How John Carter Proves that Hollywood is Broken

Earlier this year, a new record was broken, one which will be extremely hard to break. The release of a particular movie ended the 76 years it spent in what's known as development hell, a long running period where a film is being worked on, but isn't completed or released. The film is based on a book which is this very year 100 years old, and has been influencing some of the most popular and enduring and in their own way influential movies, books, and television series for the last century. It was a long time coming, but the story that was a clear source of inspiration for Star Wars, Star Trek, Dune, Superman, Farscape, Stargate, James Bond, and the single most money making movie ever made, Avatar, finally, finally, was released as a major film.

And nobody saw it.

John Carter, the movie adaptation of the book A Princess of Mars, hugely underperformed at the box office, and I am having an incredibly hard time understanding why.

Let me get this out of the way and say that I loved it. I loved the books; I waited 6 years for the movie to get made (and watched as the project got bounced across three directors and two studios just during the time I was paying attention); I have seen the movie 6 times and I left the theater unable to wait for the sequel, which is now sure to never come. I anticipated this movie so much that I was afraid, very afraid, that when it came out I would be hugely disappointed, and I currently am, but not for the reason I was afraid of. Frankly, it's for a reason that never crossed my mind, that it didn't do well (financially), and that there won't be more of it. And again, I just can't understand why.

Now when I say I don't understand, what I mean is that I just don't get it. There's several reasons why it didn't do well, and I know objectively why they ruined this movie (again, financially). I know the reasons, and while I don't get why the movie was so plagued with them, I can tell you this: this movie's failure is a living example of why Hollywood is so screwed up right now.

Hollywood people hated it before it was even made.

Part of the interesting thing of a movie having a 76 year legacy of not being made is that you can start to see a pattern here. And one huge pattern for John Carter is that in all this time, Hollywood was never quite willing to give it a decent chance. The very first attempt to make this movie was in the form of a cartoon adaptation, co-created by the original author, Edgar Rice Burroughs (then already world famous for his other character, Tarzan), and Bob Clampett, (a successful animator best known for the creation of Porky Pig). What was set to be the first ever full length animated film was a sci-fi epic that at first interested the studios, until they showed some way early test footage to a rural town test audience that reacted unenthusiastically. The plug was quickly pulled, which might have seemed a bad idea a few years later when the sci-fi epic Flash Gordon serials gained huge popularity immediately upon release, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (the film that would gain the title of first full length animated movie) was also hugely popular and won Academy Awards. John Carter, the project which was what both of those were before they were made, continued to wallow in development hell.

Fast forward to modern day, just before the movie came out, and there were already analysts predicting failure for this movie. The same second guessing that caused the property to miss out on the successes achieved by Snow White and Flash Gordon pervaded every iteration of this movie, until when it finally did come out, that second guessing was being printed and published for all to see, and judge the movie by, before anyone got a chance to even view it. And lo and behold when enough people in Hollywood started telling everybody that would listen, including (and especially) potential audiences that this movie was going to bomb, audiences avoided it, causing it to bomb.

And you know who was there to tell you all about it? Hollywood was. That's because...

When Hollywood decides it's right, it will never admit it was wrong.

It was decided this movie was going to bomb before it ever came out, and it was likewise agreed that it was a bomb before it was even out of the theater. Hollywood didn't give it half a chance to even generate good word of mouth after its admittedly weak opening weekend, because for every audience member trying to tell their friends, “hey, this was good, you should check it out”, there were two analysts saying “man, this movie is losing so much money it's not even funny, that probably means you shouldn't see it”. Disney waited a full two weeks from its release to announce to everybody that they lost a huge amount of money on it. It earned its own subheading on Wikipedia's page for the term “Box Office Bomb” within a month of being out. High ranking, important people at Disney are losing their jobs in shame, and the movie can still be seen in the major theaters.

We're not hearing about it's good, early critical reviews. We're not hearing about the Facebook petitions to give us a sequel. We're not hearing about how it has a higher user rating on MetaCritic than the money devouring Hunger Games. We're not hearing about how it broke the all time opening weekend record in Russia. Don't get me wrong, it's not doing well, but it's not doing as bad as is being reported. Hollywood told us all before it came out that this movie would bomb, and now that it's out, they're telling us just how bad it bombed.

Still, it's not hard to blame a lot of audiences for not going on account of they had no idea what it was about. That's because...

Hollywood has no clue what to do with a good idea.

