John Carter

Indian Express Ratings:***

SEVENTY-NINE years after it was first planned as an animation,Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Barsoom series has ironically come to screen as the first live action film by a director who has given two of the most-loved animation films of all time (Finding Nemo,Wall.E).

John Carter doesn’t have the innocent wonder of either. However,where it stands out in the clutter of similar high-action,CGI-infused,alien-invaded movies is in how it uses the characters to actually tell a story. Despite the $250 million budget,John Carter’s heart doesn’t lie in jumping from one war to another stringing along a story,but in telling a tale with a few battles thrown in. Realising that sense is the first casualty of such computer-effected battles,Stanton keeps them dizzyingly short.

Dafoe and Morton are also well cast as two of the main green,six-limbed Tharks that inhabit Barsoom,or Mars as Earthlings know it. Despite their ungainly height,the Tharks are nimble and expressive,especially through their eyes. The animation team captures a distinctive race without reducing them to a caricature quite like the Na’avis in Avatar. Mars itself is stark,dry and rocky.

Kitsch plays John Carter of Virginia,US,who finds himself transported to Mars after entering a forbidden cave and grabbing a strange medallion. The year is 1876 and being a Civil War veteran who saw personal tragedy during the conflict,Carter is determined now to not be drawn into any cause and to only live for himself.

The film,largely based on ‘A Princess of Mars’,from the 11 stories in the Barsoom series,is all about Carter discovering that he cannot ignore a just cause when he sees one. In the film,it comes in the shape of princess Dejah. Again,the choice of Collins as this princess surprises you. If Kitsch is bulky but not really ruggedly handsome,Collins is pretty and sturdy rather than a stunning beauty requiring rescue. Dejah is in a quandary because the evil Sab Than (West) threatens to destroy her kingdom Helium if she doesn’t marry him. Having been given the power to control Barsoom by “messengers of the Goddess”,Sab Than is almost untouchable and has already destroyed the rest of the planet.

Apart from the Tharks and their wailing hatchlings,the film gives us flying machines shaped like giant dragon flies and a monster dog who travels at the speed of thought. Stanton keeps the tone comedic rather than confrontationist,the film more about two alien worlds discovering each other,sort of,than about a battle for control.

John Carter,however,loses the plot towards the end,almost desperate to wrap its head around the science of time travel and when to call an end to this adventure. The characters climb on those flying machines to do their thing almost once too often,even as the film reduces the lack of gravity that makes Carter such a jumping superhero to nothing more than a comic device.

Still,in times where almost nothing is unknown and unexplored,it is an achievement all right to get us to cheer aliens with tusks growing out of their faces and four hands that can be wondrous when they act in unison but absolutely amazing when they don’t.

shalini.langer@expressindia.com