Taylor Kitsch isn’t exactly having a banner year. He’s the star of one of Disney’s all-time worst box office bombs, John Carter, and now he’s leading the troops in Universal’s Battleship, which is not only one of the worst blockbusters in recent memory, but also one of the most idiotic movies I’ve ever seen. It makes John Carter look like The Godfather. It’s not that the plot is stupid – we’ve seen alien invasion movies before, and some of them are actually good – but the filmmakers seem to be the only ones who don’t realize they’re making a movie out of a damned board game. This one was dead in the water before it even left port.

(Spoilers throughout this review.)

For the purposes of brevity, I won’t fully explore how ludicrous it is that a major movie studio spent upwards of $200 million dollars making an adaptation of a board game. And not only that, but inexplicably, while adapting a freaking board game into a screenplay, the writers failed to include the one line that is actually associated with this property: “you sunk my battleship!” It’s never uttered by anyone, and with Liam Neeson playing an admiral, I shouldn’t even have to point out how much that line writes itself. In fact, the absence of that line in Battleship is actually a good indicator of the film as a whole. There are two ways to go with a movie like this: embrace the craziness and make something that’s fun and over the top with a hint of self-awareness, or make everything as dramatic and serious as possible and sap all of the fun out of it. Guess which option these filmmakers chose?

Director Peter Berg is equivalent to broken pieces of a mirror pulled from a Michael Bay afterparty, scattering Transformers reflections across the screen with half the style and none of the character. (When I’m glorifying Sam Witwicky as an interesting character in comparison to the ones in this film, you know you’re in trouble.) Battleship is an ugly movie, and Berg is ultimately the one responsible. Excessively tight close-up shots of humans collide with spinning garish metal, and the result should be evidence to the Michael Bay haters out there that despite Bay’s public persona, he’s actually a craftsman when it comes to shooting action sequences. There’s no life to be found in Berg’s cheap imitations.

There was absolutely no point in this movie which I cared what happened to any of the main characters, especially Kitsch’s rebellious “hero” Alex Hopper. The entire film is supposed to be about how he learns to become a team player so he can impress his girlfriend’s dad, but he never earns anything he gets. When the aliens attack, Hopper’s brother and a ton of other soldiers are killed and he essentially inherits control of the ship. But the hotheaded young officer has to be literally grabbed by the collar and shaken by his subordinates in order to avoid leading everyone to their deaths. He’s unlikable, entitled, and entirely void of charisma. A good actor may have been able to skate by on charisma alone, but Kitsch was handicapped even further because of a terrible script. Maybe the movie has a hidden meaning that condemns the notion of failing upward, but that would require far too much thought for this project. It’s a good thing the film doesn’t show us how Kitsch works his way up to a lieutenant in the Navy*, because even the best writers couldn’t have convinced us of this character doing anything worth rewarding.

But the best writers were busy or too expensive, so Universal hired Jon and Erich Hoeber, the brothers who wrote the geriatric spy movie RED. These two must have been raised by effing Schwarzenegger or something, because they’ve got a hard-on for the concept of old people kicking ass; this is evidenced by Battleship’s stroke of batshit crazy, laugh-out-loud insanity: a climax involving 80-year-old veterans running a battleship while AC/DC blares in the background.

I honestly don’t know where to start when addressing parts of this film that don’t make any sense, so I might as well begin with the aliens. Their motivation is never made clear, and we get a tiny glimpse of their backstory during a mindmeld with Hopper that is never referenced in the story after it occurs. They have advanced technology, which includes a Terminator-esque visual display that identifies items as safe or hostile. These readouts also make no sense, because one minute the aliens are destroying random cars full of civilians on a highway, and the next they’re taking out military bases. I understand the whole “destroying the weapons” thing, because that could be some sort of The Day The Earth Stood Still anti-weapon message…but Battleship has no message, because it has no brain with which to present it.

