TAG TEAM REVIEW: JOHN CARTER - Page 11

I don't think anyone suggested the creative team here was flawed (I mean, it sounds great!).  But the film resulting from their collaboration was heavily flawed and the suggestion is that perhaps Stanton works better (at least this time) within the walls of Pixar.  Chabon is credited as the writer, but Stanton was still steering the ship through production/reshoots/post-production.

I wish!

 

A bad script is a bad script, and no one author, even those of the highest pedigree, is incapable of producing one.  I was surprised to learn that Chabon was involved with this screenplay, as it certainly does feel - in places - like something that has numerous fingerprints all over it.  There's certainly nothing in the movie that I think represents Chabon's talent alone.  I also think there's a key difference between studios carelessly inputting ideas and, as Joshua said, more democratic idea-checking between various creatives.

 

It's also worth noting that Chabon is credited as one of three writers, Stanton himself being one of them.  The suggestion that he could have worked better with Pixar's creatives on certain aspects of the screenplay is not, in my opinion, an unfair one.

Poor Mark Andrews.  Nobody cares that he was involved with the writing.  Hahahahaha

Very curious to see how well BRAVE will turn out under his hand.

 

Okay, yeah. I agree, in a way. Perhaps my problems are with the way movies are made in Hollywood. But do you think Chabon had someone craning over his shoulder playing Socrates when he wrote Kavalier & Clay? There's a certain integrity in each art form, and JC, as a more "auteur-driven" project, is more dignified than most as films go. Now maybe that isn't very much, and I'm silly to hope for that and most of the time, I don't. But to go to town on JC for exactly those qualities that make it a dignified movie, and a worthwhile creative attempt, is like hating on the idea of art in general.

Eh, Gore Vidal helped write Caligula.

In John Carter's case, Chabon had at least Stanton craning over his shoulder.  Chabon wasn't the only one writing the movie.

I'm sure he had an editor he trusted, but I certainly see your point. But I honestly don't think you can make a sturdy comparison between movies and novels like that. K&C is massive and sprawling, in a way only a book can be. Movies are so different, unless you're Malick. And then we're dealing with a whole different kind of cinema than blockbusters.

 

Point being, novels can't waste money.

 

 

But everyone's saying the creative method was flawed, in that the favored option here seems to be filmmaking by committee rather than letting proven artists like Stanton and Chabon do their jobs. That it's seriously being considered that more checks on Stanton's "vision" would have produced a better movie is the point I'm taking issue with. 

Oh, were we?  That's not what I intended.

 

 

But don't you think JC is kind of massive and ungainly and unsturdy in kind of a very novelistic way? That's part of what I like about it! It's not compact and succinct and act-conscious. In a lot of ways it feels like the meandering chaos of a Burroughs plot meeting the character-conscious sprawl of Chabon. To me, that's pretty cool (although I appreciate I'm probably in a minority in my appreciation of both authors). There might be more overlap between the two art forms than you think.

 

Also, novels often waste money. Publishing costs dough, too.

That's interesting, because the messiness of the movie that you liked seems to oppose what Stanton was trying to achieve with the movie by giving John Carter an arc and a more traditional narrative.

 

Marketing budget wasn't part of CARTER's problem.

 

Look, I think this particular argument really all comes down to how you feel about the movie. If I LOVED the film, I might be saying the same thing as you. HUDSUCKER PROXY was a bomb. But I view it like, "Who cares. At least someone was dumb enough to finance it and now it exists for me to love it. That's all that matters." I'd say the same thing if the LOTR movies had completely tanked. I'm glad CARTER does exist, but I feel like Stanton fucked up a lot on it too, killing the chances of it becoming the franchise it was meant to be. Something I know HE wanted too. And I don't actually think he achieved what he set out to do with the story either. And I certainly don't view it as novelistic, as one of the biggest problems with the movie is how little character development we get for our bazillion characters.

 

EDIT: Though now I feel like I'm arguing that the movie is bad. Which I don't think.

