John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood

by Sellers, Michael D.

  For me, seeing the fan trailer spread to 400 media outlets in a matter of days caused the ‘stop fantasizing, be real’ voice inside my head to go quiet. I began to hold out hope that the fans, properly organized and motivated, might actually be able to make a difference in the final weeks before release.

  As the influencer and social media swung positive, while the mainstream media continued to savage the film, I wrote “How Motivated Fans Can Make A Difference.” The article began:262

  Frankly, this should have been smooth sailing. One of the beloved novels ever being adapted by the genius director of Wall-E with plenty of budget to get it right, a great cast, state of the art special effects….what can go wrong? When we started this site, we imagined that by now, a little more than two weeks out, John Carter would be tracking like gangbusters en route to a $60M-70M opening weekend, sequels would be almost assured, and long suffering ERB fans would be on the verge of a once in a lifetime moment of something pretty close to pure ecstasy.

  Instead, two weeks out, we are having to endure a constant onslaught of bad news. The tracking is bad; interest is low; critique of the promotion is getting very bloody. The latest is Newsweek saying that the buzz around Hollywood is that John Carter is Disney’s Ishtar — and if you aren’t old enough to remember Ishtar, that was the all time epic big studio fail. Being compared to Ishtar is basically apocalyptic. On the other hand, every advance review that has slipped out into the blogosphere has been favorable and then some. The film itself seems poised to deliver the kind of great viewing experience that you’d expect when you put Edgar Rice Burroughs and Andrew Stanton into a petri dish for four years.

  The question is this: In this day and age of social media, we the fans have more power than ever at any time in the past. We can say things, do things, that have impact far beyond our own geographical community.

  Is it possible that a grassroots #gobarsoom effort could really make a difference?

  The post then went on to list things that fans could do that, collectively, could have an impact. It talked about checking the local multiplex to ensure that John Carter lobby displays were prominently featured; using the “share” features on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media and bookmarking outlets to amplify the positive narrative; monitoring and contributing positivity on IMDB and other movie message boards; reaching out to local media to generate “hometown stories” about fans rallying to the film based on the beloved 100 year classic (a process JCF would support with B roll and in other ways); Retweet Andrew Stanton’s tweet and link to the fan trailer, using hashtags properly to ensure as wide an audience as possible.

  The next day JCF announced the “#GoBarsoom Digital Grassroots Media Campaign.”263 The idea was to give fans tools and support to help them reach out to their local media and give “hometown interviews” while directing the media to a digital online press kit on The John Carter Files that would offer a “full range of materials about Edgar Rice Burroughs, the history of John Carter as a book series, the history of efforts to make it into a movie — plus art examples, quotes from people who were influenced by ERB (Carl Sagan, Ray Bradbury, James Cameron) and more.

  The storyline for the interviews was to be the same one Jack Scanlan and I had pitched to Disney: “For many, the opening of Disney’s John Carter is just another movie, but for local fan [Insert Name] it’s the culmination of decades of waiting to see his boyhood hero John Carter on screen.” All of this, plus the digital press kit included HD videos that could be downloaded so that the media outlet has everything it needs to craft a good story.

  Meanwhile, Social Media monitoring software showed a measurable improvement in the positive/negative sentiment ratio surrounding John Carter during the period in which the fan trailer, tweet reviews, and premiere were all happening. Clearly the efforts by Stanton, the fans, and the tweets by reviewers were moving the needle -- could this be a turning of the tide?

  Or just a temporary, unsustainable bump?

  On the same day, Disney Australia released what appeared to be the full great white ape scene that had dominated the trailers and TV spots to date followed by a two minute montage that had a distinctly different feel from anything that had been released previously -- more epic, with the same Nick Ingman “Mars” music that had been used in the second half of the largely unseen (because it only ran online) SuperBowl 60 second ad. This two minute piece after the ape scene was, in fact, the “sizzle reel” created not by marketing professionals but by the filmmakers themselves, a year earlier. 264 Erik Jessen, one of the editors on Eric Zumbrunnen’s team, had been the primary cutter of the piece, which the team had made long before the official promotion began. The “sizzle reel” garnered some favorable publicity online.

