Hacker Cinema
John Carter
2012 · Film · 132 min
Directed by Andrew Stanton
ActionAdventureScience Fiction
John Carter is a war-weary, former military captain who's inexplicably transported to the mysterious and exotic planet of Barsoom (Mars) and reluctantly becomes embroiled in an epic conflict. It's a world on the brink of collapse, and Carter rediscovers his humanity when he realizes the survival of Barsoom and its people rests in his hands.
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It also had poor advertising and, reportedly, the director overestimated John Carter's name recognition as a character. Yes, he was a character created by Edgar Rice Burroughs (a name people might recognize, but not be able to place) who also created Tarzan (a name people would recognize). But no connection was brought up between Tarzan (popular, well-known) and John Carter (unknown by the time of the movie).
By this broken logic, "Movies are fungible". Because you can turn money into a John Carter, and you can turn Dune: Part 2 into Money. You can borrow against Star Wars, and you can license out Barbie.
But everyone knows, movies are not fungible, because they are not interchangeable. I can buy oil, or unleaded gasoline, and it's basically the same everywhere, it is "replaceable by another nearly-identical item, mutually interchangeable" -- oil and gasoline are fungible. But "Movies" are not fungible, because "Lord of the Rings" is not a replacement for "50 First Dates", which is not a replacement for "The Matrix", even though they're all movies.
Housing is not like Oil, housing is like Movies. It's not fungible, because a 2bedroom row-home in Foster City, CA is not "nearly-identical/mutually interchangeable" with a 4bed,2bath home in suburban Louisville, nor a 1bedroom condo in the Chicago Loop.
Even when the housing is all in the same zip code, much of it is still not fungible with it's alternatives, because housing is so regularly different and unique in a myriad of different ways. ("this one is on a hill, that one is in a valley, it has a higher risk of flooding. This one is in School District A, this house across the street is School District B, this house is in a city with income taxes, this house on the next block over is in a township with no income taxes, that house will need a new roof sooner, this house is in a HOA neighborhood, that house is near the bus line, this house is close to the freeway onramps, that house has fiber but this one is only Comcast Coax, etc")
It's not any stranger than Hollywood renaming the John Carter movie because "Every movie with Mars in the title has been a flop"[1]. And then there's the whole thing about theater and the color yellow.
[1] https://www.gamesradar.com/10-reasons-why-andrew-stanton-dropped-mars-from-the-title-of-john-carter/
There's been lots of trailers where I wondered"huh, maybe the plot will be X or Y, but the actual movie was seemingly more boring.
Of course I forget my unassailably genius alternative plot by the time I leave the theater. But I always thought it would be fun to get plot projections from smart / creatives from trailers.
The phantom menace trailer in particular. Man that could have been a great movie. What if the pod racer was for navigating a dangerous raider filled section of tattooine rather than the dumpster fire race.
The phantom menace has all the elements of the first John Carter film plot (yes I know that series underpins most of star wars anyway), but if the phantom menace was some pulp film where the crash landed Jedi had to make their way through a dangerous unfamiliar land while rallying forces to t heir side and encountering Anakin along the way...
I've read "quite a few books" in my lifetime. I am not interested in having a conversation about any of them. Well... maybe one or two. Love Tolkien but boy did he need an editor. For the most part, many of the books I read are instantly forgettable. Those that aren't, I remember fragments, some bright, salient details surrounded by a fog of dullness.
I watched John Carter the movie with my wife a while back, I know I read the books and shorts many years ago, I couldn't tell you anything about them other than "civil war era soldier" (I think), goes to Mars, does some stuff, saves the day, gets the girl (sort of). All I could think, after having read the Princess of Mars story was about were the plot holes for a few days post-reading. Ripping yarns. And then, after years, utterly forgotten. There was a few parts in the movie where I thought "Oh, I remember that from the book" and other scenes I thought "was that in the book." I have no desire to go find out. For all I know I could be confounding the John Carter stories with Danny Dunn.
I keep a spreadsheet of all the books I've read or started to read. Date started, date completed. There's more started dates than completed dates. Any initial thoughts. Sometimes some updated thoughts a little while later. Whenever one of the books comes up in conversation, I get this uneasy, vague recollection that I might have read that. I usually have to check my list. People want to show off how clever they are by quoting bits of it, or dissecting the story - either they read and re-read books for a living, or they don't read very many books, I can't decide which it is.
If someone were to question my knowledge on a book I claim to have read, I'd look incredibly suspicious. I've found, of the people who have tried this gambit, that it is usually someone trying to engage in a pissing contest and I'm not interested in engaging in that. It also makes tops of your shoes dirty.
P.S. Essayist is a) gatekeeping b) showing off his "I read books" Scout badge c) needs a damn editor.
