met and fell down Dejah Thoris, the princess of Helium City Country. He works with her to help her people get rid of their competitors. It’s a simple, old-fashioned hero stuff. In most cases, the movie canceled it.
John Carter should be the princess of Mars
It doesn’t matter whether John Carter’s movie ended up canceling the movie, because no one bought the ticket to watch it. John Carter Almost added from the term “John Carter” to the movie’s poster, it’s almost doomed to fail.
Initially, Disney will be with far superior, more descriptive titles John Carter of Marsbut they gave up on “Mars” early in the production process and only obtained the common name of the film’s protagonist.
When John Carter was released, the novel Edgar Rice Burroughs, where the film was located, had been around for more than 100 years.
Disney has barely mentioned the origin of the story, nor has it really played the fact based on the classics.
So when Disney started promoting their big blockbusters, no one knew who or what John Carter was. And, as the title of the movie, it’s hard to imagine something more boring and boring than “John Carter”.
And there seems to be no other title.
The first book in the Burroughs series is called Princess of MarsIt’s an exciting and interesting title that can sell some tickets. Especially considering the potential Disney princess connection.
Instead, they imagined it with the most versatile, common name and expected it to attract people’s interest.
It may be intentional to discard all possible connections with books.
In their John Carter movies, Disney downplays the very R-rated content in these books with a clear effort to make it as family-friendly as possible. They may not want their original parents and think that their version of the movie may not be suitable for the kids.
If you read the books about John Carter written by Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1912, you’ll find it very different from the movie Disney made.
Burroughs’ books are violent and sexy.
They are more of a sci-fi version of Conan, the Barbarian, than what you expect from a top Pixar director.
What you really need to know is that for most of the time in the books, everyone is completely naked.
There is a reason for this, it is actually a key plot point, so it is rarely covered up.
Avatar is PG-13 John Carter
avatarThis is “borrowing” most of its plot from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter book, which solves some nudity by turning its dressed warrior character into a blue CGI alien. Somehow, this is culturally acceptable, but from my point of view it is not clear why.
But Disney didn’t make such movies, so instead of finding the hard PG-13 middle ground Cameron they tried to squeeze into the soft PG-13 family-friendly format.
And it doesn’t work. No one took their kids to see it. The facts followed the ticket sales data show that most of the people who bought tickets were over 25 years old.
Maybe they should tell people that John Carter is Andrew Stanton’s first live-action film, his first two movies, wall-e and Looking for Nemoare all Oscar winners and beloved real-time classics.
However, Disney has achieved few of these achievements.
Since Disney won’t make this a gritty movie, the authors of the Ratings movie Book might want them to be them, and they won’t promote Andrew Stanton, so they can play other advantages of their script when promoting it. They didn’t do that either.
In books and movies, John Carter It’s an adventure story, yes, but a romance built around the princess and civilians. However, Disney never bothered to tell its potential audience that it might kiss.
More reasons to blame Avatar
avatar It was a huge blow around the same time, partly because avatar What is so successful is that it attracts women, not men. Again, Avatar stole it John CarterThe plot and many of the same beats are there.
avatarThe trailer does not shyly play romantic angles, using Cameron’s movie as a story of taboo love.
John CarterThe movie seems to be mainly used to create pictures that look good on the little boy’s lunch box.
They have very little romance, and worse yet, the film’s powerful, responsible female character Dejah Thoris is very little.
Dejah Thoris is a warrior scientist and is arguably the most important character in the movie.
Young girls will look up to characters like Dejah Thoris well, but because of the marketing of the movie, these girls may not realize she is an important part of the story.
Mars chaos
John Carter Opened with a re-edited version of the Disney logo, bathing in red to commemorate the movie’s Mars position.
This logo is the last even out of reach setting you see in the movie, as it’s mostly in barren deserts, which may be easy in Utah…and is actually where they shoot.
This is a problem because when you look at the trailer for the movie, and when you watch the movie, it is really hard to really feel the sense of wonder the movie is trying to convey.
This problem also continues to encounter with the alien species John Carter.
Tharks look completely strange, so, no doubt, they are the best parts of the movie.
But Dejah Thoris and her people, Edgar Rice Burroughs, described it as the “red” people of Mars, mostly looking like humans, they put on a bunch of spray tans and then everyone went out.
Regardless of how Disney sees it selling in the small clips, all of this ends up looking too familiar.
Perhaps that’s why the Disney marketing team shys away from the Dejah Thoris Front and Center who will be very clumsy human-looking, and instead insists on wasting almost all of their marketing to show a smaller battle in the context between John Carter and John Carter and Barsoomian White Papes.
But movies taken on alien planets should look and feel different. It should feel exciting, like new things you have to see. It’s like somewhere you want to be. world John CarterNevertheless, all its charms were never exciting and novel.
It is possible to tell the story in a way that actually makes people see it, but the Disney team never found it.
John Carter crashes
John Carter Disney is a huge investment, with production costs exceeding $260 million in 2012.
The horror marketing campaign for the movie cost more than $100 million.
John Carter Opened in second place, not all successful animated movies Lolaxin the second week of release.
Things only get worse from there.
Analysts estimate Disney lost as much as $250 million in the movie.
This is not a blow from critics.
Comments are mild, and the world’s largest Roger Ebert spawning Fan tries to find the positives in it, and like most critics, he gives it a mediocre intermediate star rating.
In the process of failure John Carter Actor Taylor Kitsch had a great career, and he was regarded as a warm-up and a madman at the time.
John Carter It’s not the only science fiction disaster, it’s just the biggest disaster.
Just before the box office disaster a year ago Cowboys and aliens.
But this is John CarterThe historic collapse has changed the trajectory of Hollywood sci-fi movies.
In the following years, we began to get darker, tougher science fiction as the studio became more risk averse and returned to the well.
The era of throwing a lot of budgets on experimental, optimistic adventure scripts is over, showing no signs of coming back.
However, that doesn’t mean that John Carter is not worth your time. Despite all its flaws, Andrew Stanton’s film is fun, Willem Dafoe’s work, as Tars Tarkas deserves entry only.
Burroughs’ books are still groundbreaking and great. Part of them Conan Barbarian and part Lost in space. Maybe one day, a better company will find a way to make them just.
