John Carter

...of Mars. There, I said it. Unaccountably, the distributors feel that the words 'of Mars' will put you off where, say, eight foot tall green dudes with four arms aren't going to. Also, apparently, they have scrawled over it with 3D crayons, and that version is best ignored. So, this is me reviewing John Carter OF MARS, in glorious 2D as nature intended.

In summary, John Carter, an American Civil War cavalryman is, accidentally and without realising what's happening to him, transported to the surface of Mars. Mars is a dying planet, with little water, thin air, and so little gravity that he is, in effect, Superman, having way more strength than he needs to get around. 

Once there, he encounters a tribe of 8 foot green Martians from a civilisation that has descended into savagery due to the planet's dwindling resources. Respecting strength above all else, he is cautiously accepted among them, until the arrival a beautiful and human-looking red Martian princess, fleeing an arranged marriage, turns Carter's head, and he grudgingly begins to think about helping her cause rather than just worrying about getting home.

 So, brief history lesson. Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote A Princess Of Mars in 1912, as a serial, which was first published in 1917. So think on that before you scoff at the old fashioned ideas in display here; this is a story which was talking about aerial warfare and weapons of mass destruction before 1912. It is not Burroughs' fault we took his thoughts and made them part of our culture. So many things owe a debt to this story, as much as this one owes a debt to Wells and Verne. This, my friends is a sci-fi *period drama*.

Now you may ask yourself if you actually want to see one of those; it's a fair point. The film-maker has an interesting choice here, does he produce a film with deliberately cheesy dialogue and a plot that is literally one hundred years old, or does he jettison his source material? For my money, he's definitely done the former, and if you're not going to watch the film in that context, it's very much akin to watching an adaptation of Jane Eyre, and asking why they're talking in such old-fashioned language.

If you are minded to watch it as a ripping good yarn, and one which comes to you straight from the dawn of sci-fi itself, you should enjoy it immensely. I certainly did. I don't agree with everything done here; the film is actually a distillation of the first three Barsoom novels; A Princess of Mars, Gods of Mars and Warlord of Mars. I didn't see any particular need for this. I think you could make a perfectly good adaptation of A Princess of Mars, and leave yourself the other two as sequels. So if you think perhaps there's just too many plot elements thrown in with a shovel, yes, you're right.

Ultimately, this film is pretty much eye candy; that's by design, Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote the novels, for all intents and purposes, as travelogues of this imaginary Mars he'd come up with, and that shines through to the film. Beautiful to look at, and viewed as the progenitor of every sci-fi action movie you've ever seen, rather than a rip off of them, full of delicious nostalgia.