Here's the deal. I talked up at the top about how ridiculously influential the book the movie was based on is. If you read it yourself, you can right away start picking out major things that have become more famous in other media that found their origin in this series. Some of them are huge (like almost all of the non-environmentalist parts of Avatar), and some of them are much more subtle (the word Jedi is derived from similar words in Burroughs' Martian language). But beyond just the influence of this book, think about the successes of the things influenced by it. Dune revolutionized science fiction. Superman is easily the most widely recognized superhero in the world. Star Wars can't be even mentioned without making a million dollars. Avatar made all the money, rocketing up the box office despite being three hours of blue cat people trying to save nature, all of which are things that would normally turn audiences off on their own. But what made people go see Avatar were all the other parts, parts which were taken from John Carter. Indeed, some of the most successful and memorable aspects of all of these things were the parts inspired directly by John Carter. And the movie that we got out of it, while it had some updating and “fleshing out”, was overall a very faithful adaptation, putting on the screen an incredibly accurate depiction of the world that inspired countless others.

And then the advertising crew took a look at that world, threw their hands in the air, and said, “We have no idea what to do with this.” Where a preview could have told us how old the property was, or how inspirational it has been to the things that most audiences love, or given us any real indication of what the movie was about, or even told us at some point that this movie takes place on Mars, they instead decided to be as vague about the plot and location as possible, and show us only the most fleeting, nondescript, and typical seeming footage of the action and special effects that they could find. The title of the book, A Princess of Mars, dropped the Princess so as to please all the males who just couldn't take Princess Leia seriously, and dropped the Mars to satisfy any women who still had lingering doubts about this whole sci-fi genre. In the end, they went with the name of the human character as the title, telling no one anything about the move other than that Edgar Rice Burroughs didn't show that much creativity when naming his characters (he spent all that creativity on creating whole planets and alien races and histories from thin air).

The title change is just one part of a whole different problem, namely that...

Hollywood wants to fix what's not broken.

Again, take a look at the provided (and let me assure you, only partial) list of things the original book inspired. Think of the minds that were influenced by this work, and used that influence to make themselves famous with their own stories. You don't inspire that many people and projects of that high a creative caliber and that long lasting an appeal by being a terrible story teller. And while Burroughs had his weaknesses in the character development (and occasionally naming) department, he was by no means a terrible story teller. The covers of his books describe him (quite accurately, in my opinion) as the greatest adventure writer of all time. Ray Bradbury described him as “the most influential writer, bar none, of our century”. You have to understand how much influence Burroughs as a writer had on the genre of sci-fi that was still quite young at the time of his writing, and recognize the influence that he still holds, even if a lot of audiences don't realize he's the one who originated it. Jules Verne and H.G. Welles get all the credit for creating the genre of science fiction itself, but it was Burroughs' works, primarily with the John Carter of Mars series, that really created what we know now as sci-fi. This man's pedigree in storytelling is nearly unsurpassed, to the point that he has two cities in America named after his fictional characters, and when Hollywood got a hold of his magnum opus, it still decided that they had to tweak it.

I definitely enjoyed the movie, but I have to say, it's not my new favorite movie like it was hoping (and like it would be if it was just a little more faithful). Understanding that because of the time period it was written in (and the first person narrative, which led to focusing almost entirely on one character), there was some updating that had to be done, but considering that most stories that are nearing 10 years start to show their date, needing only a little character development and maybe a little more feminine empowerment after a century is quite an impressive feat. What the work didn't need was a dead family back story. The book was the ultimate fun time thrill ride, about a dude who was just generally awesome running around on an alien planet fighting monsters to save the princess, and doing so in the most fun, creative, and genuinely engaging way possible. It was just about the last story that needed a heaping helping of tragedy, angst and general Jason Bourniness. This section of the story remained thankfully small, but it was still there, and it took up enough screen time (at the expense of the romantic development of the main characters) that it fundamentally changed the genre of the story, from Romance (set in a sci-fi adventure) to a Drama (a journey of self discovery set in a sci-fi adventure). This subplot doesn't quite mesh with the rest of the pulpy fun of the movie, and more importantly, it doesn't mesh with the ludicrously amazing movie we could have had if it had remained entirely within the tone of the book.

Why does Hollywood feel the need to shoehorn moodiness where it doesn't belong? It's simple, really...

Hollywood has killed good action movies.

