Has it only been ten years since John Carter? The movie feels like a relic from a different era—which it kind of is. At The Wrap, the film’s long gestation and disappointing fate are chronicled in “The Untold Story of Disney’s $307 Million Bomb John Carter: ‘It’s a Disaster,’” which looks at the entire history of the film, from the 1917 publication of the Edgar Rice Burroughs novel on which it’s based up to the repercussions the film’s reception had for its stars.
John Carter was supposed to be the start of a franchise—an epic series for Disney, which had not yet bought Lucasfilm. (That deal was finalized mere months after John Carter‘s release date.) So it’s no surprise that director/co-writer Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, WALL-E) had a plan for what would happen next. And in traditional series fashion, the unmade sequel would’ve changed the world of Mars—excuse me, Barsoom—as we knew it.
The second movie would have been called Gods of Mars. As Stanton explains, each film would have a different character delivering the prologue, and in Gods of Mars, that character would be Dejah (played by Lynn Collins in John Carter). Gradually, it would become clear that Dejah was telling the prologue to her child—Carthoris, whose father is John Carter. Dejah’s father, Tardos Mors (Ciarán Hinds), would offer to help with the baby, only to be revealed as shapeshifter Matai Shang (Mark Strong), who steals the child.
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Carter, of course, returns to Mars, where he finds that Kantos Kan (James Purefoy) has been looking for him. Stanton explains, “And he gets back and you think it’s going to be a reunion, only to find out that there’s been some time between the prologue and the main credits.” Then the real trouble starts:
Now Dejah’s gone missing. She’s convinced that the Therns took their child and if Carter ever comes back, she went down the River Iss to try and find him. And then, like Beneath the Planet of the Apes, it all takes place, everybody going into the earth to find out who’s really been controlling the whole planet. There’s a whole race down there that has been with high tech. Basically, it’s been a third world without anybody knowing it on the top of the surface and the first world’s been inside the whole time operating the air, the water, the everything to keep the world functioning.
John Carter didn’t do well enough to merit a sequel. It made $281 million dollars, which sounds like a lot, but its production budget was $307 million. The movie, as The Wrap details, seemed doomed before it even came out. Fans recut its baffling trailers. Disney’s usual marketing and merchandising was missing. Studio brass changed over. Practically everything went a little bit sideways. It’s a story that’s all too familiar and yet specific—and personal—for every film and its creators.
I’d love to see a fan edit that removes the prologue, having him just go into the cave and wake up on Mars. You know, something like the book. Strange that the movie felt the need to be more longwinded than the actual text, but whatever.
Anyway, I still like this movie more than their recent Star Wars outings. (Yeh, I sed it, ain’t takin it bak.) I have no idea how long Disney had their beady little eyes on Lucas’s empire, but I get the feeling when Carter flopped that’s when they threw up their mouse claws and decided to just buy a space opera rather than build one of their own.
I am still sad that the sequel(s) never happened.
@1: I am committing rumormongery in the first degree, but I’ve seen it said it was the exact opposite: the Mouse was committed to the Carter property when they got the chance to acquire Star Wars and/or the MCU and decided they didn’t need another tentpole franchise, so they deliberately tanked the marketing for JCoM so they could exercise a box office bomb clause in the contract.
@3. Oh wow, that’s a new layer. Very interesting. Thank you.
I may be in the minority, but I love love love the John Carter movie. But I’m a sucker for anything dealing with the Percival Lowell Mars mythology. I also quite enjoyed The Revolutions by Felix Gilman, for anyone out there of like mind.
It was a pretty solid film, and I’m sorry the sequels were never made. The books are very fun even if they have the same formula: John Carter encounters yet another shade of Martian that is lording over the other hues (Martians are basically a Crayola box of fun), beats the crap out of them for a while, faces overwhelming odds but is determined to die like a Virginian!, eventually meets a nice individual of the new hue and helps make them regional overlord. And repeat.
I loved this movie. I’m really sad this sequel didn’t get made.
I enjoyed the movie a lot and would have seen the sequel. But Stanton must be a better director than he is a speaker: the indented paragraph quote is so full of inaccurate grammar that I had to stop reading half-way through. I’m glad someone proofread his final script for “John Carter”.
This is a fun movie!! A delightful romp, as it were. I include this movie in my list of movies that are somehow really fun despite doing terribly in box office (also included in this list: Man from UNCLE, Valerian…)
I remember seeing this movie in theaters a few weeks after it came out and wondering why people were hating on it so much. I still think one of the biggest mistakes they made was not including the “of Mars” in the title. The movie is delightfully quirky and weird and I wish they would have leaned more into that tone with the marketing…
@8: Everybody talks first draft.
I remember hearing Andrew Stanton give an interview with Mark Kermode on BBC radio just before the movie opened. Kermode, who seemed to have an axe to grind, bluntly asked why they dropped Mars from title, and Stanton gave a frankly bizarre answer. I’m assuming it was the reasons Disney gave him, but it was something about how their research found that people didn’t like space movies (?). Keep in mind this was a couple years after that obscure little space movie Avatar made gazillion dollars…
Weird.
