It’s not necessarily fair to be so down on John Carter for having a boring, bland trailer when this is so clearly the kind of movie built on spectacle that takes a while to accomplish. Like Green Lantern, it’s likely that later trailers will be much more interesting as the special effects start coming in and it becomes more obvious how Disney has spent as much or more money on this then pretty much any other movie they’ve ever made. All that said, it still looks like we’re facing a dustier version of Tron: Legacy: big expensive Disney flick that isn’t going to pull the kind of numbers they want, even with a giant, four-armed, white space ape…
Don’t worry John, the clone army is on its way to save you.
This is a still that comes along with an EW interview with director Andrew Stanton, who gives some context to this cinematic version of one of the book’s beasts…
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So tell me about these White Apes in your film. They’re from the books, but I recall they’re not quite this ginormous?
DREW STANTON: No, they’re sort of an oversized gorilla in the books, and they’re kind of ubiquitous. They’re littered everywhere through at least the first several novels. They were always cool, just from a visceral standpoint, [but] they don’t really have a narrative function in the first book. So what we did is we made the White Apes a formidable creature that you kind of hear about throughout the movie, but you never really witness. There’s a subtle sense of anticipation for what these things might be like. Then Michael Kutsche — who did a lot of the designs on [the Johnny Depp movie] Alice in Wonderland – came up with this design on his own, for just their scale. He made them nocturnal, almost like moles — they stopped using their eyes, and just had a heightened sense of smell. We just love that. We needed a scene where Carter was going have to get out of his execution sentence in order to move the story forward, and we thought what better than having to go up against this formidable creature?
I have no doubt we’ll end up seeing exactly where the money on this movie went, but I can’t shake the hunch that this is going to be a big disappointment for Disney.
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(via /Film)
5 comments
Creature design is okay, but seems so derivative or maybe just boring. Why do so many monsters look so much alike these days? Though I’m not saying they are identical or anything but I’m seeing these beasties popping up nowadays and there is a similar vibe running through this, the Cave Troll, the remake Kraken, Cloverfield… the imagination on show seems rank(or) amateur to me
But of course anything not Pirates related or starring Johnny Depp is going to be a disappointment to some people, including Disney execs. However, I am not grasping the snarky attitude you are directing towards this film. I actually dig the trailer and like what I am seeing so far. I don’t really see them mucking this up.
I’ve got to agree with prunetracy on this one. Your spider-sense may be tingling, but mine’s just fine, thanks. I won’t pass judgement on this film on anything I’ve seen so far, but that image above looks pretty epic, as did the trailer, considering they were still madly working on all the effects shots. I seem to remember a similar attitude to Rise of the Planet of the Apes before the jizz-covered reviews appeared. And we all heard similar bashings on the original Iron Man trailer way back when. That turned out great. So I’ll hold off on the judgements and wait for the actual film before deciding. Also, that creature may be a bit large, but is pretty accurate compared to what Edgar Rice Burroughs described in the book. The unfortunate thing for this property is that it inspired much of the sci-fi-alien-planet-adventures your familiar with (Star Wars, Avatar, etc.) so, unfortunately, what’s old may not be so new again.
A lot of monster/creature designers are hired out of the video game industry, or heavily inspired by video games, which might explain why so many Hollywood movie monsters have a “sameness” about them and why they resemble PS#/X360 bosses instead of a type of threat we haven’t seen before – at least, not in a long time.
Really hoping this turns out to be a solid film, as I loved the first few Carter novels. That being said….is anyone else bothered by the fact that so many media outlets continue to end statements with question marks? Entertainment Weekly isn’t the only one doing it. Just wonderin’.
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