 

I don't see you addressing the art at all, though. You haven't even seen the film, right? All I've seen you do is indulge in box office schadenfreude. Frankly I find this to be a shitty and disappointing mentality to see coming from someone on CHUD, especially one of its better posters. I mean yeah, fine, we can't completely divorce the art from the business, but as film lovers I'd think that the former would be exponentially more important to us and worthy of discussion than the latter. What happens when we switch that around? People overlook flawed but interesting, good films. You mention HEAVEN'S GATE, which is a perfect example. There are lessons to be learned from flops like that, but that shit is primarily for the business people, not for the lovers of the artform.

 

You know what else is an inextricable aspect of Hollywood? Behind the scenes interpersonal drama and conflict. Aren't you a guy who typically balks at people who are overly invested in that stuff? The attitude you're displaying in this thread doesn't seem that far removed from those people.

 

Sorry to kind of call you out like that, but like I said, it's disappointing to me to see conversation on CHUD overwhelmed by the business side of this.

 

Well, I don't know if you can get more traditional than Carter as portrayed in the original novels. Giving him an arc actually feels like more of an update than a move towards convention, since the Carter of Burroughs is pretty much static as a character. Burroughs' messiness comes from convoluted plot mechanics, not wild or unpredictable character dynamics -- everyone fulfills their archetypes nicely in Princess of Mars. The movie really distorts that simplicity in a contemporary way, and to positive effect, I would say.

Also, Heaven's Gate is kinda great. Not the classic they hoped for, but still interesting, rich and worth seeing, and I think anyone who is seriously discussing that film, box office or not, needs to mention that.

*blinks at thread explosion* Honestly, I'm getting to the point where I'm tired of all the box office crap. Is it nice when good movies do well? Absolutely. Does it suck when they don't, and bad movies triumph? Sure.

 

But all this armchair psychology ultimately means nothing. Sure, backstage drama can be fun and interesting, but we don't know the whole story here. Calling Stanton unimaginative is a little ludicrous considering his past work, even if Pixar *is* the good version of by-committee filmmaking. And RD, I have to agree with Dan in that sneering at the creative direction of the film when you haven't seen it makes you look pretty shady. And I consider you a good mate here.

@Gabe: Agreed, but more often than not its used as a punch line by people who have written it off and not watched it because of its flop status. So I bristle seeing people condemning this film to the same fate, seemingly almost relishing it. I know we don't see eye to eye on this film though.

Charges of schaudenfreude are a bit harsh I feel, I'm just fascinated by the films dismal failure is all. As nooj said above this is all very fresh, and for those of us who are not just nerds of the medium of cinema but the process of making cinema as well, we have the 21st century answer to Heavens gate on our hands here - that's not the least bit interesting?

 

Eventually all that will die down and we'll be left discussing the merits of the film itself - in the meantime I'm sorry but this shit is compelling stuff in my opinion.

 

...and surely people can see the difference between trying to understand what went wrong with John carter and what it signifies for Disney, Pixar and modern blockbuster film-making in Hollywood today and taking sides in a spat between two asshole artists as if they were our next door neighbours when we don't know them, will never know them. One is looking at an industry the other is essentially fucking gossip.

 

But I'm sorry I disappointed you.

Hmm. I'm not sure how we ended up here. I was under the impression we were debating the points of a filmmaker being given supreme power over his film, including the marketing, versus having to creatively answer to others. As far as $ is concerned, if anything I thought this was a discussion of money spent not money earned.

Well when the money spent is so fucking ridiculous the film has to become the 65th biggest grosser of all time just to break even, then the return sorta has to play a part in the discussion no?

Come on, how is that not schadenfreude?

 

I think what rubs me the wrong way is that you haven't seen the film. Your talk would come off a little differently if you had. Buying into the narrative of the film as an epic disaster without assessing it artistically is dangerously close to conflating box office with quality. Yeah, I think behind the scenes stuff can be very interesting (though again, more for the artistic side of it), but you said yourself that the art and the business are linked - so how can you really gauge how big a success or failure this is or what went wrong or didn't if you don't actually know the end results of the behind the scenes creative decisions (that were so inextricably tied to the financial ones)? If JMulder or I are divorcing the two from each other, so are you. Why don't you go see the film first and then go to town on what a disaster it is? You might come out feeling like it totally deserved its fate, but at least you'd have an informed opinion instead of smirking at it from afar.

 

And yes, I see the difference between this and gossip. I just don't think the difference is as big as you do.