You may have noticed a growing distinction between your typical summer blockbuster action movie and the more subtle, nuanced dramas often found in arthouse theaters. Compare Transformers 3 with, oh say, Blue Valentine. Now I didn't see either, so I can't really say much about the quality of the movies themselves, just that based on the previews I had absolutely no interest in either. What I can say is that Blue Valentine had phenomenal reviews, was nominated for an Academy Award, and has an 88% at Rotten Tomatoes. It didn't do badly in the box office, making a decent 12 times its own budget, so it got away with a nice profit to boot. Transformers on the other hand, has a 35% at Rotten Tomatoes, was nominated in nearly every Razzie category, and has one of the most unintentionally (or quite possibly intentionally) hilarious Wikipedia entries I've ever seen. It also made over $300 million in the US alone, and was at the time one of only 10 movies in history to make over a billion dollars, making significantly more than either of the two Transformers movies preceding it. Like it or not, this kind of money generating ability cannot be ignored by Hollywood, and obviously isn't being ignored, as there is already a Transformers 4 being worked on (reported to be, I kid you not, a reboot of the series, though still done by the same people.)

Notice a difference there? Hollywood has taken the summer tent pole action movie and decided “why bother with any kind of semblance of quality when you can simply throw random crap on the screen, and when it's huge enough, and expensive enough, and explosive enough, everyone will go see it”. And this strategy has been rewarded greatly by audiences worldwide.

And keep in mind, I didn't see, nor want to see, either of these movies. I'm honestly not one to believe a movie is good by either the awards it received or the records it broke in the box office. But Hollywood had decided that there's a distinction between the two, either it will be a low circulation indie darling, or it will be a crap goldmine. Either it's art or entertainment. And this distinction has been picked up and ran with by everyone, audiences included. The constant fight over R ratings vs. PG-13 ratings boils down to this idea, that either it's made for a larger audience and thus is a soulless cinematic turd, or it has artistic integrity and will be a much loved, if low on box office returns masterpiece. They act like these are our only two options, and huge masses of the audiences have decided to agree. They reward the crappiest of crappy with all the money in their pockets, and it seems to be tied exclusively to how much time was devoted to ridiculous special effects in the preview. I really kind of feel that Hollywood has trained audiences to behave like this, creating a Pavlovian response of great excitement when shown mediocre film with huge budgets. They've been taking psychological shortcuts in trying to entice the masses to go to movies, by making exclusively sequels and remakes of easily recognizable properties, by streamlining the budgets to accommodate the most cutting edge special effects and just enough for a passable script, and speaking as much as they can in the only global language, explosions. Audiences eat it up, because this seems to be 80% of the entertainment they give us. They've taught audiences to expect terrible dialogue and gaping plot holes if they want some decent action, and that if they want some intellectual stimulation, they need to pack up and go to the Angelika.

But there's another effect of this distinction between quality movies and entertaining movies.

Hollywood has killed fun movies.

Now it gets worse. I saw Transformers 1 and 2. Yes the second was terrible, and yes the first was only fair to middling. But even while Michael Bay was aggressively attacking my intelligence, I still managed to have a good time. The main reason was that I saw the movies with friends and family, and it did deliver on some explosive goodness and robot fights, and everybody was having a good time together. When a movie promotes a fun atmosphere for audiences to go and have a good time with friends at, it's amazing how fun the experience can be, even when the movie itself is objectively terrible. The whole group I went with to see Revenge of the Fallen had a good time, even if none of us now will admit to liking the movie itself.

But this is no excuse for anyone legitimately trying to make a good movie to scrimp on qualities outside of simply being a fun popcorn romp. When you're working on what you want to be a good script, you want to put as much distance as you can between yourself and Robots vs. Explosions: the Movie. How do you do that?

You make it less fun, is what you do. Crap movies got popular because they still managed to be fun, and somehow because of this, fun has become equated with crap. Now, if you want your movie to be taken seriously in just about any conceivable way, it can't be fun at all. To get an idea of what happens when film makers try to actually make smart action movies, just take a look at the career of Christopher Nolan. Yes, his movies are good; yes, they make a pretty good amount of money and still manage to be critically acclaimed; but have you noticed another similarity they almost all share? At least one love interest isn't making it out alive. The only movie where the main character doesn't have a dead wife or girlfriend is Insomniac, the main movie in Nolan's career I never hear anyone talking about; for all the rest, there will be a dead woman (and the grief her death causes) as a central plot point for the movie. Twice in the case of The Prestige.

This applies to any movie that wants to be taken seriously, whether they succeed at that or not. You want a spy movie that isn't just Roger Moore death quips? Tadaa, you've got Jason Bourne, his shaky camera, dead girlfriend, and everything. You want your Ray Harryhausen mythology monster movies updated for modern times? Poof, toss in a dead family and you've got yourself Clash of the Titans. You want to watch some blue cat people save their jungle planet? Well you've gotta sit through Sam Worthington watching his brother's corpse go through the crematorium first.

