John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood

by Sellers, Michael D.

  Given the foregoing, the release of a trailer is a key moment in which digital best practices call for reputation monitoring and management systems to be fully deployed and countermeasures in place.

  The John Carter teaser trailer debuted in front of Harry Potter in theaters and on the internet on July 14. This was the trailer with Peter Gabriel music that had finally satisfied Stanton in that it played up the mystery and romance, teasing the audience without spoon feeding them. Online, the release of the trailer was “news” primarily on movie sites catering to the geeks and film influencers. Reaction to the trailer was mixed. A representative sampling can be found on Collider.com, all on July 14th:153

  OHOO: Following the onslaught of cowboys and aliens trailer followed by conan the barb. kitsch looks like conan while the horse back riding scenes is too reminiscent of cowboys and aliens chase scene, you can only use one location until you covered all the angles. Now that both trailers are out JCM just shot itself in the foot for releasing a trailer so close to the release of cowboys and aliens fresh on everyones mind

  JLC: Far more “real” than what I was anticipating. I was thinking more along the lines of Avatar, but it clearly isn’t that. I think that’s a good thing since it will lessen the comparisons.

  Jay: i like that it does have a realistic like look to it, but i need to see more before i get really excited for it.

  John Conor: so avatar+terminator type of deal...what else did they throw in their.....oops my bad the story dates back before these movies haha

  Shane: so this is a remake of princess of mars with traci lords cause it looks a lot like it in fact scene for scene

  Skivingtong: The fact that they shied away from calling It John Carter of Mars feels as if they’re not willing to go all the way with the source material.

  Shaunx: AVATAR + Prince of Persia + Cowboys and Aliens + 300 = JOHN CARTER

  Rockslide: I just finished reading Princess of Mars, somewhat in anticipation of this, and somewhat just to see one of the origin points of so many sci-fi elements. Its funny to think that many people will believe John Carter is ripping off so many other stories when in fact it was the original

  Steven: I really like that song, but I dunno how I feel about the film from watching the trailer… it doesn’t seem to sell the idea that John Carter is transported to a unique and fantastical world. I think filming in a real location might have been a detriment to the film....

  Saadgkhan: Its looks lot better than I’ve expected!

  dpramroop: why isnt this guy the prince of persia

  Tk421: I sincerely hope this film turns out well. The cast abounds with great actors and Andrew Stanton is solid. However, the costume designer needs to be castigated for making John Carter’s outfit look nearly exactly like Jake Gyllenhal’s on Prince of Persia. This movie already has the originality hurdle to leap with audiences in terms of story, it does not need to draw derision for it’s costuming choices as well.

  nevinx: …ups we just remade Scorpion King.

  But please bring the money you can to our time wasting facilities.

  MDFaraone: I think the stupidest thing about this movie is the BORING name that they cut it down to, whose brilliant Idea was that. The original title was perfect : John Carter of Mars , it juxtaposes a common familiar name with something otherworldly and makes the mind pause for a moment to ponder it....might as well be “Jimmy Carter”

  Perhaps more significant than the mixed quality of the response to the trailer, was the muted quantity of the response. Collider.com, for example, logged a total of only 19 comments on the first day of the trailer’s release. On the same site, The Avengers had 88 comments on the opening day of its first trailer.154 This light response was consistent with the level of response on other influencer movie sites and was an “early warning” indicator to Disney. It was also a foreseeable outcome based on the minimal amount of publicity in the months leading up to the trailer release. There is no indication that Disney undertook any reputation management countermeasures once the trailer was out, and the mixed reaction had begun. A close study of first day reaction to the trailer across the internet shows no sign of Disney having done more than toss the trailer into the internet swamp and let the reaction play out without intervention or engagement.155

  While the reaction to the trailer was less than optimal -- at least is was not wholly negative, and a mixed reaction to the first teaser trailer was a manageable result -- not good, but not devastatingly problematic.

