This March we saw two major films enter the Arena of the Box Office Games. One, John Carter, got slaughtered like a lamb at the Cornucopia; the other, The Hunger Games, roared like a lion and emerged the victor.







Before attempting any analysis of what when right and what went so very wrong, let me go on record as saying I’m a massive fan of both filmmakers. Gary Ross has written and directed modern classics like Pleasantville and Seabiscuit. He wrote Big, an 80‘s classic. But he also wrote The Tale of Despereaux, which was unsatisfying. Andrew Stanton wrote and directed Finding Nemo, one of my all time favourite films, and wrote Toy Story. Wall-E, which he wrote and directed, is a work of sheer genius. Regardless of John Carter, I’ll be first in line to see Stanton’s next film. Both filmmakers are extremely talented and with John Carter, have both had their hits (mostly) and misses. Filmmaking is risk taking; it goes with the territory.







Let me also get the most obvious stuff out of the way. The Hunger Games is current, popular book franchise with a built in audience. But let’s not forget that a popular book can be a curse as well as a blessing. It worked for Twilight, it didn’t work for Percy Jackson. John Carter, based on A Princess of Mars, a text nearly 100 years old, is unknown to anyone outside of serious disciples of science fiction. But it can’t all possibly be down to the underlying material? Every year, there are breakout blockbusters based on original (i.e. no built in audience) material (Inception anyone?), so let’s put aside the source material argument and explore what went right, and what went wrong:







1.The Marketing. The Hunger Games marketing and pre-release buzz just looked cool. John Carter looked dated and derivative. Katniss’ world made you want to know and see more. The early teaser trailers were compelling, emotional, and visually arresting. The early (and subsequent) materials for John Carter felt stale and derivative. Of course, I fully recognise that since so many great sci-fi films have been inspired by Princess of Mars, the look/tone/feel is bound to be familiar, but the imagery felt like a mash-up of Star Wars Episode II’s arena fight sequence and a silly version of Gladiator.







2.The On-Screen Mojo. Neither films were fronted by major movie stars, but Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss is highly watchable whereas Taylor Kitsch’s John Carter looked dime-store handsome and textbook brooding. We got nothing new from him. We’d seen this character just one summer earlier in the guise of Daniel Craig in Cowboys & Aliens. More than that, however, I suspect Kitsch was acting to digital elements whereas Lawrence was reacting to real actors around her. If “acting is reacting” then John Carter didn’t learn the key lessons from George Lucas’ Star Wars prequels. Asking good actors to react to characters that aren’t there leads to empty, stilted, and wooden performances. James Cameron drew out emotive performances from his “performance” capture (he’s very insistent on that word, and not using “motion” capture) technique on Avatar, but I would guess that Taylor Kitsch was reacting to characters and settings that were inserted months later in what Stanton called “digital principal photography.”







3.The Story and The Stakes. The Hunger Games is a clear story with a beginning, middle, and end. And the stakes for our main character were real and they were very high. I still can’t tell you what was going on in John Carter. I’m not sure who the baddies were, and I think, though am not certain, that John Carter was simply a projection of himself on Mars, so no real threat could come to him. I cared about his love interest, but didn’t ever truly care for John himself. In Stanton’s fabulous TED speech, he talks about the need for storytellers to “make me care.” Sadly, he didn’t heed his own advise with John Carter.







Filmmaking by definition is risky. Unlike making widgets, you just don’t know what’s going to come out of the black box until it’s essentially too late. I applaud Disney for mounting John Carter and Stanton for going big with it.







It sounded as though Disney was gearing up for a franchise, and perhaps Stanton & Co. could have addressed the issues of this first film, but with losses of approx. $200 million being attached to the picture, we may never know.







As for Katniss, Lionsgate will be serving her up three more times (the third book, MockingJay, like HP7 and Twilight: Breaking Dawn will be split into two films) and over the course of her reign, I do hope other studios don’t lose their nerve in mounting big, sci-fi epics.







I suppose that all depends on how Ridley Scott’s wildly anticipated Alien quasi-prequel, Prometheus, fares in June.