As with a lot of mindless blockbusters, the physics here are questionable at best. Trust me, I’m fine with that when a movie has a sense of self-awareness or even a sense of amusement at what it’s doing, but Battleship’s overly serious tone only succeeds in making everything look ridiculous. At one point, the aliens unleash a high-pitched blast that sends literal shockwaves through the bridge of a ship hundreds of yards away, causing glass to break and the soldiers on that ship to fall to the ground screaming in pain. But a lifeboat carrying the film’s main soldiers is a mere twenty feet from the source of the noise, and while they grab their ears for a second, they soon appear never the worse for wear. Even a scene in which the communications are down and our heroes have to essentially play a game of Battleship on command screens from the bowels of a destroyer is boring and forgettable. I’d have loved all of these elements if they were executed well, but that would have required a completely different set of filmmakers altogether.

The supporting cast was useless and annoying (Rihanna chief among them), and even Neeson’s presence wasn’t enough to salvage anything decent from this waterlogged disaster. For the record, Battleship also has maybe the most unnecessary post-credits sequence in cinema history, but I wouldn’t recommend waiting through to see it for yourself. Though the movie was fighting an uphill battle from the start, it really didn’t have to be this bad. Toss in the “you sunk my battleship!” line, and the entire tone of the film could have changed. It’s amazing how much power a tiny phrase has, but unfortunately Berg and his crew weren’t interested in acknowledging the absurdity of a movie based on a board game. Thank God Universal cut ties with Hasbro and jumped ship on future board game adaptations. Until next time…

*For an excellent example of a time jump from hotshot young punk to soldier, see J.J. Abrams’ 2009 Star Trek.

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Peter Berg’s Battleship has been catching a lot of crap from people for looking too similar to Michael Bay’s Transformers films – but then, that’s exactly what the Hasbro (the company that brought us Transformers) wants us to think. Universal is doing everything they can to evoke that robot imagery in their own movie, and this new trailer certainly does more of that.

The action is on full display here, but there’s no meaningful look at any of the characters, so for me, a lot of the robotic gnashing just feels kind of empty. Watch the trailer after the jump, and give us your thoughts in the comments below!

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Considered one of the most influential science fiction novels of all time, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “A Princess of Mars” opened readers’ imaginations to interplanetary heroism, romance, action, adventure, and more. From all accounts, it has the best elements of any great piece of pulp fiction. Almost 100 years after the novel’s release, the long-awaited film adaptation of this story exchanges pulp for stoicism and loses all of its fun in the process.

The biggest problem with Carter isn’t the poor acting, bad dialogue, or bland storytelling. It’s the tone with which director Andrew Stanton, who also co-wrote the screenplay, chose to bestow on the movie, and the way he (or Disney, the studio responsible) attempted to conform the film to hit every quadrant. John Carter was once called John Carter of Mars, a title much more evocative of the type of movie this should have aspired to: daring, charming, and a bit ridiculous, like an Errol Flynn space opera. But the studio decided that dropping the “of Mars” would get more females into the theater and avoid conjuring memories of their colossal 2011 financial failure Mars Needs Moms. This marketing ploy made very little sense to me, especially considering that they didn’t change the rest of their strategy to fit their perceived new goals; what I mean is, every commercial and TV spot aired featured nine foot tall aliens with four arms and Taylor Kitsch leaping around a red planet like a frog with ‘roid rage. Not exactly the best way to distance themselves from the Mars they so desperately wanted to leave behind in the title. And did you know that the film actually opens with Carter as a Confederate soldier on Earth during the Civil War and he’s suddenly transported to Mars? If you knew that, I bet you didn’t learn it from the trailers; again, focusing on that plot point would have been a nice way to shed that studio fear of Martian haze.

But let’s forget the advertising, shall we? A film should always be judged on its own, independently of what a marketing team decides is the best way to sell it. There have been plenty of terrible trailers for great movies (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Lucky Number Slevin come to mind), so let’s leave the marketing in our collective rear-view and move back to the movie itself.

