The latest word is that John Carter is officially the first major box office bomb of 2012.

It is a very difficult movie to sell to an audience.

At its core, this is a romance story... but was filmed as an action movie, so guys would like it. But then the talking parts make it drag along, not because they are cringe inducing, but because they don't fit in the pacing of an action movie.

They dropped the "of Mars" part of the title, as a marketing move to attract female audiences, but then the average Joe has no idea who this John Carter is...

I found it very erm... curious... of how many actors from the HBO Rome series ended up in this movie.

Yes, three of them to be exact. Polly Walker, Ciaran Hinds and James Purefoy.

All of the movie insiders are convinced that the marketing for the movie was utter crap. Like you mentioned, no one had a a clue who or what "John Carter" was about and the vast majority of people (including me) had no idea about the original book.

Yes, apparently all the effort went into deciding to drop the "of Mars" from the title. Then they sat back, patted themselves on the back, and got wasted.



The Jedi Master

Darn...that's too bad...

I went to see "John Carter" expecting a mediocre CGI slugfest...which I'm not a big fan of...but was very much happy that the story, and quality put into making it, made it a really fun film that caught my attention really early and kept it right 'till the last frames. So count me in as really pleased to have paid for it, I got my money's worth.

The CGI was pretty good really, the physics mostly "believable", at least as far as a scifi fantasy written before Martian physics was fully understood. Parts of the story were very predictable, as you can't avoid in a typical action story, yet there was enough unexpected turns to make it fun. The actors were all performing well, of particular note the Princess and her father. Purefoy having a comical "hostage" moment that had me laughing! Did I mention the princess was rather yummy?

Yes, the marketing for this movie was crap. Should result in a few people getting fired and blackballed from the industry.

I do think that most who saw it in my theatre enjoyed it, but compare and contrast the marketing of Wrath of the Titans from a few years ago, to that of John Carter...I'll bet many could have mistaken "Carter" preview and TV ads for another soon-to-fail SyFy show...

Superb movie too bad Disney's marketing campaign let it down!

Do you mean in terms of funding? IIBC, did not Disney spent sumfink crazy like $100,000,000.00 for advertising.

I thought the reports had it that it was Andrew Stanton who forced his viewpoints for the type of marketing (weird trailers, old music, etc.) for JC?

Right. The problem was not how much money was spent on advertising but the problem was HOW the movie was advertised. Disney totally dropped the ball on that one.

I liked the movie and being a sci-fi geek I knew who John Carter was and although a Princess of Mars probably would have been an acceptable title but if you didn't know of it already it would have made little difference. Furthermore I went to see it based just on movie trailers I had already seen I can't see how it would bomb based on that.