John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood

by Sellers, Michael D.

  The only hope for John Carter was for him to hit another home run.

  Having just seen the movie, I just wasn’t sure whether he’d pulled it off. It was good -- but a home run? It was hard to tell.

  As the Hero Complex screening and Q and A with Andrew Stanton came to a close, I watched as fans swarmed the director and Disney handlers tried to get him through the crowd and out of the theater. I realized that Stanton’s “I’ll stick around to find you” was about to get overwhelmed by reality, and was on the verge of exiting when Ryan Stankevich from Disney spotted me and said hello. I mentioned to her that I’d gotten an email from Stanton saying he’d like to meet me after the screening. Ryan pushed through the crowd, calling out to Stanton that “Michael Sellers is here.” For a moment I was afraid he wouldn’t recognize the name, but he did recognize it and immediately broke away to greet me.

  In the conversation that followed, Stanton -- who seemed in no hurry -- thanked me and the fans and said, “You’re the only ones who’ve figured out what the DNA of the film is and gotten it into a trailer.” He asked if there were additional trailers in the works. I admitted that it was difficult, due to the paucity of available materials but said I would try to come up with more. “Get me anything you can and I’ll tweet it and get Favreau to tweet it and we’ll get it out there. This really helps.”272

  I promised to give it my best shot.

  The Disney handlers hustled Stanton off, and I was left wondering how we could possibly do another trailer, given that we had already used up almost all of the available material.

  Still, it felt a little bit like being “on the team.”

  It was, as my father used to say, “better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.”

  The Critics Weigh In

  The critical response to John Carter unfolded in several phases, beginning with the partial lifting of the embargo on February 21 that allowed journalists who had attended Disney-sponsored advance screenings to tweet brief comments while stopping short of publishing actual reviews.

  Coming as it did on the same day that articles such as The Daily Beast’s “Disney’s Quarter Billion Dollar Movie Fiasco,” the mostly favorable tweets coming mainly from sci-fi oriented or second tier critics were a welcome injection of positivity into the poisonously negative broth that was the media environment for John Carter at that point.273

  By February 26, Oscar Sunday, Disney had collected enough tweeted accolades to be able to release its first “critics” spot at the end of the Oscar pre-show.

  But it was on March 2nd, the date the embargo for full interviews was lifted, that the first wave of actual reviews hit and the verdict with the first 10 reviews in: 80% “Fresh” and 20% “Rotten.”

  From Rotten Tomatoes: 274

  FRESH

  Total Film: A handsome new sci-fi adventure that feels rather familiar.

  IGN: Disney's adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars knocks it out of this world.

  Badass Digest: It took a hundred years to get on screen, but Edgar Rice Burroughs’ classic pulp story gets there right... mostly.

  Digital Spy: When John Carter moves up the gears it's an accomplished blockbuster packed with pulse-racing action.

  Matt's Movie Reviews: Epic in scope and stunning in imagery, John Carter is an old school blockbuster....

  WhatCulture: Lovingly made pulp fantasy

  HitFix: John Carter does pulp fiction right and on a grand scale

  SFX: Lynn Collins' feisty Dejah Thoris is the best sci-fi kick-ass princess since Princess Leia

  ROTTEN

  Quickflix: An Underwhelming Epic

  Fan the Fire: The story veers between interesting, boring, and borderline incomprehensible.

  Reading the first batch of reviews, I was concerned. There was nothing wrong on the surface with an 80% critics rating -- but these were only first reviews, the ones from minor reviewers and/or those with a special emphasis on sci-fi or geek culture films. Plus, the positive reviews were positive enough to be graded “Fresh”-- but they weren’t unqualified raves.

  True, the positive reviews did contain at least some statements of unbridled enthusiasm: "Some of the stuff that Stanton pulls off in John Carter is mind-blowing," enthused Badass Digest’s Devin Faraci, "There are a few sequences that feel simply classic, like we’ll be referring to them for years to come. There’s one scene, where John Carter stands alone (well, with Woola) against a rampaging army of nine foot tall, four armed Tharks, that is an all-timer."