> This leads us to today, where critic reviews are functionally useless for the broad audience
This is rather over the top, since the article clearly shows reviews and audience ratings does correlate, especially towards the top.
But it is always interesting with movies where the difference of opinion is starkest.
Note that the "audience ratings" does not always correlate with the average audience. Especially with divisive movies like TLJ or the Ghostbusters reboot, disgruntled fans run campaigns to get the score down. TLJ is still one of the highest grossing movies in history, so the audience rating putting it significantly lower than say John Carter or Snakes on a Plane is clearly not representative of the general movie going audience.
My fear with any Snowcrash adaptation is that it will feel like John Carter of Mars (or Warhammer Online [1]). John Carter was a groundbreaking novel, but its ideas became so adapted and universally understood that revisiting them in a movie felt ironically like derivative work.
If I have to endure years of my non-cyberpunk friends talking about how Snowcrash feels like a rip-off of Ready Player One, then I will flip tables.
[1] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/10/i-hope-you-like-text
The thing is, they can keep him as a trademark even if he is public domain. This is how the Edgar Rice Burroughs Estate keeps Tarzan and John Carter, for example.
Maybe it should just be increasingly costly to maintain an old copyright, so a few high-value copyrights like Mickey Mouse could be maintained while much more literature simply passes into the public domain. Or perhaps film copyrights could be separated from print copyrights.
Or maybe we could just not have de facto perpetual copyright.
To a degree - but VFX companies are pretty much forced to underbid themselves in order to get contracts in the first place.
Several companies (Cinesite is a prime example - they underbid on John Carter heavily) underbid in the hope they'll be picked for future films as well.
And because VFX is generally the last (ignoring final grading) part of doing a film (occasionally the VFX for shots is still being done up to 2 weeks before the film's released), there's a hard deadline set that the VFX companies most of the time have to meet.
Often, while doing the VFX, the director's changed their mind several times regarding what they actually want, and any planning / previz that was done to agree on the shot is wasted, as is a lot of the work that was done do get to that point. You can often reuse assets and stuff, but that's about it if there's a change of plans.
Thankfully over the past few years, previz of VFX is getting more and more realistic (in terms of animation / layout - the look is still quite crap), giving directors a more accurate view of what they'll be getting at the end.
I've mainly 3 problems with 3D-movies
1) For some reason, when I watch one, the first 20 minutes or so my left eye feels "numb". Hard to describe, just unpleasant.
2) I wear glasses, and I can't wear contacts. Clunky 3D glasses don't work for me, and some theaters don't use polarizing filters so there's no clip-ons
3) This seems to be related a lot to how a film is edited, but there's an effect that makes everything on screen look like miniatures (as in tilt/shift photography) to me. It's not the same in every movie. Avatar = good, Hobit = soso, John Carter = very very bad.
Sidenotes, yeah, the picture is darker. And somehow the movie does indeed feel "smaller", those effects don't bother me much, but they don't help.
Consequence: I don't buy a 3D-TV, I don't buy a 3D-Beamer, and if I can avoid it I don't go watch a 3D-Movie. Unfortunately, I like going to cinema, and sometimes cinemas only have 3D screenings, which is annoying because then it's a choice between not seeing the movie in a cinema or 3D (both bad options).
John Carter was doomed before it was released. All the reviews doomed it. I even read a critical article on the WSJ. With all the bad press and the amount of money spent to make the film, I decided to see it anyway. I must say that I've seen far worse movies and I found it to be quite entertaining.
This article is kind of disappointing.
> Between 2007 and 2011, pre-tax profits of the five studios controlled by large media conglomerates (Disney, Universal, Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox and Warner Bros) fell by around 40%, says Benjamin Swinburne of Morgan Stanley.
Mass-market luxury industry takes hit during largest recession since Great Depression. News at 11.
>In 2011 American cinemas sold 1.28 billion tickets, the smallest number since 1995. Last year, ticket sales rose back to 1.36 billion and box-office revenues to a record $10.8 billion
So the year over year volatility is in the single digits and following the economic recovery they're back to making record profits.
It seems like the only point the article makes is that that TV is doing better than film right now. But that isn't "movies are doomed," just "TV is doing really well."
>A move from analogue to digital film enabled perfectionist directors to shoot more takes and touch them up afterward, using up expensive production and editing time. Studios have also started to make more “tent pole” films: big releases that can support the bottom line like a pole holds up a tent. These typically rely on expensive special effects, rather than compelling scripts, to attract a global audience.
Jevon's effect in action. The thing is, that's not actually a problem: If you're making more profit from doing that than it costs to do it, it's sustainable. If you're not, why are you doing it? Stop it and go back to creating a larger number of less expensive films based on compelling scripts rather than special effects. It seems to be what people are asking for anyway. You can't simultaneously expect to be taken seriously in complaining that what you're doing isn't working and refuse to change what you're doing.