  But......

  It was reaching tens of thousands of people and 4-5 million moviegoers would have to buy tickets and see the film in theaters across the country.

  Where were they going to come from?

  On February 26, for the Oscar pre-show spot, almost two full weeks before the release, Disney began running “critics” TV spots filled with random review quotes that no longer tried to sell the film on its own merits or do a better job conveying the film’s essence, instead drawing mainly from the “Tweet” mini-reviews that had come out since Disney had decided on February 21 to lift the embargo partially and allow tweets. Many observers saw this as Disney in effect throwing in the towel as far as doing a better job of conveying the essence of the film’s story, and indeed, it was almost game over at this point.

  The review quotes, which built to a climax that ended with “First Blockbuster of the Year” followed by (could it be anything else) a clip of John Carter fighting a white ape, drew fire from some of the journalists quoted, and hoots of derision from others, particularly for the “First Blockbuster of the Year” climax.265

  A few days later, on February 28, Disney released the third and final theatrical trailer, this one ordered up by new marketing chief Ricky Strauss.266 The final trailer was greeted with a collective sigh.267

  "Who is that?" So villain Mark Strong asks in the opening line of the latest trailer for John Carter, thus echoing the sentiment of pretty much every non-sci-fi-nerd who is not John Carter. The film opens in less than two weeks and, according to recent tracking, awareness and interest for the film is dismally low for a $250+ budgeted film. Confirming those tracking numbers, last night, following a John Carter TV spot, I was drawn into this brief conversation:

  "What is this place supposed to be?"

  "Mars."

  "Oh, that's Mars? I was wondering why he was in a weird desert. Why is he on Mars?"

  "I... I don't know. He was in the Civil War, and somehow he ends up on Mars. It was a series of books."

  "What? Why does he have the most boring name imaginable?"

  "I don't know."

  This so-called "final" trailer for John Carter makes no attempt at clearing any of that up. Like with the previous trailers, Disney is so intent on showing off their effects that you can't taste any of the actual meal under all the overwhelming CGI ketchup they dumped out.

  In the mainstream media, this article in The Weekly Standard captured the situation clearly and was reflected in hundreds of newspapers and media outlets as the release date approached.268

  Stanton chose to attempt to make a realistic epic full of special effects in the Pixar way—a method that involves a lot of reshooting, rewriting, and rethinking as the movie is being made. As a result, it appears John Carter may have cost Disney as much as $250 million to make, but in this case the money was spent on a movie with no major stars, an unproven director, and based on a “brand” with meaning only to science-fiction geeks......

  What this means is that John Carter has become the latest in an endless series of tsk-tsk subjects of Hollywood-run-amok articles and books, as pop-culture spending excesses seem always to generate a kind of thrilled and sickened fascination on the order of reading about the Madoff family.

&nbs
p; Tsk-tsk indeed.

  Was there any hope of changing the outcome?

  Finally: The Film Itself

  On February 27, the LA Times Hero Complex was sponsoring an advance screening in Burbank of John Carter, with Andrew Stanton to be present for a Q and A after the film. Jack LesCanela, a reader of The John Carter Files, had scored a ticket for me so a few days prior I put the word out via email to a member of the John Carter film crew that I would be at the screening. My email got forwarded up the chain and eventually landed in Andrew Stanton’s in box, with the result that on Oscar Sunday, February 26, I opened my email to find a message from Andrew Stanton:

  Dear Michael

  I'd very much like to meet you after the Q&A after the Burbank screening. I'll stick around to find you. Thanks so much for the trailer you have done.

  You managed to capture the true movie we have much better than anyone else (so far.) I'd love to hear if you have any other wonderful underground trailers that I could help you virally spread.