  Drew McWeeney at Hitfix offered praise of the CGI Tharks: "The Tharks, led here by Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe), are compelling creations. By a few scenes into their time onscreen, I stopped thinking about the technical trick involved in bringing them to life and simply accepted them as real."275

  More importantly, the negative reviews went straight to the issues that had worried me after his first viewing on February 27, and a second viewing that same day, March 2nd, at a screening for Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc and a group of Burroughs fans.

  At Quickflix Simon Maraudo wrote:276

  John Carter, for all of its pricey spectacle, is a mostly impenetrable picture unlikely to please children nor adults..... This film tells of two human-ish tribes at war on Mars (or, as they call it, Barsoom). When the leader of the Zodanga tribe, Sab Than, (Dominic West) is gifted with a powerful ray by the planet’s omnipotent watcher (Mark Strong), he begins to wipe out the people of Helium indiscriminately, much to the chagrin of their princess Dejah (Lynn Collins). Meanwhile, the CGI Martians of Thark keep to themselves, betting on which army will ultimately prove victorious, but hoping they’ll just wipe one another out. If you’re keeping up, I commend you.

  The script, penned by Stanton, Mark Andrews, and author Michael Chabon, does not ably construct this universe (a framing device involving a young Edgar Rice Burroughs pays off in the end, but only further confuses us in the beginning). So much time is spent explaining the lay of the land, little is left to craft memorable characters, or involve us in the struggle, or show us why it might be a bad thing for Sab Than to rule Barsoom (for all the to-ing and fro-ing we do across the planet, we don’t much get to see how the place actually works, or what the people living there even do. See also: Thor. Kitsch is likable as a reluctant hero, and Collins works her Princess Leia shtick nicely, but the antagonists are a non-entity.

  However, once all the confusion regarding names and locations in the first half fades away, we are treated to a series of fairly thrilling action sequences. The film’s extravagant $250 million budget can be seen on the screen in the mostly sumptuous special effects. Who knows? Perhaps the sequel – if we ever get there – will fill in the gaps and expand on John Carter’s legend now all the expositional heavy-lifting has been done. But is that an acceptable excuse for an epic to be this underwhelming?

  The good news -- it wasn’t completely negative. But the charge that the film’s exposition heavy opening was confusing was not unexpected, and doubtless was going to become a theme. And indeed, the other hostile review (which upon a full reading revealed itself to be mixed-negative), delivered a strong punch to the gut of the film along the same lines:277

  Amidst the CGI environments and constant plot machinations, the story veers between interesting, boring and borderline incomprehensible. The latter instances usually involve Mark Strong’s staring villain Matai Shang, whose presence is given almost no context until right near the end, at which point his explanations are watery at best.

  Meanwhile, reviews aside, the drumbeat of negativity in the journalistic articles was increasing. Bloomberg News, for example, ran with: “Disney Hopes ‘John Carter’ doesn’t become ‘John Doe.’278 Dozens of other similar articles were appearing daily.

  Steadily over the next few days, the critics had their say, and on Rotten Tomatoes the rating began a steady decline. By March 4, it was at 72%; March 5 it was 69%, and by March 7 it was flirting with dropping below the 60% threshold, after which it would no
longer bear the “fresh” rating, and would be labeled rotten.

  Under normal circumstances, not obtaining spectacular reviews would not be a crippling outcome for a movie such as John Carter.

  The Lorax, which opened surprisingly strong on March 2 at $70.2M (tracking had it opening at $45-50M) did so with a 56% critics rating, making it “Rotten,” and an audience rating of only 68% -- clear evidence of a strong and successful marketing campaign.279

  But nothing about the John Carter situation was “normal.” It had cost a whopping $350M to make and market; it was the target of relentless sniping from multiple quarters; it was saddled with an extraordinarily weak marketing campaign, and as a result of all this, the stakes were raised and the critics’ reaction was more important than it would otherwise have been.

