Avatar of Mars

Moviecut—Avatar of Mars

This movie stumbles badly right away. There's no real need to update it, it works better if it isn't updated. But that's not the real failing. The scene where he is in the hospital being told by some mad scientists that he is being sent to Mars as some sort of science experiment was one of the most absurd that I have ever seen. It was unintentionally comic. Why in the world did they need to declare that Barsoom isn't Mars, but a planet in another solar system? Yes, we know that the real Mars isn't like the Mars that Burroughs imagined, that doesn't interfere with the story. There is a scene were he asks for something to drink, and he is given a rag full of sweat. Another scene where he asks for food, and he is given the excretion of some larva. Neither of these are in the book; they eat something that seems like cheese or tofu, and to drink, they drink the liquid of a cactus-like plant. Why they chose to make this change is beyond me. It seemed to be an attempt to disgust the audience, and didn't make the movie any better. A good Phantom Edit would cut out entirely the portion before he gets to Mars. A minute of two of narration at the beginning could replace the entire first part of the movie. It would also be necessary to snip out the part where you learn the bad guy is from Earth. You don't have to eliminate him entirely, just the nonsense of him being from Earth. I'd also delete the scenes where he is given sweat and larval excretions to drink. Other parts are more minor. Traci Lords is a bit too old, too clothed and too blonde to be a plausible Deja Thoris. She seems more a cranky sitcom mom than a princess of Helium. The tattoos on John Carter seem unlikely, a tramp stamp on a man? But these are minor, the major flaws of this movie are overwhelming, but if they were cut out, this would be, well, not a great movie, but not too bad. If you watch the movie, you see that throughout the movie, one of Tars Tarkas' tusks wobbles. A fairly minor thing, but it shows how quickly they made this movie was made.

This ultra low budget science fiction flick turned up for rental in the wilds of northern New Hampshire. Traci Lords as Dejah Thoris showed her age in her complexion. Her scanty costume wasn't flattering and her figure has seen better days. Antonio Sabato as John Carter was better looking, sufficiently hunky for the part, and hampered by an ugly costume. The rest of the cast were green martians, played by wearing cheesy looking masks, which makes any sort of acting pretty much impossible. The original Burrough's plot was heavily modified and not for the better. Dramatic scenes from the book, such as John Carter slaying a green martian for hitting Dejah Thoris, riding double as they flee captivity, standing off the hordes of Warhoon with a radium rifle and 200 rounds, are omitted. John Carter doesn't woo and win Dejah Thoris, the beautiful and gutsy martian princess, which was the strongest part of the book. The low budget showed up in clunky looking weapons and props, mediocre costumes, and special effects that made the old Dr Who seem sophisticated. The best I can say is it was a movie, I did watch it to the end, but that's about it.

It's just not too clear where the movie makers were trying to go with this adaptation of the Edgar Burroughs story. At first glance, it looks to be a tribute to the style of old drive-in sci-fi features, where an intrepid astronaut pioneers unchartered space. Along the way, our space hero will bravely fight giant creatures, duel bad guys, establish friendship with the Martian locals, romance a blonde alien, bring about peace between warring tribes, overthrow a despot, and so on. They give us all that old school sci-fi stuff, but there's no cohesion to anything. The "plot" is just a parade of unlinked chapters. The story is modernized, which is a mistake. Yes, everybody knows the Rovers have found nothing up there, but who cares? Keep the naive retro feel of a mysterious and foreboding Mars. That was the fun of the source material. But now, the action doesn't even occur on Mars! The 19th century soldier turned Spaceman Spiff has been redone as a Gulf War Marine, and sports millennial tattoos. The Princess herself is Xena Warrior Princess one moment, and helpless fairy tale princess the next. Still, those Martian green celery-head guys were lovable (even though you can see skin poking out from beneath the masks). The indigenous bug creatures, and the fights against them, are amusingly cheap, yet done with gusto. Overall, an amateurish film, but has a bit of odd charm to it.

Updated and pointless version of Edgar Rice Burroughs' first novel is moved to now and Mars in a far off galaxy. Antonio Sabato Jr is John Carter a fighter in the Middle East war who's injured to the point of being near death. Rescued by the military he's sent to the far off planet where he meets the a pouty Traci Lords and a weakly made Tars Tarkis (who's size varies and who only has 2 arms). Not quite the worst film of all time that some have called it, it is rather a weakly made film that spent a chunk of its budget on computer generated monsters and space ships. Lords is okay as the title character, but in all honesty she's a bit too old for the part. Actually I think the cast would have been fine had the script and the direction been better. It was clearly made to cash in on the up coming John Carter of Mars, though its DVD cover says something about Avatar and Lord of the Rings. As something to watch it is at best background noise. This isn't something you really want to watch with your full attention focused on it since its really not very good. My attitude I've seen it and now I never have to see it again. The one question is why isn't Edgar Rice Burroughs credited anywhere in the film? This is not a remake or a rethink but a "version" of a classic tale and the man who created the place really should be credited.

Just dump it. How on Barsoom did they allow such a "movie" to be made. This is even worst than Uwe Bol's frolics! And come on please!! The Geek's Version of Avatar??? And squinting to resemble Cameron? Seems like trying to get a strong association with Avatar? Been looking forward to a good movie on ERB writing but this seems to be going on, what with "The Land that time forgot" and all, and now this!! Makes me sad just watching a Tars Tarkas that looks anything but mighty , a cheesy John Carter and a Dejah Thoris that does not come remotely close to the prose! And a 2 legged Thoat??? Must have had a hell of a time getting just a 2 legged one in CG... 5 foot Tharks anyone??

