Barsoom, Bar None

So you knoiw how there are just those moments where you see this

 

and you think... Awesome! Then there are those where you see this

and think... Hahaha, yeah we'll see about that. Then now and then there's one that migrates from one catagory to the other for mysterious reasons. Usually this happens with things like









 :)








:^D











:D:D:D




Which is bad enough (I mean the ship itself is frowning), but then it even worse when  you get ripped off of a sequel you were really looking forward to.

Never has there been as big an anticipation for a film as that of me and Natasha for John Carter. Rewind several years. We read the Edgar Rice Burroughs books together while riding trains across Russia as a young (spelled F R E E) married couple. I can't quite say why we took to them so much. It's not like they're particularly deep, or clevely written, or anything in particular. I mean, they're filled with inconsistencies and superlative romanticized nonsense. But when you put it all together with imagination and have solid storytelling to support it all, as a whole they just work. They're captivating, and were especially so for us at that time.

Rewind a couple years. Now, consider that this has got to be one of the biggest stories to somehow evade the big screen for 100 years you can imagine how when we saw the trailer we were pretty stoked. The technology and money to do it right, no distracting big names. I guess, they didn't have everyone on Mars naked, but you can't win them all.

So I reserved the best seats at the 3D Imax as early as I could, and took Natasha out and we enjoyed it quite well. I mean sure, they took the usual license, mixed things up, and made a bit of a directoral mess. But they also did very well with some things in solving some of the difficult problems in adapting the original work to the screen. It was different enough that it kept us interested.  They got the main characters right, except for the necessity to make all female sci-fi/fantasy heroines Lara Croft clones, and stayed mostly consistent with the culture and feel of the races, except the red costumes were lame, but they could have done more with developing them. The scenes introducing most of the characters were done brilliantly, Woola's taking the cake. All in all, I wasn't disappointed. I enjoyed rewatching it too. I'd give it a solid seven in a bad mood, an 8 watching it at home and a 9 for the Imax experience (10 if it weren't for the existence of Avatar). I was very curious to find how they would continue the story with the sequel.

So I got on a while ago to check up on when the sequel will be coming out...

Been dropped.

...

!!

...

I guess people were burnt out on paying ripoff prices for 3D and Americans don't read books as it didn't do so well in the box office in America. In Russia it did well (probably because more were familiar with the book, sad but true), so this hit me as a surprise. Since it cost a fortune to make, it was a big bomb.

Sadness. Anger. Frustration.

As much as I could nitpick at how they should have done it, I'm more angry for people not watching it. For all the substance lacking formulaic rubbish that rakes in millions, someone finally puts a genuine effort into as ambitious a project as this, does a decent job, and no one watches it?

Rant. Peeve. Vent.