This is Andrew Stanton’s first live action feature film (he previously directed Finding Nemo and WALL*E for Pixar), and though the source material he’s working from came way before and absolutely inspired Star Wars, Avatar, and a lot of other sci-fi properties that we’re familiar with today, the burden falls on him as a director to give us something new with a $200 million dollar blockbuster. It’s his responsibility to recognize that we’ve seen action sequences like the ones written in “A Princess of Mars” before, and it’s up to him to do whatever it takes – even if that mean deviating slightly from the source material – to give audiences something that, if it doesn’t take our breath away, at the very least provides an emotional connection to the characters and perhaps some coherent action while avoiding the most asinine of cliches. Unfortunately, we don’t get any of those things in John Carter.

What we do get, instead of pulpy entertainment, is a super serious narrative of the reluctant hero with a past. It’s more Batman Begins than Flash Gordon. There’s a scene in which Carter is on the run from a horde of evil aliens, and he stops and turns to face them. Intercut with flashbacks of his dead wife, Carter leaps into the middle of hundreds of enemies, stands in one place, and flails his sword wildly, slashing anything in his path and bellowing in slow motion while Michael Giacchino’s score demands we take this as a somber moment. Carter just stands there, feet planted, bodies piling up around him as the creatures stupidly attack him one at a time and continue to jump at a man who has slaughtered hundreds of their friends in front of them with very little effort. It’s blockbuster stupidity at its most depressing, removing the potential fun from the story and replacing it with self-serious moments that earned unintentional laughter in my theater.

The story is ripe for adventure in all the right places, but never lives up to its thrilling potential. A soldier is mysteriously transported to Mars (called Barsoom by the natives), basically gaining superpowers as soon as he arrives; because of the differences in gravity, he can leap hundreds of feet at a time and has super strength. But the movie is wildly inconsistent with its rules, contradicting itself every few minutes and resulting in a muddled mess that has some passable effects, but no heart whatsoever. The soulless Taylor Kitsch brings little to the wayward warrior, delivering poorly written lines with no gusto. One minute he kills someone with a single blow, the next he’s struggling to pull a chain from a wall. There’s no continuity with the “powers,” and no danger involved with them, either. Carter barely bleeds throughout the whole film, a wimpier version of Han Solo who ironically inspired the creation of Han Solo. If you’re going to use that archetype, there’s gotta be something more going on underneath the surface (see: Sawyer, “LOST”).

Lynn Collins is gorgeous as Dejah Thoris, but she’s saddled with such a thankless character that it was hard to take her seriously. You may see the occasional supporter come out and defend her character as being badass, but try as the filmmakers might (and they didn’t try very hard), she’s still ultimately just a damsel in distress who relies on Carter to save her from being married to the bad guy. Mark Strong’s talent is totally wasted as the leader of some sort of galactic League of Shadows whose idea of killing time involves wandering from planet to planet, building them up, and orchestrating their downfalls from within. This group’s motivations were never clearly defined, and for a band of eternal creatures who supposedly organize the death of planets all the time, they’re really bad at it. Willem Dafoe yammers his way through a motion-captured performance as a character so blase I could barely pay attention to what he was saying without falling asleep.

The coolest part of the movie is its ending, which has a neat little twist I’ll admit I didn’t see coming. But that’s the only positive thing I can say about the script, which is otherwise full of eye-rolling moments, dumbed-down dialogue, and idiotic one-liners played for the broadest possible laughs. (Soon after Carter wakes up on Barsoom, he yells, “Where on Earth am I?!” He later introduces himsefl to Dafoe’s alien as “John Carter from Virginia,” and for the rest of the movie, they call him “Virginia.” See what I mean?) Michael Giacchino’s score takes its cues from the love theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and while some of the special effects were cool (cities, ships, some design elements), the weight of Carter jumping around never felt right. None of the storylines hit me on an emotional level, and I was never invested in what happened to anyone. There are two warring nations on Barsoom, and they live in seemingly the only two cities on the entire planet. Couldn’t they just draw a line down the middle and each take half?

