Review: John Carter

Fairly decent guilty-pleasure popcorn fare.  It's nice to see a movie with amazing visuals and art direction that doesn't bore anyone with a brain to tears.  (And the art direction really is fantastic; they basically took Frank Frazetta's drawings, tossed in a few steampunky technological complications, and ran with it.)  The story is...a little overcomplicated and wobbly in bits, but it did have a couple moments of surprising emotional resonance.  I can't say I found Taylor Kitsch's acting 100% convincing, but he did a serviceable job - and he sure looks good in pulp-novel flesh-baring outfits. 

Which brings me to another point:  it was a surprisingly gender-egalitarian film for its genre.  Yes, the major Martian culture was based heavily on ancient Rome (again, in keeping with the pulp theme; a nice, if perhaps unintentional, wink at the audience was the casting of several prominent actors from HBO's Rome as members of the royal court), so that entails a definite patriarchal attitude.  But the aforementioned flesh-baring outfits were present on actors of both genders, and there were two separate female characters who came across as having motivations and agency of their own.  Sadly, the action scenes sort of come along and take up the time that might have fleshed anyone out into being properly three-dimensional, but as both sides get fairly short shrift there, it didn't twig me on the gender-relations front. 

Not great cinema, but a fun swords-and-sorcery flick with plenty of pretty things to look at.  Really, this is what Conan should have been but utterly failed at.  B

Review: John Carter

Fairly decent guilty-pleasure popcorn fare.  It's nice to see a movie with amazing visuals and art direction that doesn't bore anyone with a brain to tears.  (And the art direction really is fantastic; they basically took Frank Frazetta's drawings, tossed in a few steampunky technological complications, and ran with it.)  The story is...a little overcomplicated and wobbly in bits, but it did have a couple moments of surprising emotional resonance.  I can't say I found Taylor Kitsch's acting 100% convincing, but he did a serviceable job - and he sure looks good in pulp-novel flesh-baring outfits. 

Which brings me to another point:  it was a surprisingly gender-egalitarian film for its genre.  Yes, the major Martian culture was based heavily on ancient Rome (again, in keeping with the pulp theme; a nice, if perhaps unintentional, wink at the audience was the casting of several prominent actors from HBO's Rome as members of the royal court), so that entails a definite patriarchal attitude.  But the aforementioned flesh-baring outfits were present on actors of both genders, and there were two separate female characters who came across as having motivations and agency of their own.  Sadly, the action scenes sort of come along and take up the time that might have fleshed anyone out into being properly three-dimensional, but as both sides get fairly short shrift there, it didn't twig me on the gender-relations front. 

Not great cinema, but a fun swords-and-sorcery flick with plenty of pretty things to look at.  Really, this is what Conan should have been but utterly failed at.  B