You want to see a noble Civil War veteran spend 2 hours saving an alien princess and fighting wicked cool Martian creatures? Well you've got some tragic backstory to wade through first. I'll readily admit, they didn't do half bad of a job creating a version of the John Carter character who had trouble letting himself become invested in a cause because the last time he had, his wife and child had been burned alive in their home. But did they have to? They opted to use the tale to tell us about much of an atrocity war is, and while that's a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with, I also firmly believe that A Princess of Mars is the wrong place and time to be telling us that. If you wanted a story that explained just how bad conditions were in Victorian Era orphanages, you'd read Oliver Twist, not Peter Pan. But because they wanted to adapt John Carter and also make a movie that had heart, soul, and quality, the only way they could do that was to add some tragedy, and lose some fun. Enough of the rest of the movie was fun enough to actually overcome this in my opinion, but I'd have rather it just wasn't there and that they'd instead focused on the budding romance between the two lead characters.

In either case though, the movie came out, it was pretty great, even where it could have been better, and it sadly did pretty bad in the box office. This happens, and even if its failure was the fault of forces beyond its control, it just boils down to an occasional regrettable lack of audience support. It's not like this spells doom for other potentially great movies, right?

Right?!

Wrong.

Hollywood is going to take entirely the wrong lesson from this.

This movie failing means without a doubt other movies like it will not get made, and I'm not just talking about the John Carter sequels that would have been amazing. I mean any movie for a decent amount of time afterward that is in any way similar to John Carter is going to get shot down. If it takes place on Mars; if it's an action film with a love interest who's a princess; if it features a strange tribal alien supporting cast; if it's got Andrew Stanton as the director. Hollywood is going to be taking a long, hard look at any scripts coming its way and if it sees anything that can be construed as a vague similarity, they're going to be very iffy. Hollywood is likely going to be wary of all things science fiction for a while. There's likely movies that have already been canceled because John Carter failed.

This has happened before. Speed Racer came out 4 years ago. It was awesome, but it did badly for reasons I cannot begin to comprehend. Regardless of what those reasons were, Hollywood decided it was because the movie was a family friendly action flick, and made a mad rush to cancel or overhaul any projects they had that fit that description. A Captain Marvel movie was scrapped, and a Johnny Quest remake was canceled.

They do the same thing when a movie does well. When Iron Man became an unexpectedly huge hit, they tried to catch lightning in a bottle once more by recreating superficial similarities in other movies. One of the next major superhero movies to come along was Green Lantern, which featured a character who was brave, noble, and responsible, so much so that he was deemed worthy to be entrusted with an extremely powerful weapon. But because Iron Man did so well telling the story of an immature, irresponsible jerk becoming a better person, by golly, Green Lantern was going to tell the same story. Iron Man's success couldn't have been because of Robert Downy Jr.'s irascible charm or because the character's growth made complete sense in presenting a situation where he logically would reach maturity and at the same time come into a new and untold level of power which he no doubt would have misused earlier, but thankfully doesn't now on account of his own inner changes. No, it's successes were obviously because irresponsible characters combined with super powers is fun to watch, therefore it stands to reason that Green Lantern would be successful if they did the exact same thing with it. And when Green Lantern failed, they figured it couldn't be because the character's arc of being given a mega weapon and suddenly, inexplicably becoming a better, smarter, more caring person made little to no sense, or because the interpretation was painfully inaccurate to the original comics. No, Hollywood decided that it failed because any DC character who wasn't Superman or Batman wasn't going to make any money at all, and promptly responded by reiterating their stance of never making a Wonder Woman, Flash, or Justice League movie.

Hollywood has this uncanny ability to take exactly the worst lesson from a failure or success possible, partially because they refuse to see their own mistake and firmly believe that there is no factor for a movie's success or failure other than audience demand. With John Carter, they're not going to take into consideration any of the many failings they made with the movie. They're not going to reason that it failed because the name was neutered to the point of ineffectively explaining its premise, or because the advertisements were infuriatingly vague, or because they just had to add a tragic backstory where there was absolutely no call for one. They're not even going to look at the fact that it made decent money and that it's the colossal budget that made it so hard to break even. They're going to look at the lack of profit and somehow surmise that audiences don't want sci-fi action epics with likable characters.

And then they're going to order a cancellation on everything like it.

And this is why we're so screwed.