I could go on about the nonsensical elements of this movie (why do inhabitants of Barsoom fly around on spaceships and shoot laser beams at each other, yet still use metal swords for close combat fighting?), but I’ll digress and end by saying that for me, this movie is a complete failure. The only thing that’s epic about John Carter is how much of a disaster it is. Until next time…

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Over recent months the trailers for John Carter have improved, but you know the marketing team at Disney need a re-think when a roughly cut fan trailer does a better job at selling the film than anything they’ve put out.

We’re less than two weeks away from John Carter hitting on March 9th, and Disney has released a new extended preview online. The first part is a scene featuring the White Apes (which I deliberately haven’t watched), and the second part contains a sizzle reel which has finally convinced me that John Carter needs to be seen. Why didn’t Disney release this earlier?

The sizzle reel begins at 2:40:

From Academy Award(R)-winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton comes “John Carter”–a sweeping action-adventure set on the mysterious and exotic planet of Barsoom (Mars). “John Carter” is based on a classic novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose highly imaginative adventures served as inspiration for many filmmakers, both past and present.

The film tells the story of war-weary, former military captain John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who is inexplicably transported to Mars where he becomes reluctantly embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions amongst the inhabitants of the planet, including Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) and the captivating Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins). In a world on the brink of collapse, Carter rediscovers his humanity when he realizes that the survival of Barsoom and its people rests in his hands.

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Disney has released two new TV spots for their $200+ million movie adaptation of John Carter via Yahoo! While the movie is still over 3 months away Disney are happy to give us a glimpse at new footage, most notable new battle/actions scenes which look quite impressive.

You can watch both TV spots below:

From Academy Award(R)-winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton comes “John Carter”–a sweeping action-adventure set on the mysterious and exotic planet of Barsoom (Mars). “John Carter” is based on a classic novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose highly imaginative adventures served as inspiration for many filmmakers, both past and present. The film tells the story of war-weary, former military captain John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who is inexplicably transported to Mars where he becomes reluctantly embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions amongst the inhabitants of the planet, including Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) and the captivating Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins). In a world on the brink of collapse, Carter rediscovers his humanity when he realizes that the survival of Barsoom and its people rests in his hands.

John Carter will be released March 9, 2012.

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Universal Pictures today released the second official trailer for Battleship, the movie based on Hasbro’s naval combat board game starring Taylor Kitsch, Brooklyn Decker, Alexander Skarsgård, Rihanna and Liam Neeson.

From the trailer it’s clear director Peter Berg, Universal, and the marketing team have been very much influenced by Michael Bay’s Transformers franchise. It sounds, feels, and looks just like the first Transformers movie, which was probably Universal’s aim as that ended up spawning a billion dollar franchise.

You can watch the trailer below:

Peter Berg (Hancock) produces and directs Battleship, an epic action-adventure that unfolds across the seas, in the skies and over land as our planet fights for survival against a superior force. Based on Hasbro’s classic naval combat game, Battleship stars Taylor Kitsch as Lt. Alex Hopper, a Naval officer assigned to the USS John Paul Jones; Brooklyn Decker as Sam Shane, a physical therapist and Hopper’s fiancée; Alexander SkarsgÃ¥rd as Hopper’s older brother, Stone, Commanding Officer of the USS Sampson; Rihanna as Petty Officer Raikes, Hopper’s crewmate and a weapons specialist on the USS John Paul Jones; and international superstar Liam Neeson as Hopper and Stone’s superior (and Sam’s father), Admiral Shane.

Battleship opens fire on May 18th, 2012. Will you be buying a ticket?

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Back in May Disney decided to change the title of John Carter of Mars to simply John Carter, removing the cool and interesting part of the title in the process. Soon after Mark Strong, who plays Matai Shang in the film, said the change was because “in the beginning he’s John Carter, but by the end of the first film, he’s John Carter of Mars; so he’s earned that title.”

Strong’s reasoning made some sense, and as Disney is hoping for sequels they can add ‘of Mars’ should they happen. However, director Andrew Stanton has now revealed the real reason for the change was mainly down to marketing.

