Only thing Dune really needs(And this was judging by the books) was a sense of humor.

Not to sound punnish but a lot of the character's personalities in Dune are very dry, like no one has ever heard of honesty or laughter before.

Heh, I've only read the first Dune, but that sounds about right. Reminds me of Skyrim actually. No humour allowed, high fantasy is srs biz!

Watching the trailer, it looks like they've tried to combine star wars with Avatar. What they really should have done is steampunked it up a bit and done it like Forbidden Planet with a gentlemen warrior, not some frowning gormless idiot.

I reckon they could have done that for less than $250 million.

What is it with really unimaginative titles nowadays? Like it's trying to be so nonchalant... it doesn't get noticed at all.

At the end of the movie, "John Carter of Mars" pops up. Why not have that as the title?

I didn't even know the movie was on Mars until I went to see it.

what's worse is that I didn't know the setting was Mars until this thread & I like movies on other planets generally

until i read the article my guess was that aliens invaded earth back in the Egyptian era.

that is a fair guess given the ad

This is the list of novels.

1: A Princess of Mars (1912)
2: The Gods of Mars (1914)
3: The Warlord of Mars (1918)
4: Thuvia, Maid of Mars (1920)
5: The Chessmen of Mars (1922)
6: The Master Mind of Mars (1928)
7: A Fighting Man of Mars (1931)
8: Swords of Mars (1936)
9: Synthetic Men of Mars (1940)
10: Llana of Gathol (1948)
11: John Carter of Mars (1964)

Alot are in the public domain now, but the last one is the only one called john carter and its not even the first novel, why they would bother making a movie of a collection of novels that a large audience have probably never heard of, and then promote it poorly, which it is here as well, you see a quick shot of tars tharkas and his people, the white ape creature, and dejah thoris and thats the clip, its very short.

I also thought this, until I did a little more digging. They could have made the title better, I guess.

Over-the-top concepts are okay, but when you go from the civil war to Mars... it comes off a pretty damn ridiculous. It's like trying to make a historically accurate movie about world war one and including Apple products as standard gear for the protagonist.

The books took place after the civil war, and you have to consider the thing was written a hundred years ago.

It was about a man from roughly the present day at the time, teleported to Mars. His background was really just there to establish his soldiering abilities.

Sure, and while I am a little caught up in the civil war era to Mars, it would still be moronic even if it was from the present day to Mars. It just sounds dumb.
Why would the aliens teleport a single man? Sure he might be special, but why not ask for aid from... entire armies or teleport PMC affiliated forces?
Surely, if they'll reveal their existence to one man, why not several other skilled soldiers as well?

I hate Hollywood.

They didn't ask his aid. He just kinda died and ended up there.

As I said, it's pulp sci fi about a guy who fights monsters. You can't expect it to make much sense.

Wow, that is an old series.

Yeah, I also wonder why Sauron recruited the hobbits to fight the evil dwarven witch Elrond in Lord of the Rings. Only that happened just about as much as the underlined statement

I'm not really gonna debate the movie as being all that good but you should at least not make assumptions about it and then smudge it because of assumptions you made that may just be false. This probably underlines more than anything else how the advertisemant campaign failed. How many others must think the movie is about the Marsians summoning some one guy to help them because they somehow got that impression from the trailers and how many of them probably didn't even give the movie a chance because they decided to roll with their assumptions as truth and thus decided before even seeing the movie that it would probably be bad. And for every good word of mouth statement that is spread about the movie online there is probably another false statement spread by misinformation.

Loads of adverts on TV in England I noticed. Every other ad break had John Carter.

Ah, I see, was under the impression that he had somehow been beamed up there or something. Not that it makes the concept any more clever, but sure, if he's kind of dead, I guess I can buy that.

What can I say? I don't like to research. When some say "teleported to Mars from the civil war" it just sort of comes off as a bit too cheesy. That said, the special effects look good. But special effect-fests are a little trite.

I was kind of forced to see this movie the other day, and judging from the trailers I thought it was going to be a cheesy and terrible film. However, I ended up quite liking it, but it still felt pretty lame at parts. The beginning, specifically, did not really grab me at all. It was still a decent film though.

I loved the fact that it had the token Disney sidekick cute animal, the "surprise" at the end genuinely surprised me.

Never heard of John Carter before, but the film was great for what it was.

I actually liked the super fast alien dog

I dislike that they made the animals even remotely "cute".

But, then, I've read the books and am used to the imagery from their covers.

(See http://www.catspawdynamics.com/john-carter-of-mars-covers-by-michael-whelan/, for what I picture the dog to be more like. )

Glad I wasn't the only one that though this .

I saw it yesterday. I'd say it is a cheesy, high budget, average action movie with a super hot actress in a skimpy outfit, aimed at little kiddies. It wasn't very good, but it had some decent action scenes (and a super hot actress in a skimpy outfit). I thought the overall plot was pretty good (probably have the books to thank for that, though I've never read them), but it just didn't come off well. Probably because it was too much a Disney children's movie. They should have done it in the style of the new Conan, that'd have been great.

You can rest easy, there's not a single spaceship in the movie. Just a whole bunch of airships. Your summary of the plot of the books is exactly that of the movie, though with all the details in your description it might as well have been of Avatar.