  On March 4, Disney played one last card -- releasing the first 10 minutes of the movie (minus the opening Mars prologue) on the internet. The first comments were largely favorable -- far more so than had been the case for any of the trailers. However, coming as late as it did, and being available only online, unless it went massively viral it was not going to be a game-changer.

  Meanwhile, there was now a new issue that was generally being viewed as yet another hurdle -- The Lorax was over-performing so much that it now seemed likely that John Carter, tentpole epic with a $250M budget, would not even win its opening weekend.

  The Lorax had opened at $70.2M, well above tracking which had it at 45-50M, and a 40% dropoff would mean it would book $42.2M on its second weekend and it looked highly unlikely that John Carter could beat that. While all cards had been played -- there was one final factor that might just save John Carter: red hot overall box office.

  For the year, Box Office Gross was running 16% ahead of same period 2011 and there had been at least three major cases of tracking being way off -- The Lorax, which tracked at $45M and did $70.2M, Safe House with Denzel Washington which tracked in the low 20’s and opened at $40.1M, and The Vow which tracked in the low 20’s and opened at $41.2M.

  Was it possible that all the reports, all the analysis, even the gut feel of it all would turn out to be wrong and John Carter would somehow fool everyone and over-perform versus the tracking as those three films had? That would mean an opening as high as $50M if it doubled the tracking as Safe House and The Vow had.

  Was there reason to believe it could happen?

  Was there still a best case outcome that would keep John Carter from being pronounced DOA?

  As the reviews poured in, I watched the “Fresh” rating plummet and realized there was going to be no deus ex machina. There would be no sudden surge of critics raves or massive word of mouth to overcome the campaign shortfall. I held to the hope that it would open at $40M which, with legs, would give it an outside chance of making it to $150M domestically -- then if foreign was huge, it could still reach $500M.

  But that was the upper limits of what might be possible, and that was a long shot.

  I looked at all the factors-- tracking as predicted by the tracking polls; recent history of tracking polls missing low (The Lorax, Safe House, The Vow); macro factors (Box Office running 16% ahead of last year); and X factors that might not be being captured by the analysis.

  What X Factors?

  Disney Moms and Dads -- were they being captured by the tracking or online monitoring? Could they give it a boost?

  Answer: “yes” to the tracking, which was old technology, calling selected likely filmgoers which would probably encompass the Disney moms, and “no” to online buzz -- maybe the busy moms weren’t as active on the internet as other segments, so they might be underrepresented. They could boost it by a few million.

  What about Boomer ERB fans -- men (and women) now in their 50’s and up, who had discovered ERB via the Ace and Ballantine paperback reprints in the sixties? They might not be showing up either in the online monitoring or the tracking polls. Another booster of a few million.

  And finally there was the late buzz -- the wavelet of positive word of mouth that had been building online since the fan trailer and tweet reviews had started having an impact on February 21. Was there enough there to move the needle? Or was it too little, too late?

  In response to Stanton asking for more “underground trailers,” Mark Linthicum and I had set out to cut another trailer, but it wasn’t easy. Expectations were high -- and yet we only had access to the materials that Disney had released, and all of those materials had sound and image tied together so we were stuck not only with the limited images, but if we cut a standard trailer we would have to live with the soundtrack that was already attached to each piece of film. This had been all right for the first trailer because that one was essentially a rearrangement of many different Disney pieces. Having done that once, doing it again would be repetitive.

  We tried a number of approaches, but none seemed to really offer anything substantially different enough from what was out there, or from what we had already released, to warrant releasing.

  Almost out of ideas, we decided to try something that would not be, precisely, a trailer, but would simulate an Opening Titles sequence that would set up the “Heritage” of the film, and then offer an images-and-music-only trailer flowing out of the opening titles.