From Bleeding Cool:

“Here’s the real truth of it. I’d already changed it from ‘A Princess Of Mars’ to ‘John Carter Of Mars’. I don’t like to get fixated on it, but I changed ‘Princess Of Mars’… because not a single boy would go. And then the other truth is, no girl would go to see ‘John Carter Of Mars’. So I said, “I don’t won’t to do anything out of fear, I hate doing things out of fear, but I can’t ignore that truth.

“All the time we were making this big character story which just so happens to be in this big, spectacular new environment. But it’s not about the spectacle, it’s about the investment. I thought, I’ve really worked hard to make all of this an origin story. It’s about a guy becoming John Carter. So I’m not misrepresenting what this movie is, it’s ‘John Carter’. ’Mars’ is going to stick on any other film in the series. But by then, it won’t have a stigma to it.”

Studios often change titles after doing some marketing research, and it just so happens the males in the focus group didn’t like princesses and the females weren’t fond of planets. Disney’s Tangled was originally called Rapunzel but they thought it would discouraged young boys from seeing the film, so they changed the title and used the male character more in the marketing. Tangled ended up making nearly $600m worldwide, so it obviously worked. We’ll have to see if John Carter has similar success when it hits in March.

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The teaser trailer for Disney’s John Carter was released back in July and introduced us to the set-up, but offered little action or anything to get too excited about.

Now the studio has released the second full length trailer, and we finally get to see where some of the $200+ million budget went. It also looks pretty good.

Watch below:

From Academy Award(R)-winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton comes “John Carter”–a sweeping action-adventure set on the mysterious and exotic planet of Barsoom (Mars). “John Carter” is based on a classic novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose highly imaginative adventures served as inspiration for many filmmakers, both past and present. The film tells the story of war-weary, former military captain John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who is inexplicably transported to Mars where he becomes reluctantly embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions amongst the inhabitants of the planet, including Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) and the captivating Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins). In a world on the brink of collapse, Carter rediscovers his humanity when he realizes that the survival of Barsoom and its people rests in his hands.

John Carter will be released March 2012.

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Universal Pictures has today released the first official trailer for Battleship, the movie based on Hasbro’s naval combat board game.

People seem to have been against this movie from the beginning, mainly because it’s based on a board game. The casting of models and singers in lead roles suggested they weren’t taking the movie seriously, and from the looks of this trailer neither should we.

Watch below:

Peter Berg (Hancock) produces and directs Battleship, an epic action-adventure that unfolds across the seas, in the skies and over land as our planet fights for survival against a superior force. Based on Hasbro’s classic naval combat game, Battleship stars Taylor Kitsch as Lt. Alex Hopper, a Naval officer assigned to the USS John Paul Jones; Brooklyn Decker as Sam Shane, a physical therapist and Hopper’s fiancée; Alexander SkarsgÃ¥rd as Hopper’s older brother, Stone, Commanding Officer of the USS Sampson; Rihanna as Petty Officer Raikes, Hopper’s crewmate and a weapons specialist on the USS John Paul Jones; and international superstar Liam Neeson as Hopper and Stone’s superior (and Sam’s father), Admiral Shane.

Battleship opens fire on May 18th, 2012.

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Disney have today released our first look at John Carter (formally John Carter of Mars) in the form of a teaser trailer. The movie is the live-action directorial debut of Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, Wall-E) so expectations are pretty high, but from the trailer it looks like Stanton has crafted an interesting and unique sci-fi movie.

Watch below:

The song in the trailer is a? Peter Gabriel cover of “My Body Is A Cage” by Arcade Fire.

John Carter is a sweeping action-adventure set on the mysterious and exotic planet of Barsoom (Mars). John Carter is based on a classic novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose highly imaginative adventures served as inspiration for many filmmakers, both past and present. The film tells the story of war-weary, former military captain John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who is inexplicably transported to Mars where he becomes reluctantly embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions amongst the inhabitants of the planet, including Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) and the captivating Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins). In a world on the brink of collapse, Carter rediscovers his humanity when he realizes that the survival of Barsoom and its people rests in his hands.

John Carter will be released March 2012.

Read similar posts to John Carter teaser trailer on Filmonic