  Meanwhile, it was an event not directly within the John Carter sphere that would erupt in August, and it was this event that would, more than anything else, cause the explosion of negative buzz that would eventually overwhelm and envelope John Carter.

  The Lone Ranger Fiasco and D23

  When Rich Ross took over from Dick Cook as Disney Studio Chief in October of 2010, all indications are that he would have pulled the plug on John Carter just as he did on Captain Nemo: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, save for the fact that John Carter was too far advanced at the time with principal photography less than 90 days away. All the main cast had been signed to ‘pay or play’ contracts;156 all the contracts were in place for special effects -- the John Carter horse was out of the barn.

  Now, 18 months later, in the summer of 2011 with the Online Phase of the John Carter campaign just being launched, Ross was engaged in a struggle with Jerry Bruckheimer and Gore Verbinski over the budget of The Lone Ranger, which was set to go into production in October 2011 for a release date of December 21, 2012. The budget of $250M was the issue -- a budget that between Bruckheimer, Verbinski, and star Johnny Depp was more a function of “above the line” costs than, as was the case in John Carter, where it was animation/VFX costs that drove the budget to $250M.157

  To show he was serious, Ross pulled the plug. Breaking the news, Deadline Hollywood ran with the headline: “SHOCKER! Disney halts “The Lone Ranger” with Johnny Depp and Gore Verbinski.”158 Within the article, there was what would turn out to be a fateful reference to John Carter:

  This had to be an incredibly tough call for Disney’s Rich Ross and Sean Bailey, but they have several huge live-action bets on the table already. Budget busters include John Carter, the Andrew Stanton-directed adaptation of John Carter of Mars with Friday Night Lights‘ Taylor Kitsch in the lead role, which has a budget that has ballooned to around $250 million;

  The very first version of the report placed the John Carter budget at $300M, and later revised it to $250M, evidently doing so after receiving urgent assertions from Disney that $250M was the correct number. The $300M figure, however, was already embedded in the consciousness of many studio watchers by the time the change was made, and would spawn other references to $300M as the final cost. Unfortunately, in correcting the figure and setting it at $250M, Disney did nothing to correct the misimpression that the cost had gotten as high as $250M by “ballooning” due to out of control production and “costly reshoots.”

  And so it was that John Carter became a piece of collateral damage in the reporting about the shut-down of The Lone Ranger, and would forever onward from that date be branded in the media and, eventually, the public consciousness as an out-of-control production that “ballooned” to $250M (or $300M) from an original intended budget of $150M, as announced in 2009 at the time Taylor Kitsch was signed. This was not how the $250M budget actually came about, and was an unfair rendering of what had happened -- but the narrative exploded onto the internet in the wake of The Lone Ranger announcement.

  Stanton would later vehemently and credibly contend that he stayed on budget from day one based on this approval before the start of shooting. But that didn’t matter in August 2011, because the seeds of the “out of control production” story that would ultimately bring down John Carter more than anything else, were now planted.

  The $250M reference was not the only seed.

  Another important seed came from a lengthy “edit bay interview” of Stanton which was released through multiple
outlets timed to coincide with the release of the first teaser trailer in July 2011, a month before the announcement about Lone Ranger.

  For the edit bay interviews, about 30 journalists were taken to Barsoom Studios in Berkeley,159 where they were given an introduction by producer Jim Morris that included the trailer, selected scenes, a viewing of art and costumes, and a lengthy presentation by Stanton. The journalists in attendance were armed in advance with questions about the reshoot because of Stanton’s casual comment in the June 15 LA Times interview in which he talked about having done a “month of reshoots” -- an attention getting number in an industry where anything more than a “pickup day” or two is regarded as sign of a “troubled production.” Collider.com published the complete interview, unedited:160

  I’ve always seen live action as the adults: They really get to make the movies, and we’re just kids here doing our little thing. I’ve always wanted to give it the intelligence and everything. That’s a bad trap you fall into, and the shocking thing when I got out there was like, “Oh my God, we actually know how to do it better on a lot of things back here [at Pixar].” I think some of that isn’t because people are bad at their job but that people are stuck in a certain way that it’s always been done. You can say that about any system. Pixar had this luxury of being ignorant and young and not knowing how it’s done. We saw from afar how we thought movies were made, and we used logic—turns out that’s not used that often.