It is total insult! An insult to the ERB, an insult to the fans of Barsoom series, and insult (hopefully) to the upcoming "John Carter of Mars". I would have expected more even from a mock buster... I mean even with a low budget, why wasn't it possible to just stick to the plot of a book? Why did they need all that stupid Afghan/Iraq or whatever else stuff? Why trying to make John Carter just some kind of nowadays marine? How would that explain him being the greatest swordsman on two worlds? Does marine training include swordsmanship? Just give me a break! I'll just say no more, otherwise i'll start swearing :( Compare to this, Travolta's "Battlefield earth" is a great adaptation... And the the princess... well guess what... She's over 40... I mean the whole movie I was trying to convince myself that she was hot... but I definitely had too few beers!

The best way I can describe this movie to you is by asking you to imagine your friend's dumpy, middle-aged mom, dressed up for Halloween in a skimpy 'warrior princess' costume. That's Traci Lords as Dejah Thoris and she's every bit as embarrassing to watch as your friend's mom would be. Moreover, she doesn't seem to be enjoying the party much. She goes through the film with an ill-tempered pout welded to her face, looking as if she's perpetually on the edge of saying 'Screw this' and storming off. Unfortunately for us, she decided to stick around, growling out her lines like someone being forced to read the telephone book at gunpoint. So much for "the most beautiful woman in two worlds". The "fighting Virginian", Captain John Carter, isn't much better. He's a sword-and-sandal beefcake who looks to be about half her age, with spiky hair and the kind of 'tramp stamp' back tattoo more commonly seen on oversexed teenage girls. He spends most of the movie smirking to himself. Rounding out the cast are a few sinister swarthy figures, and a small - very small - army of undersized tharks (humanoid Martian monsters). The tharks also mostly sound as if they're having their lines read to them over the telephone, but their faces are mercifully hidden behind tusked plastic masks, so there's no way to tell whether they're pouting or smirking. In some scenes, the tharks appear to tower over John Carter, as if the film-makers had remembered that they're supposed to be fifteen feet tall. In the next shot they've suddenly shrunk to human size again. My guess would be that the makers originally planned to fake the size differences using clever camera angles, but found that it was too much work. For financial reasons, they were apparently unwilling to re-shoot the scenes they'd already filmed, so they just stuck them in and hoped for the best. There are also some sinister swarthy figures, a collection of computer-animated monsters plodding morosely across a desert landscape and some giant ant/spider things, some of which fly and all of which explode in a splash of vivid green ichor when shot with the flimsy art deco rifles carried by the tharks. It looks rather as if the spiders - which do not appear in the original novel - somehow used up the limb budget for the whole film, forcing drastic cutbacks elsewhere: the tharks have only two arms, while the eight-legged thoats have become bipeds. The scenery is similarly reduced. It looks like what it is -- not the fabled deserts of Barsoom, but a few rocks in a sandy patch of waste ground somewhere outside L.A. I couldn't bring myself to watch the movie all the way through. There didn't seem to be any point. It's fairly clear that the film-makers probably felt the same way, but they at least stuck it out and dragged it to some kind of plodding conclusion. Or so I assume. It would be nice to imagine that the movie was intended as a kind of post-modern satire on Burroughs' overblown heroic fantasy. In this cynical vision, everything is deceptive and disappointing, a cruel metaphor for the human condition -- the deserts of Barsoom are nothing but a sandy backlot, the peerless princess is a middle-aged former * star, the ultimate champion just an over-muscled gym rat. Scholars would applaud the daring irony, the bold inversion of the escapist epic. But I'm afraid that the cynicism was of a different kind and that the makers were simply trying to make a quick buck as cheaply and crudely as possible. Even 'completists' who want to see everything inspired by Burroughs' work should give this one a miss. It's just depressingly bad on every level.

I've gotten through half of Princess of Mars. Not sure I can do the 2nd half. It's not that it's bad--in fact it's OK as far as super low-budget fantasy flicks go (I love the old Amicus Burroghs flicks with Doug McClure). They only used a few of the original story elements, but I guess putting six arms on Tars Tarkus or red body paint on all the "humans" would have been cost prohibitive. But what's up with casting Traci Lords as Deja Thoris, the princess? Even if you're kind in your estimation, Lords is well over 40. Not bad looking for a woman her age, but certainly not a good enough actress to make you forget that she's WAY too old for the part. I just couldn't go on with the film once she became a big part of it because I couldn't' stop thinking how virtually ANY young Hollywood actress would have been more watchable. In fact just about any woman who works at a Hooters would have been more watchable! I don't want to sound age-ist, but if a female actress of marginal acting ability is going to be running about in a skimpy outfit for over an hour on screen, she'd better be super-exceptionally hot for her age or young enough for it not to matter. I mean, really--did anyone rent this because they saw the name Traci Lords? And I want to reiterate--this is not a personal attack on Ms. Lords. I just don't think she's doing herself, or us, justice by still trying to be "the hot young chick." And Deja Thoris should be a hot young chick.

If this film had only used different character names, I would have rated it higher, because it would have been a dumb, laughable Science Fiction flick, possibly even enjoyable at some "it's raining and there's nothing else to do" level. You get the feeling that the writer had read the first John Carter book a long, long time in the past and remembered the characters' names without remembering what the story was about, or even what a thark was supposed to look like (I'm sure that Burroughs' warrior tharks didn't have tusks that wobbled). This plot was silly; Burroughs' was engrossing. The biggest disappointment was Traci Lords. While it was her body that was ravaged in many films, here, it was her face that looked ravaged - she just looked so OLD. (Fortunately, I never expected her to know how to act, so I wasn't disappointed there.) The big sword fight seemed to be performed by two actors who'd never held a sword in their lives; all the intercutting didn't cancel that out (why couldn't they have used stunt men?). A truly bad film.