John Carter

For anyone who's gotten a whiff of the trailer, it's no mystery that earthman "John Carter" somehow shows up on Mars, with extraordinary physical abilities (the most obvious one is the ability to jump high, very high and far, and land without hurting himself too much due to the lower gravity on Mars, similar to Hulk's jumping abilities), as a movie, it does a lot of the technical stuff well, showing us 3 different sets of Martians, with 2 sets of humanoids at war for a long time, and the taller, green-skinned 4-armed Tharks, who pretty much stay on the sidelines.  John Carter, himself scarred by the conflicts his military service entailed in the mid-1800s, wants no part of this Martian war, and appears to be emotionally bottled up at the start of his Martian adventures.

There's a lot of material to cover in this film, but the script causes the film to sputter in the middle, and the motivations of the various characters are threadbare, and not quite involving.  I'd say the film over-reached on the politics of Mars, and the plot developments don't quite unravel in a natural manner, which lends to itself to a lazy meandering energy level in terms of intensity of the stakes involved for Carter (I blame this lazy tone on the direction of Andrew Stanton), and the 2 humanoid factions at war with one another.

Due to the initial reddish white balance of the Martian atmosphere at the start of Carter's arrival on Mars, it's not quite all that pleasing to the eye, but there is a lot to stare at, as far as the Martian terrain goes, as well as the cities, the set designs, the technology designs, so I can't say it's really boring, just that the film never finds a groove to settle in.  With much of the film's Martian terrain scenes shot on location (not in a studio with green screens), the film oddly has a hazy nondescript, unfocased look to it, rendering it less interesting than I had thought it would look.

Taylor Kitsch's casting as John Carter might have been a mis-step, he simply doesn't quite have disarming charm at his disposal as an actor, and comes across far too one-note for most of the film (the reluctant warrior, always looking to avoid physical conflict, but never quite managing to escape them), and has a difficult time raising his game as an actor, but it was like the director was afraid for push Kitsch, so his acting was average.  I think it limited director Stanton's choices for camera angles, as he rarely pushed in on actors to rev up the emotional components that propelled the plotlines.  Lynn Collins as Dejah Thoris was actually okay for me, I wasn't thrilled with her casting (plus it being a Disney film, I knew her wardrobe would be much more modest than the source material previously alluded to for her character), but she won me over for the most part, even with an accent that moved around from scene to scene.

The 3D is pretty much a non-factor in this film, I put the credit/blame at Stanton's feet, so if you want to save a few $$$$, go for the 2D showing. 

I give it 2.5 stars, or a grade of C+.