  The line that stands out is, “Oh my God, we actually know how to do it better on a lot of things back here.” This was echoed by Stanton in other interviews--the notion that the venerated Hollywood system of live action film production was inferior and that Pixar had evolved a better way of doing it. It was a notion that conformist establishment Hollywood would resent.

  Stanton wasn’t finished:

  One of the other things that I realized is animation...you draw it, you put your own voice on it, you cut it, and you don’t like it, and you do it again. You do it every six months over three to four years. Every time you do that, that’s the equivalent of a reshoot, so I’ve been taught how to make a movie with four reshoots built in every time. And you wonder why our movies are good? It’s not because we’re smarter, it’s not because we’re better, it’s because we are in a system that recognizes that you don’t go, “Oh my God, okay, I’m going to paint this, but I can only touch the brush once and I’m only going to make one stroke. That stroke’s asked, and we’re done; we’re not making this painting.” I get to try it, play it, don’t like that, play it again, no, play it again, record it—most creative processes allow for somebody to go off into their shack, their studio, their recording booth, and try stuff until they figure it out and find it. This is such an expensive way to make something creative, which is a movie. People freak, and they want to hold it all in. They want to see, “Can you be really smart and think about it some more and plan some more? Just do it once. Or maybe twice.” Most places now aren’t even letting you think about it; they’re like, “Just do it! Maybe you’ll luck out.” We planned the bejesus out of it here. I’ve never met people who plan more than we do, and we do it four times over. You have no excuse: It’s got to be good. I never had to argue, but my explanation to Disney when they were going, “Why do we have to reshoot, and why is this number so bad?” I said, “You’re taking somebody who’s learned how to do it three to four times and do it once.” I tried to be as smart as I could and raise the bar as high as I could with the script before we went shooting knowing I wasn’t going to get these same iterations, then tried to be as smart as I could about doing the reshoots. It’s still less than what I’m used to. You start to understand the logistical problem trying to do that. It’s such a gypsy culture: You don’t get to keep the same people. They’re not in that building; you can’t grab them on a Thursday and go, “What if we do this?” All your actors are gone off. It’s a real conundrum, and believe me, we’re trying to think if we do another one, how can we improve upon what we’ve learned? We’ve managed to seduce some of that with our thinking on this, but there’s huge room for improvement. It’s a gnarly problem; I get it.

  Although Stanton never directly says it -- clear from the subtext is that while he thinks the “Pixar process” is superior, and it is the only film-making process he knows or trusts, it was not possible to approach John Carter as if it were a Pixar project. The best that was possible was a hybrid, and Stanton clearly found that frustrating, and although he never directly says that his creative process was compromised, a observer can’t help but wonder how much the “gnarly problem” affected that Pixarian creative process.

  Indeed, by Pixar standards, one could argue that John Carter was being forced into the marketplace essentially “half-baked.”

  No one would admit that, but the logic is inescapable.

  For the journalists, the elements for the explosion of negativity were all now in place. There was the notion -- incorrect but firmly implanted -- that the film had been budgeted at $150M and then “ballooned” to $250M because of reshoots made necessary by an inexperienced director; meanwhile the director was asserting that via Pixar he had figured out a “better way” that he was applying to live action filming; and Disney was making strange decisions (the title change) and producing and releasing marketing materials that were not resonating.

  It was a toxic brew indeed.

  The D23 Presentation and Its Aftermath

  After the release of the teaser trailer in July, the next major event in the campaign would be the presentation at the Disney D23 convention in August.161 This was intended to replace participation in the Comic-con convention in San Diego which was the traditional launching pad for sci-fi and superhero movies. The D23 Convention, on Disney turf in Anaheim, was an opportunity to showcase the film in a more managed environment--however the context, instead of sci-fi geekdom, would be an environment where it would be promoted alongside Pixar’s Brave, The Muppets, Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie, Sam Raimi’s Oz The Great & Powerful, and Marvel’s The Avengers to an audience of mostly journalists who would report on what they saw.

