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Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Signal Watch Re-Watches: John Carter (2012)

I will be brief.

But, I am documenting every time I watch a movie this year.  And it would seem unfair to not tell you.  Yeah, before it left the theater (I assume first run theaters will be dropping the movie from their screens this week), I wanted to see it again.

And, you know, I liked it just as much a second time, if not more after reading the first three Barsoom books.  Lots of little bits that are throw-aways from the book, or book-accurate bits like the hand-on-shoulder greeting among allies, radium shells from the Thark rifles, what a royal @#$%* Sarkoja can be...

Anyway, it would have been nice to see where they wanted to go with the sequels, especially as they took such an incredible number of liberties with the source material.  At least I would have been kept guessing.  At its core, the movie remains true to each character they represent, even if there's no appearance of Phaidor while we see Matai Shang, etc...  and so its not that hard for me to reconcile the differences.

I'll shut up about John Carter for a bit.

4 comments:

  1. I think its so cool you saw this movie again. It was fun!

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  2. It was! You guys also need to try out that new Drafthouse that opened off Slaughter. Its pretty nice.

    We'll see how well Jamie puts up with this John Carter business when I get the BluRay.

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  3. I liked it, too. And given the reception that the movie has gotten, it's sort of like they made a $250 million movie just for us! ;-) (actually, I read that it recently beat put itself in the black by four or five million)

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  4. yeah. Given the way the studio tried to disavow itself before the movie was released and the amount spent on marketing, I think this is the end of the John Carter gravy train. Given that Superman Returns made more than $80 million over the announced budget and was considered a flop, once you take marketing into account, its unlikely we'll head that way again. Unfortunately, the math for these movies also includes the other, smaller movies they're intended to support as tentpole pictures, so unless you get a $500 million return in the US, its considered a failure. Craziness.

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