Fair enough then. I'll bow out until I've seen the film.

has anyone made a "Hearts of Darkness" analogy yet?

 

Perhaps the movie studio waited too long to send their Willard up river to try and reign in their Kurtz ?

 

Edited by VTRan - 4/4/12 at 8:39pm

GENTLEMEN! 

You can't fight in here!

 

This is Barsoom!

Also, Heaven's Gate was an ambitious film made by a great filmmaker that killed an era and bankrupted a studio. John Carter was just another pricey flop. Bad comparison.

I did a search and didn't see that anyone had posted this....

 

 

I do adore how Hollywoods finally worked out the whole world watches their movies and maybe, just maybe, foreign box office might mean something. Took fucking long enough.

None of the claims in the article seem remotely true. John Carter would probably need to be one of the five or ten best-selling DVD's in history to break EVEN.

 

This isn't really a box office thread, though. But NOBODY is "ecstatic" about this film's performance.

Yeah that article is not correct. ~50% of box office gross goes to the distributors and theaters. So they are only half-way there. This film will need DVD/Blu-ray sales/rental and broadcasting deals to break even eventually - and that will take a while. But I'm sure it will break even at some point. It is a flop, but not the disaster it is made out to be.

 

 

I just finished arguing about how box office doesn't matter, but that number just isn't true. The theater keeps only 20-25% of the first couple week's grosses, and often much less for big blockbusters. Only then does it go up after that. They make most of their money from concession sales.

 

Again, this bit of pseudo-wisdom would've never been deployed against something like Avatar, or almost any other film. People are thinking like Hollywood, beating on the flop -- presumably to prove the system works and emphasize that Carter is a puzzling anomaly? I dunno.

Actually, I was under the impression even that 20% number is super generous...

The usual split for opening weekend for big films is 70% to the studio, 30% to the theater. At least that was the case a year or two ago. Every weekend that shifts a bit to the theaters favor, but that depends on the negotiated deal. For a film with decent legs, it should average out.

I think Rain Dog should just go see the movie today, instead of staying out of the thread until some later date. Budgets and the production process are part of moviemaking. Big money generally means there's plenty to talk about pertaining to the movie that goes far beyond the thing that goes up on the screen. You can't talk about Waterworld without talking about its budget. Its entirely possible to have a very interesting discussion about Waterworld and the production of that movie and the numbers behind that movie without ever mentioning what happens in the movie. Its just another aspect of the business and there's room on CHUD to discuss all the aspects. TOTAL SPECTRUM FILM DISCUSSION!!!!!!

Could Disney get away with re-titling this movie, maybe editing it down a bit, and then re-releasing it over Thanksgiving as "the international runaway smash hit that you probably missed the first time!" Disney needs to put me in charge of some shit.

Foreign box office receipts don't mean as much because the deals the studios have with other countries aren't standardized in their favor like the US. 100 million in foreign box office receipts doesn't mean 100 million to the studio.

Just want to chime in on the "artistic freedom" debate to emphasize something that was brought up, but needs to be repeated: it's a mistake to generalize about how "artists need someone reining them in" based on this movie. That makes the assumption that Stanton is a great artist, and, I'm sorry, he ain't. He's a talented craftsman who aspires to make entertaining blockbusters. He's not Stanley Kubrick, or even Christopher Nolan. Those are filmmakers who, I'm convinced, could be handed the kind of budget and freedom Stanton was on this movie and deliver something much better.

 

And I liked John Carter just fine. It's a Star Wars-style geek SF action movie with more heart and personality than usual, but it doesn't have an innovative bone in its body, and it's not challenging or philosophically interesting. These are the movies that filmmakers need artistic freedom to achieve, and to lump them in with Stanton is actually a little annoying. I feel like, the next time a real visionary comes along and wants a big budget it'll be compared to this.

JC would seem more innovative if its story hadn't been borrowed from for the past 50 years or more.

 

Stanton isn't as innovative as Kubrick, or Nolan? I hope we're not expecting all directors to measure up to Kubrick's talent or Nolan's popularity, because that's unlikely. 

 

Hopefully Stanton learns some lessons from JC.  He may have to go back to animation for a couple of projects, but I'll look forward to his next film in any case.  Certainly more than Ross who delivered a remarkably MoR product with The Hunger Games.

