The acting was pretty good; the special effects were stunning (of course, that's expected of all sci-fi/fantasy movies these days); and the story was thrilling. Yeah, thrilling.
Alright, to tell you the truth, I usually don't write a lot about the movie itself when I type up a review. I'd just much rather write about how the movie was received in comparison to what I thought about it.
Oh yeah, I guess I should probably tell you that this review has some spoilers. Not any real spoilers, though. This movie is kind of predictable, not that that's a bad thing.
So how's this movie been received by critics? On Rotten Tomatoes it currently has a 50% "Rotten" rating. On Metacritic it currently has a 51% rating. I'm not surprised. I know everyone has different tastes, but come on, this is a movie with no pretense of being a possible nominee for the Best Picture Academy Award. Different people look for different things in movies and what I look for is something entertaining. I think that the best thing a movie can do for its audience is entertain it. Some movies are just so pretentious. You watch them and you can tell that the writers and directors were (or are) expecting them to be nominated for Best Picture or Best Screenplay or something. (This is why I don't like Pixar anymore.)
But was John Carter entertaining? Yeah, man. It definitely was. WALL-E might have been the most pretentious movie I've watched but Andrew Stanton has done an awesome job here. What would I give this movie? I'd give this movie, um, maybe a 94%. Yeah, I think it deserves that. It easily deserves a high place on my list of The Top 25 Most-Awesome Movies Ever. Here's the list right now:
1. Blade Runner
2. Jurassic Park
3. Star Wars Episode VI: The Return of the Jedi
4. Raiders of the Lost Ark
5. The Goonies
6. Independence Day
7. John Carter
8. Alien
9. Apocalypse Now
10. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (or just Star Wars if you insist)
11. Godzilla (1998 TriStar version)
12. Star Trek: The Motion Picture
13. The Lion King
14. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
15. Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith
16. Back to the Future
17. Barbarella
18. The Mummy
19. Pokémon: The First Movie (yeah, you read right)
20. Clash of the Titans
21. Shrek 2
22. Brazil
23. Superman II
24. TRON
25. Dante's Peak
I'm not saying that these are the best movies of all-time; they're just my favorite movies of all-time. Now I know what you might be thinking: you liked Independence Day more than Alien? You liked Pokémon: The First Movie more than Brazil? Yeah, that's right.
There are some awesome explosions in Independence Day, the critics must admit. I really do like explosions. I was about to put The Matrix on the list just because of that one explosion that occurs when that one helicopter crashes into that one building. That is one awesome explosion. I don't like seriously excessive explosions, though. I did like the first Transformers movie (it's one my Top 50) but its sequels were just excessive.
Getting back to John Carter, though; I'd recommend the movie to anyone who likes science-fiction movies. The Barsoom series, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, was an inspiration to many people who've created science-fiction stories. The list includes George Lucas, James Cameron, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, and H.P. Lovecraft. This might, sadly, cause people to call it a rip-off of several movies.
Critics will inevitably compare the movie to Avatar. Both movies are about a male human who needs to lead alien people in a war. I thought that John Carter was a lot better than Avatar, the main reason being that the characters I was rooting for won in the end.
I don't really know what to think of Avatar. I mean, when I first saw Avatar in the December of 2009, I didn't like it. I thought, man, this movie is seriously overrated. Then, I watched it on DVD in the May (or maybe June) of 2010 and I thought that it was better than I had previously thought it was. I thought, well, this is actually alright.
What I didn't like about it on both occasions was that the humans lost. I mean, I know that you're supposed to be on the side of the Na'vi but, come on, I'm human so I kind of wanted the humans to take over Pandora. It seemed kind of strange to me how Jake just turned on his own species like that (I'm saying this all banteringly, by the way; it's just a movie, I know). I mean, the human scientists made that alien body for him. That probably took, like I don't know, millions of dollars. If anything, he kind of owed them, not the Na'vi, something. I was so disappointed at the end when Neytiri killed the colonel and the creatures of the forest all united and crushed the humans underfoot.
With John Carter, however, I was definitely on the side of the title character. I wanted him to defend the city of Helium against the army of Zodanga. I wanted him to get back to get back to Barsoom at the end. So yeah, that's why I thought John Carter was so much more awesome than Avatar.
This movie deserves way more than a 51 or 51 % rating. I know I haven't really said much about it in this review and that I've just made generalization about it, but it was amazing.
Oh yeah, one more thing. There was this one tune on the soundtrack that, whenever, it was played reminded me of Marion's Theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark. You'd know what it was if you heard it. I think that the soundtrack was the only disappointing thing about this movie. I was hoping for a memorable soundtrack but its just one of those soundtrack that doesn't really assert itself, unlike those of Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Well, that's all for today.
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