We know that Disney tanked “John Carter” on purpose by one very simple fact: there was no merchandising. How many plush Woola figures could they have sold? Hell, I would’ve bought 4. One for each of my brother’s kids and one for me.
I love this movie anyway. It is fun and quircky.
And I’m so grateful there exist a fantastic John Carter of Mars RPG by Modiphius out there. And a Warlord of Mars kickstart for a computer game for consolles and PCs. The franchise is strong, I just hole disney never has a chance again to ruin it.
I for one Loved John Carter!! The Stories are intense and well written. I think if Disney won’t make the next movie, WE should Croud Source it to raise the funds and show THE MOUSE that there is a very loyal following!! WHO WILL PLEDGE THEIR METAL TO MINE?? VIRIGINIA !!!!!
I quite enjoy the first movie, and it made me look up the books. Burroughs has serious issues as a human and with his views. The books are campy fun, usually, but they do have some very cringe moments. This sequel sounds like it would have been amazing. It’s sad that it didn’t get the recognition it deserves.
I enjoyed this movie. I agree that it could have been streamlined. In the book, we didn’t know anything about John Carter’s backstory, and it worked just fine. In the movie they added the traumatic loss of his family, and his grief just weighed down the proceedings. There was so much to like about the movie. The visuals were good, the cast was solid, and the action sequences were engaging. And Woola was a great sidekick. It’s too bad it wasn’t marketed better.
I liked it and wish the sequel would be made.
@9 I have the same exact list. I want to do a film festival of John Carter, Valerien, Man from UNCLE, and maybe Edge of Tomorrow (although I guess it did okay at the B.O.).
The movie was fun, but not amazing. The book is pretty awful – insanely sexist and involves slavery and more. I can kind of see why Disney might want to tiptoe away from all of that.
When I read about the guy who greenlit it being replaced, I knew that (from William Goldman’s intro to the Princess Bride 25th anniversary edition) to be the moment that encompassed the project’s doom:
Goldman doesn’t talk about what happens when a new GG comes on board to find his predecessor’s project already in motion beyond his ability to mulct, but Harlan Ellison got an entire Watching out of that (I think it was Installment 13, “In Which Numerous Ends (Loose) Are Tied Up; Some In The Configuration Of A Noose (Hangman’s)”), in the process explaining hidden truths behind the created disaster of David Lynch’s Dune to which he’d devoted Installments 9 and 10. As continuity would have it, the project that got dumped that time was also from Disney, based on books even older than A Princess of Mars, and the management that sabotaged its rollout rated a mention in the linked Wrap article — Michael Eisner and Frank Wells, lately arrived from Paramount off the back of Beverly Hills Cop. Of course, I have reference to Walter Murch’s Return to Oz. Time really is a flat circle, isn’t it?
Me too, I enjoyed the movie and was surprised it didn’t do better.
How delightful to see so much love for this movie! As somebody who loved it from the get-go, has never understood why on Jasoom it tanked (and who is, as it happens, right now reading the Barsoom books again), count me in as one who is also really sad the sequel never happened!
A little nitpick: Tardos Mors, not Tardos Mas.
@16- On the other hand, they left out the… not even plot point, but that odd nugget about Carter possibly being some sort of immortal demigod of war.
“It was a bomb?”
“Yeah only Made 300 million. What a shame.”
“Well that happens with the first movie in a new franchise with terrible marketing”
“You mean like Tron Legacy?”
For those that considered the books ‘cringe-worthy’ and sexist, remember that these novels were written starting in 1912! Attitudes were different, science was different, beliefs were different. If you’re going to read a novel written in the late 19th or early 20th century (even the OZ books, not to mention all the Tarzan and Barsoom novels), then you have to suspend your 21st century ‘sensibilities’ and put yourself into the era it was written for. Enjoy, examine the differences, and appreciate how we have changed since.
@23 Yeah, that whole vague “maybe he’s an immortal being” thing was pretty weird.
John Carter (of Mars) was a really fun movie (with the most boring and unappealing bookends I’ve ever seen) that was hamstrung by Disney. Shame because it clearly deserved more.
@9 Hmm Valerian was a not terrible movie but the leads were horrible. I don’t know if they had bad direction or if it was just purely the bad chemistry but when the female lead has more chemistry in a 7 second scene with a guy who isn’t talking than she does with her love interest.. that’s a problem. Whomever casted that movie is… to be polite not good at their job.
Long-time Burroughs reader and JCM fan here.
I never understood the critics’ murderous hate, particularly if you keep in mind the same critics gave glowing reviews to much inferior movies –I’m looking at you, Star Wars franchise, Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull of Nonsense (where Indiana learns Quechua IN MEXICO, no less), and so many others.
@28 wolfkin: I agree about Valerian. A fun premise, and some undeniable fun, but the leads were hopelessly miscast –they’re talented people who have been excellent in other movies, just all wrong for this one.