  See you tomorrow night!

  Andrew

  I was thrilled.

  On one level this was just a kindly pat on the back to a fan who had done something nice for the film, and I didn’t want to read too much into it. But on the other hand, it was as if a guerrilla alliance was forming between fans and the filmmakers to use the tools of social media and try and make a difference.

  I had studied the elements that are present when something goes viral, and one of the most important was precisely what had happened with the fan trailer -- there needed to be an endorser who gets the video or blog post out into a much larger channel than would otherwise be possible. Maria Aragon had just been a 10 year old playing around making YouTube videos until Lady Gaga saw her cover of “Born This Way” and tweeted about it. The result: 52 million hits.

  Nothing on that scale had happened to us, but Stanton’s tweet had been the difference between the trailer being hardly noticed, and generating 100,000 hits and 400 news articles in a matter of days. If he were an ally providing amplification, and it seems he was, perhaps there was hope that the efforts could become meaningful.

  But, sadly, the harsh reality was that the time for the influencers to influence had passed. The damage had been done; the narrative was set.

  The raw numbers were humbling.

  The Fan Trailer had garnered 100,000 views and hundreds of highly favorable comments on YouTube in a matter of days, and the story had been carried on 400 media outlets and sites. It had generated credibility for JCF, and had, along with the tweets and the Mondo poster, helped contribute to a measurable improvement in the positive/negative sentiment ratio on blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. The fans, with zero budget, had moved the needle. But more was needed and Disney needed to be able to take this “gift” and do something with it.

  Meanwhile, though, for every person who saw the fan trailer online or read about the favorable tweets on an entertainment blog, there were 100 potential moviegoers receiving an advertising or publicity impression that was either the “more of the same” movie trailers from Disney, or “John Carter will bomb” articles in the press.

  The sad truth was that John Carter needed to find 4-5 million paying fans on opening weekend to keep from being labeled a failure and at this point, with the release so near, the positive “buzzlet” that was rippling through blogs and social media circles was being swamped by mainstream negativity.

  Too little too late.

  We were trying to stem a tsunami with a teacup.

  On February 27, as the lights went down at the opening of the Hero Complex screening of John Carter in Burbank, I experienced an emotional moment as I absorbed the reality that after playing privately in my head for forty years, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ world of Barsoom, and characters like John Carter, Dejah Thoris, Woola, and Tars Tarkas were about to be revealed onscreen. There was something very personal about my relationship with Burroughs, his characters, and his world, and I’m nor ashamed to admit that I was brought to tears by a mixture of anticipation, poignancy, and pride at finally seeing my boyhood dreamworld come alive on screen.

  Barsoom, as drawn by Edgar Rice Burroughs, becomes more than a setting -- it becomes a character. As John Carter, for the love of “the incomparable” Dejah Thoris, finds himself in a position very much like King Arthur to gradually unite the warring factions of all the planet’s cultures, Barsoom becomes an otherworldly Camelot -- a place of dreams, of honor, and of possibilities. I am convinced that it is for this reason - this deeply emotional context - that dreamers like Carl Sagan and Ray Bradbury both spoke of their own dreams of going “home to Barsoom.”

  Now it was here, realized on screen, after 100 years of existing in the imaginations of so many.

  The movie began to play.

  I had been following the narrative closely enough to know some of the strategies that Stanton had employed, so I was not surprised at the prologue on Barsoom even though in the novels, Burroughs had carefully revealed Barsoom to the reader only through John Carter’s eyes, a technique which caused the exposition to be doled out in manageable bites rather than all at once.

  I found the prologue easy enough to follow but wondered what the takeaway would be for audiences unfamiliar with the world being depicted -- would it be confusing to them? But the Barsoomian prologue was over quickly, and then it was on to John Carter in New York City sending a telegram to the young Edgar Rice Burroughs, then young Burroughs arriving at Carter’s estate only to find his uncle dead, and then, seven minutes into the story, it was on to the “real story of John Carter, thirteen years earlier in Arizona, just prior to being transported to Mars.

