By Joshua Tyler | Published
In the long and historical history of Disney, the company has had massive successes, including the Marvel Cinematic Universe of History and its complete animated production in the 90s. More recent, have suffered a series of failures, make fun of critics and ignored by the movie Moers. However, Disney has not yet exceeded the failure of the 2012 box office when the study launched the large -budget science fiction adventure film John Carter.
At the time of its launch, John Carter He maintained the doubtful distinction of being the less profitable Disney film ever made. While recent movies like Snow White can soon challenge that album, John Carter was a path of paths in an epic failure.
An ongoing science fiction adventure based on classic novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter A massive success should have one leg, but never had a chance. That is why John Carter failed.
The world of Barsoom
John Carter It is a disappointed veteran of the civil war mysteriously transported to Mars. Or as the planet residents, Barsoom.
In Barsoom, Carter discovers that he appreciates the reduced gravity of the planet and the thinner atmosphere, has superhuman agility and strength. It is quickly involved in the conflicts between the various Martian breeds, including humanoid red marians, barbarian green marians and therm.
Along the way, Carter is and falls in love with Dejah Thoris, princess of Helium’s city-state. The teams with her to help save their people from their rivals. They are simple things of ancient and outdated hero. For the most part, the film is carried out.
John Carter should have been a Princess of Mars
If John Carter’s movie did it or not, ultimately, it didn’t matter because no one bought a ticket to see it. John Carter He was sentenced to failure almost from the moment the words “John Carter” were added to the posters of the film.
Originally, Disney was going to go with the much higher and more descriptive title John Carter de MarsBut they launched “from Mars” at the beginning of the production process and were only with the very generic name of the main character of the films.
The novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs about what is based on the film was over 100 years old when John Carter was launched.
Disney almost did not mention the origins of history and did not really play the fact that it is based on a classic at all.
So, nobody knew who John Carter was, when Disney began to promote his great box office success. And, as a movie title, it is difficult to imagine something more boring and not described than “John Carter.”
And it is not as if there are other available titles.
The first book of the Burroughs series is called A princess from MarsAnd that is the son of the exciting and interesting title that some tickets would have sold. Especially given the potential connection of Disney princess.
Instead, they were with the most generic and common name imaginable and hoped that people’s interest would arouse.
Dismaining all possible connections to books may have been intentional.
For your John Carter movie, Disney attenuates the R-Red content of the books, in a clear effort to make it as familiar as possible. They probably did not do it because the parents the original and thinking that their cinematographic version might not be destined for children.
If you read the books Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote about John Carter in 1912, what he will find is very different from the Disney movie made of her.
Burroughs’ books are violent and sexy.
They are more like a science fiction version of Conan The Barbarian than something you would expect from the main director of Pixar.
All you really need to know is that most of the time in books, everyone is completely naked.
There is a reason for this, and a fundamental plot point is real, so it is covered very little.
Avatar is PG-13 John Carter
AvatarThat “takes” much of his plot of John Carter’s books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, resolved part of this nude problem by converting his scarcely dressed warrior Charrior Charrior Charrior in extraterrestrials CGI Azules. Somehow, that is more culturally acceptable, although, from my point of view, it is not exactly clear why.
But Disney does not make that son of movies, so instead of going for the hard PG-13 Middlement Cameron found, they tried to get into a soft format for the PG-13 family.
And it didn’t work. No one led his children to see him. Ticket sales data after the event revealed that most of those who bought a ticket were over 25 years old.
Maybe they should have told people that John Carter was Andrew Stanton’s first live action film, whose two previous films, Wall and Find NemoThey were bots and instant classic winners.
However, Disney did very little of those achievements.
Since Disney was not going to make the sandy and qualified film, the author of the books could have wanted them to be, and they were not going to promote Andrew Stanton, they could have played their SCIT strengths. They did not do it either.
Both in the books and in the movie, John Carter It is an adventure story, yes, but a construction around a romance between a princess and a plebeian. However, Disney never bothered to tell his potential audience that there could be kisses.
More reasons to blame for avatar
Avatar It was a great success at this same time, and part of La Razón Avatar It was a great success that appealed to women as much or more than attracted men. And again, Avatar stole a lot from John CarterThe plot and many of the same rhythms are there.
AvatarThe trailers are shy when reproducing the romantic angle, creating Cameron’s film as a prohibited love story.
John CarterThe trailers acted as thinking that the film was mainly built to creatures that could look good in the lunchbox of a small child.
There is very little romance in them and worse, very little of the films, Take-Charge’s main female character, Dejah Thoris.
Dejah Thoris is a warrior scientist and possibly the most important character in the film.
Young girls would do well to admire a character as Dejah Thoris, but due to the marketing of the film, those girls probably did not realize that it was an important part of the story.
A Martian disaster
John Carter It opens with a restructured version of the Disney logo, bathed in red to honor the Martian location of the film.
That logo is the last scenario of equally remotely strange aspect that you will see in the film, since it is mostly established in a bars desert that a leg could have in Utah … and spreading that is where they trigger, actually.
That is a problem because you look at the movie trailers and, in fact, to some extent while looking at the movie, it is really difficult to feel the feeling of astonishment that the film is trying to condemn.
That problem takes to the alien species that John Carter also finds.
The Thars look completely oblivious and, as a result, they are, without a doubt, the best part of the film.
But Dejah Thoris and its people, whom Edgar Rice Burroughs described as the “red” people of Mars, mostly resemble humans who put on a lot of tan in spray and then to get bad tattoos.
No matter how Disney has marketed it, seen in small fragments, all this ends very familiar.
Perhaps that is why the Disney marketing team shunned to put the forehead and the center of Dejah Thoris, with a human appearance, and insisted on wasting almost his entire marketing to show a minor contextexy between John Carter and Giant.
But a film set on an alien planet must be seen and feel different. I should feel exciting, like something new that you have to go see. As in a place that you want to be and explore. The world of John CarterDespite all his charms, he never feels exciting and new.
It may be possible to tell this story in a way that makes people see it, but Disney’s team never found it.
John Carter crashes
John Carter It was a large investment of Disney, which cost more than $ 260 million in production costs in 2012.
More than $ 100 million were in the horrible marketing campaign of the film.
John Carter Opened at number two, behind the non -real animated film The LoraxIn its second week or launch.
Things only worsened from there.
Analysts estimate that Disney lost up to $ 250 million in the film.
And it was exactly a success among critics.
The reviews were warm, and while Roger Ebert, the biggest in the world Spawn Fan, tried to find the positive aspects, hey, like most critics, cool a mediocre mediocre rating.
In the failure process, John Carter He shuddered in the career of Actor Taylor Kitsch, who at that time was seen as a heat and corner.
John Carter It was the only science fiction disaster, only the greatest.
It was preceded only one year earlier by the box office disaster Cowboys and aliens.
But it was John CarterThe historical collapse that changed the trajectory of science fiction films in Hollywood.
In the following years, we began to be darker and sandy science fiction, as again, the studies became more risk and returned to the well.
The era of launching massive budgets in experimental and optimistic adventure scripts is and shows no sign of returning.
However, it does not mean that John Carter is not worth it. Despite all its defects, Andrew Stanton’s film is very fun and the work of Willem Dafoe, since Tars Tarkas is worth the cost of admission alone.
And Burroughs’ books remain innovative and fantastic. They are part Conan the barbarian and part Lost in space. Maybe one day a better company finds a way to do justice.