  For the music bed we chose Nick Ingram’s ‘Mars’ -- the track that had been used in the un-aired second half of the Super Bowl TV Spot, and in the sizzle reel cut by Erik Jessen, one of the film’s editors, which had been released by Disney on February 24. The music began with a very slow, emotionally laden melody and my thought was to have the beginning of the trailer play like an opening title credit sequence with cards that laid down the unique heritage of the film that was about to follow. We also inserted images from the original artwork for the first book publication of John Carter. As the evocative, melodic strings played, the cards came up:

  --In 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs gave us the gift of modern science fiction

  --His story of a Virginia cavalry officer transported to Mars . . .

  --. . . has inspired the great scientists and storytellers of our time.

  --Carl Sagan . . . James Cameron . . . Arthur C. Clarke . . . Steven Spielberg . . . Ray Bradbury. . . George Lucas . . . Jane Goodall . . . Jerry Siegel . . .

  --Walt Disney Pictures Presents

  --On the 100th anniversary of “A Princess of Mars”

  --A Film by Andrew Stanton

  --Based on the visionary novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs

  The cards laid out beautifully, and they created just the right mood for the first shot, the iconic shot of a flyer approaching, with Helium in the background. It was a shot that had been used in all the trailers, but watching it come up after reading the cards that preceded it created -- at least for me -- a completely different reaction. It seemed epic, special, laden with meaning because of its origins and the impact it had had over the years.280

  But there was no denying the fact that it took 45 seconds to get to that first image from the film. No one to my knowledge had ever made a trailer that took that long to get to the visuals from the movie.

  The remainder of the trailer used images and music only, no dialogue or sound effects, and with the help of the powerful, emotional orchestral score, laid out enough of the story to create, we hoped, intrigue. In the end -- we called it “John Carter Fan Trailer ‘Heritage’” and uploaded it to YouTube.

  It wasn’t exactly a trailer -- but it was true to the underlying marketing narrative that I felt strongly had been missed, and was “from the heart” for sure. Plus it was all we had. And so we released it on March 2, publishing it on YouTube and sending it along to Andrew Stanton. Jack Scanlan, who had become the volunteer publicist for the #GoBarsoom Digital Grassroots Media Campaign, put it out to key outlets who had covered the first trailer.281

  While it didn’t have the immediate impact of the first trailer -- it did get coverage in over 200 outlets and garnered six figure views. In fact, in the final week before release, the two fan trail
ers together managed to almost as many views as the official trailer. Later, after the release period had passed -- this trailer would continue to consistently draw views and appears likely that it will eventually overtake the first fan trailer.

  We had given it our best shot.

  After putting out the second trailer, there was little I could do in the final days except find positive reviews and post links to them. And there were plenty of positive reviews coming in.

  Houston Chronicle: “Thrilling John Carter well worth the wait.”

  MSN: “...first movie of it’s kind in a very long time and I’d willingly sit through it again for a second or even third time.”

  Village Voice: “A lively, visually crafty pleasure.”

  View London: Intelligent script, strong characters...superb performances.”

  Miami Herald: “Ridiculously fun!”

  Salt Lake Tribune: “A Rousing Sci-Fi epic.”

  But just as surely as there were positive reviews in abundance, so too were their negative ones and as the release date approached, the overall critics ratings continued to fall -- not a nose dive, to be sure, but a gradual slide. On March 8, the day before the release, it dipped into “Rotten” territory at 58%. Worse -- it was the “Top Critics” who were savaging the film.

  Variety’s Peter Debruge (March 6) : To watch John Carter is to wonder where in this jumbled space opera one might find the intuitive sense of wonderment and awe Stanton brought to Finding Nemo and Wall-E.

  New York Post’s Lou Loumenick (March 7): “It’s hard to care about anything going on in this shapeless would-be franchise, which lurches from scene to scene without building any real excitement.”

  Arizona Republic’s Bill Goodykoontz (March 7) : Somehow, despite that boatload of talent, the movie never really comes together.

  EW’s Owen Glieberman (March 7): “Nothing in John Carter really works, since everything in the movie has been done so many times before, and so much better.