Princess of Mars

4/22/2024

Now I did quite enjoy "John Carter" with Taylor Kitsch from 2012 but yikes what have they done to the story here? Antonio Sabato Jr in the "Carter" role makes Kitsch look like Marlon Brando. He's just dreadful. To be fair, the third-rate CGI doesn't help, nor does the pretty awful script or the fact that he is clearly there (shirt off) to complement the even less glorious talents of the eponymous character (Dejah Thoris) who seems to have based her characterisation on an over-exposed, sepia-tinted, version of "Wonder Woman". Somebody decided that the US operations in the Middle East was a better starting point and it all goes downhill quite continuously from there. I did quite like the worm thing that spurted out the nutritious milk as our character finds himself transported from Earth to

3/6/2025

**_The ‘B’ version of “John Carter”_** When a “jarhead” is injured in Afghanistan (Antonio Sabato Jr), he is used in a teleportation experiment and transferred to a planet in the Alpha Centauri stellar system. Due to the lower gravity, he has the ability to leap great distances and earns the respect of his captors, the Tharks. After meeting a human-like princess (Traci Lords), she leads them to an air-purifying station that keeps the planet hospitable. "Princess of Mars" (2009) is based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ pulp work from 1912 and follows the book pretty well, just updating the opening and cutting out the fat; not to mention adding the (unnecessary) character of Sarka, along with alterations to the various creatures and the addition of some well-done droll humor. Burrough’s Bars

5/27/2026

Asylum tries, poorly I love the books by REB. I do. The Disney version (John Carter) isn't a good visual representation of that story. This is worse. So much worse. It is cheap, tacky (not just the way it looks, but how it focuses on gross stuff for a cheap laugh, uses a Leia Slave costume for our female protagonist, and so on) and just a bit soulless. It is HARD to transform these stories into cinema. REB had a very lovely imagination, and he went wild in his books. This, however, was not it. Someone else pointed out that if this had been in the 50s, in black and white, and at a drive-in, it might have worked, and that could possibly be true, but there is no excuse for a movie from 2009 to look and play this poorly. I would not recommend you watch this.