I kind of have a special place in my heart for the “John Carter” movie. I remember being on my first tour back in 2012 and staying in this really nice part of Kansas City, MO. I was in a cool hotel room right on the outskirts of this downtown business district called Country Club Plaza that had all these cool shops: a Starbucks with a fireplace inside and a Clover brewing machine, a big Barnes and Noble, and a kick ass movie theater. It was on one of my off days from playing at the Kansas City Music Hall that I decided to kill some time and check out a movie, any movie. That movie would be “John Carter.”
I remember leaving the movie to find out that it was pouring down rain. I didn’t have an umbrella and I didn’t have a car. I walked from my hotel room to the other end of the shopping district to see the movie and now the only way back was walking in the rain. It was miserable. But as I walked back I kept thinking to myself, “why the hell are so many people talking shit about this movie?”
“John Carter” had a bad rep throughout its theatrical release. There was word that the movie had a huge budget and Disney was banking on it to be a huge success. This thing 
cost upwards of 300 million dollars to make and now they needed this thing to pull in some serious money. I’m talking about in the realm of Avatar-money. But when the movie came out there were a lot of people that said it was just kinda “blah.” This isn’t like how when Avatar came out and there were the people saying, “look, who cares if they look like big Smurfs. You gotta see this in 3D. It looks amazing.” This glowing type of word of mouth might’ve done “John Carter” some good. But there was none of that. However, I thought the movie was cool; I mean, it looked great and sounded great. The acting was fine. The costumes were fine. The story was fine. The CGI was great. And basically, it was just a fun movie. Wait a minute, why are so many people saying this movie stunk?
First off, I’m not a sci-fi guy. If I were a sci-fi guy then I’m sure this movie would’ve resonated more with me. I will say that I liked it more than all three of the new Star Wars movies, that’s for sure. But then again I’d like “Three Girls One Cup” better than the Star Wars prequels.
What I didn’t know that the book it was based on was over a hundred years old. The first 
Carter book came out around 1911. Over the years there have been many writers that used that old material to flesh out their own ideas. Both George Lucas and James Cameron have said that they owe a lot to the literary work of Burroughs. And I think that’s one of the big reasons people don’t really give a shit about “John Carter.” The material has been cannibalized so much over the years that people feel that they’ve already seen the movie.
In the book “John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood,” author Michael D. Sellers tracks down what exactly went wrong and why the movie supposedly tanked.
When I went into this book I thought it was going to be this inside scoop on what went 
down behind the scenes. Well, it was kinda like that. Sorta kinda.
Basically, this whole book reads like one long blog. He first tracks down the publication history of the Carter books. He then documents the lineage of people that have mined the text for ideas to use in their own works. Then he uses information that he mainly got online to support his argument that the film tanked because of marketing.
I’m summarizing here but this is really the basis of the book. The whole thing reads like you’re sitting down listening to some fanboy going on and on and on about his favorite film. And as this guy’s talking he has this binder with him with all these stats and numbers he got off the internet. It’s, ‘and this person was hired but they didn’t really care about the movie…so then they were fired and this guy was hired but then she hired a lot of people to do this job for her…then she was let go and this person was brought in.” As exciting as that is it’s all rounded off with things like, ‘but then Hunger Games had X amount of likes on Facebook but Carter only had X amount of likes…and Avatar had this many followers on Twitter but only Carter had this many….and on this week The Lorax tweeted this many times but Carter only tweeted this many times.’ ALRIGHT!!
Seriously, he kept an account of how many times the John Carter twitter accounted tweeted on a given day. That’s riveting material, folks.
Aside from the tedious amounts of copy-and-pasted data and the seemingly endless stream of copy-and-pasted message board content (seriously), the author at least details how the marketing team screwed up the commercials for the film. I’ll give it to him for one thing, he managed to cut together his own commercial that blew away the other studio-made commercials.
Here’s an original studio ad for the movie:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3yzs4OUnlI
Do you have any idea of what the movie is about from that ad?
Here’s the trailer the author cut together. I’ll admit this is the ad that should’ve run on every spot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BxeHQY1NuM
But one chapter had this cliff hanger of an ending detailing how there was going to be this Super Bowl commercial. This ad was going to turn the tide for the film’s hype. But then, oh no, something went wrong…
The Super Bowl ad played the 30 second version instead of the longer version.
Ugh.
Some of the details in the book were interesting but they were watered down by the copious amounts filler and repeated facts. “John Carter” should’ve been a bigger movie and it should’ve been a bigger deal. There was definitely a botched ad campaign from people that didn’t know what to do with what they had on their hands. It’s a shame that there will be no sequel to it but, hey, you never know. Maybe in another hundred years we’ll get a reboot.
So if you want to read an inside detail about the staffing at Disney, the content of online message boards, and the stats at Rotten Tomatoes, all sorta kind relating to the film “John Carter” then this book is for you.