They keep talking about John Carter as a failure. I saw it. It wasn't great. And the reason wasn't bad acting or bad special effects, it was that it had a mediocre script. So yeah, try hiring some better writers next time. They apparently cost less than special effects anyway.
>Between 2006 and 2012, the six big studios also cut the number of films they made by 14-54%, according to Nomura.
And then they wonder why they're not doing as well as they want to.
>And they started to pay actors and directors far less.
It's about time. Hard to find sympathy for "we're not making enough money" when you're still paying eight figure compensation to individuals.
I have a great Blu-ray player at home, but it's unused owing to the ridiculous prices of the media. Sure the detail is great, but it's got to compete with Netflix for home viewing. In addition, Netflix allows me pause and watch this anywhere on my Nexus 4/7.
A Blu-ray copy of John Carter is equivalent to 2 months Netflix subscription, or 3 months in Blu-ray 3D.
Could have watched John Carter 3D in the cinema (ignoring the poor reviews) only to realize I'd never watch it a second time at home in Blu-ray. 1 month's Cineworld subscription is the same cost the Blu-ray 3D.
I don't think it getting credibility in that way was ever any sort of a risk. A small independent documentary for a niche audience was never going to get the same sort of billing as John Carter.
But that's probably what's happened - it's a small niche interest film that they've just dumped in there. Looking at the new releases I don't think that's all new releases, just potentially popular ones.
Not everything gets equal billing in iTunes and not promoting something isn't the same as burying it. I suspect that this has had precisely the same level of attention applied to it as any other small, indie film - that is none at all.
You are 100% correct. The big blockbuster games will become like movies and the casual games will be like tv shows. Blockbuster movies flop all the time like "John Carter". On the other hand we are going to have freemuim multiplayer games (WoW, Diablo3, COD)
Strange article. Uses John Carter as an example, then none of the "3 simple rules" are applied to it. Nor is it mentioned the reality: the film is good, but was very badly marketed.
I just see a Hollywood that ran out of ideas a long time ago and is desperate for a fresh story. The big movie pushes I've seen this year are John Carter, based on a character that first appeared a hundred years ago, and the Hunger Games, based on a book series that first appeared less than four years ago. Then I see a new Three Stooges film coming out that, among other crazy things, features an appearance of several Jersey Shore cast members. Many other big budget films this year are sequels: Wrath of the Titans, The Avengers, Men In Black 3, etc.
And here, Prufrock451 is a lucky one. Hollywood is starving for ideas, but even when innovative writers come up with a good idea, Hollywood prefers to go with established money-makers and often red-lights obscure ideas. I think they're so willing to go with Prufrock451's story because it got so popular on reddit. There's lower risk. They see that this story can attract a lot of eyeballs, and are hoping that those eyeballs will translate to box office success.
Hollywood likes to blame its decline on pirating, but in reality there are very few new ideas coming out of Hollywood anymore, and they expect to make money repackaging old ideas, putting them in 3D and charging a premium. Hopefully stories like Prufrock451's become more common and we get to see more original ideas make it to the big screen. I certainly don't want to see more movies with the old stooges and the new Jersey stooges.
> I agree that this is a big thing, but Pixar isn't just, or even mostly, iteration, it's the folks doing the iteration.
It should be self-evident that you need very good filmmakers making films -- no technology "makes" a film. But it should also be obvious that Pixar doesn't have a monopoly on "good" filmmakers. What they do have is a monopoly on iteration, due to their use of computerized-animation. Fohr ends that monopoly.
I think we probably agree here. I would further argue that Pixar's people might not be as successful on the live-action side, since the ability to iterate is gone. As exhibit A, I would present Andrew Stanton and John Carter (of Mars), which does not look promising at all. (This is not true for all Pixar directors though, I think Brad Bird will do very well with MI4.)
To be clear: Andrew Stanton is a very good director...when he can iterate, like he did on Finding Nemo and Wall-E. Take away that ability and he struggles, as would be expected. It takes a different kind of skill to make a good film when you can only shoot final footage -- skill Andrew hasn't yet developed to my knowledge.
Live-action filmmaking has more in common with dancing than it does with drawing, and animation is not at all like dancing -- there's no real-time performance aspect to animation like there is with live-action. Expertise in one type of film production does not imply expertise in the other.
FWIW, some Pixar guys are currently looking at John Carter of Mars (although it's going to be a non-Pixar film). Like LotR, it has a mottled history of attempted adaptions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carter_of_Mars_%28film%29
Maybe not directly, but Pixar's Andrew Stanton is starting filming on the PG-13 John Carter of Mars movie later this year with Disney:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carter_of_Mars_(film)
And this is even as Brad Bird is in development on filming 1906 in conjunction with WB. So maybe not Pixar per se, but...