Movies / Home Theatre

John Carter of Mars DVD / Blu-Ray Review

By Hervé St-Louis
June 8, 2012 - 14:00

John Carter of Mars, the controversial movie by Disney Studios was finally released as a combo-pack on June 5, 2012. The collection includes both a DVD disc and a Blu-Ray version of the recent film. The Blu-Ray version includes the new Second Screen feature by Disney Studios allowing viewers to view supplemental information on their tablets or smartphones.

The movie is of course an adaptation of the successful pulp novel from Edgar Rice Burroughs about a man catapulted to Mars and implicated in the civil wars of Mars and its many bickering and different people. I stayed away from the controversy regarding the film’s trailer and for some reason, never got to watch it at the theatres either. Although I’ve heard of John Carter of Mars, I’m not very familiar with the character. This Blu-Ray rendition was my first real exposure to the character. John Carter discovers that on Mars, he has greater strength than the average Martian. Quickly, he’s mixed in the fights of various Martian factions.

I didn’t get into this film very much. Everything felt like it could have been better but wasn’t push far enough. For example the Tark people looked and felt like the Na'vi in the movie Avatar, but without the same quality of rendering and detail given to their forms. Many of the personalities and individual traits they had were interesting though and it seems they have their own back stories. However, it felt more like the director was trying to get some of Avatar’s mojo in his film while being concerned with a lot of other things. Much of the rest of the film reminded me of Dune, but again not as well executed.  I didn’t really understand the fight between the two red human groups and felt that the nominal bad guys were just fodder used to for fights. In the last scene where the Tark come to save the day, the fight didn’t make sense at all as the leader of the bad guys was fighting with the good guys instead of just telling his people to stand down.

The problem with all of these plot elements was that I just didn’t care about what would happen next, although it was all predictable.  I like the plot with the domineering floating aliens creating disruption and chaos, but their origins was not explored properly in this movie. As for John Carter, the actor reminded me of a younger Johnny Depp but without the charisma. There was little heroism in his attitude and even the funny scenes with his pet alien dog did not make him more endearing.

However the features on the Blu-Ray are essential for anyone wanting to know more about John Carter. This is where I learned all from the character and it was much better packaged than your usual Wikipeadia page. You can tell that there is a lot of history to the character. I have one complaint about the Blu-Ray, every time I start it, it seems to show the same Disney feature previews that I assume we should only skip once, the first time we fire up the disc. I get it that Disney wants to sell me more movies, but they don’t have to over do it to the extent that my user experience takes a hit, in the benefit of their marketing goals. My first objective as a viewer is to watch the film on the disc, not check local listings for when the other advertised properties will be released in my area.

Rating: 6.5 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12