Over at The Secret Sun, Christopher Knowles provides a fascinating, nuanced reading of Disney’s recent Mars movie-disaster John Carter.
If
I’m being nitpicky, though (which I am), I’ll have to take issue with the
suggestion that John Carter was “sabotaged by outside forces.” To be fair, this
suggestion comes not directly from Chris Knowles, but from Richard Hoagland,
who Knowles refers to in his article as having highlighted (on Coast to Coast AM) the fact that
celebrated director Andrew Stanton’s name featured scantily in Disney’s
marketing for John Carter: “As
Richard C. Hoagland pointed out, his name was nowhere to be seen in the
promotion or advertising of the film. Very strange,” writes Knowles.
Actually, not strange at all. Disney didn’t want
audiences to actively associate the live-action and thematically mature John Carter with Andrew Stanton’s
name, which previously had been linked exclusively to animated productions
suitable for very young audiences (A
Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo,
WALL-E). It was a marketing
strategy on Disney’s part. Simple as that.
But no marketing strategy, however daring, could
have saved John Carter from
box-office oblivion, contrary to what Richard Hoagland has suggested. The movie
was simply too damn odd to succeed. It showed no interest in conforming to
generic convention. It doesn’t fit the blockbuster mould. Ponderous and
literary, the movie is faithful to the point of slavishness to the dense
mythology of its source material -- material that today, in comparison to the
likes of Tolkien’s most famous work, is outrageously obscure.
What killed John
Carter was the Martian
Curse, which is not in any way conspiratorial or
mystical, but is a cultural spectre risen from our collective disinterest not in Mars
itself, but in science-fiction movies about the Red Planet. Paradoxical though
it might sound, we are simultaneously fascinated by Mars as a scientific curiosity
and bored senseless by Hollywood’s imaginings of it. So much has been written
about Mars from a factual standpoint that it seems almost as familiar to us as
our own moon (and last time I checked there’s not a thriving sub-genre of moon
movies).
Science fiction as a genre is infinitely bigger and
more exotic than Mars, and given that we are so frequently told by officialdom
that Mars is almost certainly lifeless (an assertion that will likely be proved
hollow sooner rather than later), it seems unrealistic in the extreme for
Hollywood executives to expect us to queue round the block to see movies about
a dusty red rock which, in cosmic terms, is just across the street from us. For
fans of the science-fiction genre -- and for cinemagoers in general -- Mars
simply feels too close to home. Sign me up anytime for a trip to a galaxy far,
far away... but Mars? Been there, done that. Sorry.
>"So much has been written about Mars from a factual standpoint that it seems almost as familiar to us as our own moon."
ReplyDeleteIndeed. 'Tis a double-edged sword that after 4000 generations, Mars has finally turned into a place.
Take that image you used. Any 9-year-old would be able to know the Martian sky is not blue, but pink! Maybe Knowles is right, and deep down we know that when we visit Mars in our fiction, we're actually visiting our own past, but we don't want to accept it... yet.
Coincidentally, it was thanks to Chris Knowles that I got John Carter. I enjoy reading his blog and thought, 'If Chris rates it, I'd better give it a try.' Perhaps it was one of those that doesn't do well and is actually bloody good.
ReplyDeleteNo, I didn't like it either and didn't finish it.
I found the opening of the movie to be too generic and superficial. Stock 'warriors,' flying contraptions and an intended sense of drama that I couldn't relate to due to the veneer getting in the way. Chances are a lot of people felt the same way and were likewise a little detached from the start - too detached to suspend disbelief.
I agree too that Mars is too close and even the least informed of us has a knowledge that it's a dead world.
Well, there are quite a few movies that feature the moon, such as "Moon", "Apollo 18", "Transformers: Dark of the Moon", "Fly me to the Moon" etc.
ReplyDeleteSo I'm not sure I believe the idea that Mars movies fail because they are not exotic enough. Maybe it's because people associate Mars with campy 50s style sci-fi (Think "Mars Attacks")
Obviously Hollywood has produced some notable movies over the years about or featuring the moon, but a handful of titles scattered across the decades hardly constitues a sub-genre, never mind a thriving one.
Delete'Moon' was critically acclaimed but struggled to make even $5 million profit; 'Apollo 18' opened to poor reviews and disappointing box-office considering its intensive viral marketing campaign; and 'Fly Me to the Moon' was panned by critics and grossed less than $10 million.
Yes, 'Transformers 3' was a huge success, but that has less to do with the moon than it does the enormous 'Transformers' fan-base.
But I do think there may be some truth to your suggestion that audiences consider Mars 'campy' based on its former B-movie associations.
The obvious answer then is Transformers - The Red Planet.
ReplyDelete