  The presentation of John Carter was part of a two hour and forty minute presentation of the overall Disney lineup, both animation and live action, on Saturday morning, August 21, 2011. The John Carter portion was largely a replay of the edit bay presentation made two months earlier in Berkeley, with the exception that this time Stanton was joined by actors Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, and Willem Dafoe. Disney showed the journalist the same package that had been shown at the “Edit Bay” interview -- the now familiar teaser trailer, a clip of John Carter arriving on Mars and meeting Tars Tarkas; his scene with Dejah Thoris in her chambers just before her wedding to Sab Than; the white ape coliseum sequence. Additionally, one new scene was added, with John Carter being shown comically attempting escape from Woola while chained in the Thark nursery.

  The press reaction to the presentation was muted. Jeff Otto writing for Indiewire/The Playlist reported, a “lukewarm”162 response, while another Indiewire Blogger, Anthony D’Alessandro, wrote: “Of all their reels at D23, John Carter received the most muted response--especially compared to the rousing applause awarded The Avengers.”163 ; The hugely influential (in sci-fi circles) Ain’t It Cool News ran a headline that included “The Agony of John Carter” and called it “stunningly flat” with a “strangely dour” tone;164 At Hey U Guys.com, Ezequiel Gutierrez reported, “I’m not sure what it is about this project, but I feel nothing.”165 Devin Faraci at Badass Digest called it “John Carter of blahs,”166 while at Collider Tommy Cook lamented its “somber, melancholy” tone and noted, “it’s just a guy fighting and jumping over giant CGI monsters.”167

  The issue of which clips were shown is, perhaps more than any other marketing element, a function of the coordination and relationship between Disney marketing under MT Carney, and the John Carter production under Andrew Stanton and producers Jim Morris and Lindsey Collins.

  Stanton had a well est
ablished and oft repeated tendency to refrain from showing “too much too soon” and the choice of scenes for D23 and the edit bay interviews reflects both Stanton’s personal preferences, and the realities of heavy CGI post production in which the most complicated, CGI intensive scenes are typically not ready until much closer to the release date of the film.

  As it turned out, the one aspect of the D23 presentation that reflected the conflict over high VFX content was the scene of John Carter and Tars Tarkas battling a giant white ape in the Thark coliseum. That scene was, at the request of Carney, fast tracked so that the first half of the scene could be included at D23.

  Unfortunately, of all scenes to be chosen to showcase VFX and action, this was perhaps the worst one, not because the scene itself was lacking -- but because it was Burroughs’ coliseum scene from 1912’s A Princess of Mars that inspired George Lucas to mount an extremely similar scene in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, a scene that was very familiar to everyone except, perhaps, Carney and her marketers. There was every reason to believe that the scene from John Carter, presented largely without explanation or context -- particularly so in light of Stanton’s decision to mount the scene with production design and art direction that accentuated the similarities to Lucas’ scene--would be viewed as derivative and that is indeed what happened, with many of the journalists citing Attack of the Clones and, more generally, the “strip-mining” of Burroughs by everyone from the creators of Flash Gordon to James Cameron.

  About the best piece of “buzz” that John Carter was able to claim coming out of D23 was a flurry of articles written about how Willem Dafoe and the other actors had been required to learn to play their role in motion capture suits on 3 foot high stilts in the Arizona desert. This minor nugget seemed to capture the imagination of a number of journalists, and was a potential angle for helping stress the diligence and commitment to realism and acting performances that Stanton brought to the project, since this meant that Taylor Kitsch, for example, was actually acting against Willem Dafoe in his scenes with Tars Tarkas, as opposed to giving his lines to a “tennis ball” or some other eye-line device.