Yeah, I don't get the complaint that a filmmaker should been reigned in? Seriously? I'd rather the director's full vision even if it's a failure than any studio tampering. Yes, that includes George Lucas and the prequels. 

Semantics, but I think there is a difference between being reigned in by studio tampering and having to work within certain limitations.  How often do we extol the virtues of a filmmaker getting creative due to budget/time/manpower restrictions?  

 

It just feels like Stanton didn't really have to get 'creative' with this movie.  

This movie had waaaay too much money thrown at it.

 

And I keep having to repeat this, but I really really liked John Carter.  Sometimes loved.  But I think there's a much better movie that could've been made.  Perhaps with Stanton not being given a blank check?  We'll never know.  Honestly, it seems almost as if Stanton had reigned himself in in some way.

Oh, would you look at that timing?

 

FIlmCritHulk takes on JOHN CARTER!!!

 

http://badassdigest.com/2012/04/08/film-crit-hulk-smash-hulk-vs-the-john-carter-script/

 

But would that make a better movie? Creative or not it could be Stanton is not up to par as other filmmakers. Scorsese was given his biggest budget with Hugo and didn't lose focus. James Cameron has blank cheques and probably made a better John Carter movie than the real John Carter.
 

 

I liked John Carter a lot more than Avatar, which was essentially John Carter.  But that's a whole 'nother discussion.

 

Some people couldn't connect with HUGO at all (it COMPLETELY worked on me).  There is an aspect of the film in which it does literally lose its focus on the titular character.

 

And when I say a filmmaker gets 'creative,' I'm talking about those instances in which a filmmaker creates something truly great and resonant out of necessity, as opposed to making something that only pleases their own sensibilities.  I'm reading the FilmCritHulk piece right now and he's already going over the very thing I brought up earlier in the thread (revealing John Carter's past the very moment we're supposedly meant to care about it).  It's something that Stanton wanted to do in Finding Nemo, but was thankfully dissuaded from through Pixar's story development phase.

Sure, but there's a reason why Avatar is the highest grossing film of all time and John Carter is a failure with audiences. Everything that FilmCritHulk points out that JC did wrong Avatar did right while basically taking a similar story.

 

Comparing Stanton to Nolan and Kubrick is silly; he's not making the same kinds of films as them, not even the same types of blockbusters.

 

And I would easily qualify Wall-E or even Finding Nemo as more than just an entertaining summer blockbuster.

Film Crit Hulk's article perfectly illustrates the fatal flaws in this movie. I'm glad that it tickled a lot of you guys' particular sensibilities, but lets put any notion to rest that is is some great under-appreciated movie like BLADE RUNNER. It is no less mediocre than THE HUNGER GAMES, and was in no way deserving of the sort of success it required. 

 

I SAID IT WAS A WHOLE 'NOTHER DISCUSSION!!!
 

 

I'M not saying that, but I feel like it's being implied when people say "an artist needs reining in..." My point is that SOME artists need reining in, in SOME contexts. I brought up Kubrick and Nolan to emphasize that there are great filmmakers who probably do a great job of reining themselves in. The fact that Stanton went a bit out of control doesn't mean that you can apply that lesson to all filmmakers, is what I'm saying.

 

I do agree that brilliance can blossom from limited circumstances, and I think it's funny that James Cameron is being mentioned since I happen to think he's pretty out of control these days. Avatar is probably his worst movie, aside from Piranha 2, and the dumbed-downedness of that movie seems to have been a direct result of Cameron blowing so much money on the technology. But again, Cameron's a blockbuster filmmaker who's mostly out to entertain. Some artists can handle the level of freedom these guys are given and still deliver, because they're focused on the story and the ideas rather than the whizz-bang or the process.

 

Well while we're on the subject let's discuss the merits of the Star Wars prequels. ;)

You know, that's a great Film Crit Hulk article. Hell, I even agree with him on how useless (if still entertaining) the first two prologues are.

 

...But (and this is probably where I'll lose all credibility with you people) that doesn't change the fact that I personally was still engaged in this film's story and drama. I know that seems unfathomable (I feel like this is the 2009 Star Trek debate all over again), but I can't lie about how I feel.

 

Next you'll be suggesting we debate Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for the umpteenth time.