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Both a notoriously costly film to make and an equally infamous box office flop, “John Carter” is not without its faults. The film can’t escape the white savior trappings of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ source material, “A Princess of Mars,” and its world-building is a tad wonky at times. On top of that, Andrew Stanton’s movie (which he co-wrote with “Brave” co-director Mark Andrews and “Spider-Man 2” scribe Michael Chabon) would rather you didn’t dwell on the fact that John fought for the Confederacy (!) and all this may imply about him.
With those caveats out of the way, there’s an underlying (if you will forgive the pretentious wording) cinematic quality to “John Carter” that’s allowed it to stand the test of time better than other tentpoles from 10 years ago, purely in terms of its visuals. Stanton’s background in animation shines through in the movie’s best scenes, like a waggish montage where John stages multiple escape attempts after being captured by Union soldiers. A similarly playful, inventive sequence later in the film shows John as he clumsily adjusts to Mars’ low gravity, slowly realizing he can leap great distances across the red planet.
Working with cinematographer Dan Mindel (“Star Trek,” “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”), Stanton combines the gravelly textures of a Western with the striking aesthetic of a pulp sci-fi epic, making the movie’s fantastical vision of Mars feel more alive and tactical. By mixing real-world locations in southern Utah with studio sets and green screens, the spectacle in “John Carter” also comes across as fittingly massive in scope for an interplanetary narrative of this nature. Compared to the directors behind certain recent $200 million+ projects (naming no names!), Stanton delivered a whole lot more bang with the bucks Disney gave him.
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