  Three beginnings, I thought, seemed a bit dangerous: Barsoom prologue, ERB frame story, then Carter in Arizona. But I found the opening captivating and when, fourteen minutes in, Carter awoke on Mars and began his comical attempts to adapt to the lower gravity there, I sat back and prepared to enjoy, for the first time in cinema, the thrilling ride of an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel brought to life on screen.

  But it didn’t quite turn out as expected.

  It was a thrilling ride -- no question about that. But the experience was not quite the uniquely Burroughsian ride I was expecting. I would later describe it as being as if I had gone to my hometown after decades away and made a pilgrimage to the Italian restaurant I had loved as a child. The restaurant was still there; it looked the same, the name was the same. But a new chef had taken over and the cuisine was no longer homestyle Italian, but a very delightful modern fusion cuisine, which tasted great and was presented beautifully -- but left you wondering: “Where’s my lasagna?”

  While this was a mild disappointment as a fan, as a filmmaker I was conscious of how much Stanton did retain of the original, and I found myself being mostly grateful for that. I had read most of the screenplays of the previous John Carter of Mars attempts, and I felt that even though this one had substantial changes, it was the closest of them all in its faithfulness to the basic setup of getting John Carter to Barsoom, and the world he finds when he gets there. The “world build” in particular was faithful -- Helium, Zodanga, Tharks and Red Martians, airships and flyers, swords and radium pistols--it was all there, lovingly rendered.269

  As a devotee of the books, I knew that my viewing experience was skewed by the fact that at each step of the way, particularly on a first viewing, I found myself automatically comparing what was on the screen to the book, a process that interfered with the normal psychology of watching a movie. I understood this “background static” problem, and accepted it, and deferred my final judgment on the movie -- it would take a number of viewings to reach a point where I could simply go on the journey Stanton was offering, without constantly referencing the somewhat different journey that Burroughs had implanted in my mind. Of all the changes, the two that had the most profound effect for me were the conversion of John Carter’s character from knight errant to damaged-goods-hero-in-need-of-redemption, and related to that - the use of a tech
nology (Thern medallion) to transport Carter to Mars. The latter was more than the layering of a scientific element -- it changed a major dynamic of the story because John Carter, rather than having been spiritually transported to Mars to begin a new life there that he seemed somehow destined for, had instead been in essence kidnapped to Mars and placed there with a piece of technology in his hand that could, if he learned how to use it, return him to Earth. This created major shifts in John Carter’s relationship to Barsoom; his motivation; and his goal as he understood it for much of the film

  There was much to think about.

  But vastly more important in my view than my personal reaction to the movie was -- how would audiences and critics react? The audience at the Hero Complex screening seemed to genuinely enjoy it, and when afterwards Mark Linthicum and I taped exiting viewer comments we had no trouble finding strongly positive reactions. 270

  Was it strongly favorable enough?

  It was now twelve days until the release; Disney had essentially thrown in the towel at the idea of trying to better explain the movie in trailers and TV spots, and was now just using fifteen second “Critics” spots, urging viewers to believe that the critics loved the movie.

  Would they?

  For a typical, well-promoted action adventure blockbuster, a middling critics response and B+ Cinemascore viewer response would be enough, coupled with strong promotion, to generate a box office success.

  Sadly, the elements were arranged differently for John Carter.

  The weak promotion had left the film in a situation where it needed an absolute home run from Andrew Stanton to have a chance.

  Stanton had hit two home runs previously. Finding Nemo and Wall-E had been huge hits with both critics and fans. At Rotten Tomatoes, Finding Nemo had scored an astonishing 99% critics rating and 81% audience rating, and Wall-E had scored 96% with critics and 89% with audiences.271