Episode 38; 2012: JOHN CARTER

A really under-appreciated Sci-Fi gem from 2012 this week, a fantastic adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' 'Barsoom' series of pulp fantasy classics, which is SO much better than it's reputation would have you believe! Check it out please!

We are hurtling towards the Big 5-0 now, just a few more episodes to go, so keep it Milestone Movies!

Thanks for listening! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome back once again, Milestone Movies. I'm not going to bore you with the details of what this podcast is, because I'm pretty sure after 38 episodes you're going to know. But we are now talking about the best movies of 2012 already. We've that far through. So the main one today might surprise some people. It's not, I don't think it'll be a controversial choice, but it's probably not one that a lot of people will think of. I think it's probably one that people have a negative view about even though they've not seen it. So I'm here to convince you that John Carter, aka John Carter of Mars, is an amazing film. And you should give it a chance. But before we do that, we will talk about the best movies of the year in terms of the most successful movies. As for most of the the 2000s that we've talked about so far, your top five is absolutely full of your franchise films, your sequels, your prequels, your remakes, whatever it is. But first and foremost, on there, the biggest film by far this year was The Avengers. In the UK, that was known as the Avengers Assemble. And that's Josh Whedon's mashup and the culmination of the first few MCU films. So you'd already had two Iron Man films, you'd had a Hulk film, which had sort of not done exactly what they wanted to, so he was recast in this one. You also at that point had had the first Captain America and Thor. So each of them had introduced different characters as well, and they all came together for uh absolutely brilliant um superhero team up, the likes of which really had never been seen before. Uh they've been attempted since, but not really topped, um, except by Marvel themselves, who you know absolutely outdid themselves, did another one with Age of Ultron, similar to this, uh, and then absolutely stepped up again with Civil War and obviously Infinity War and Endgame. Um, but you know, again, it's not an MCU podcast as such, so I won't go into it too much. I mean, I love the film, I think it's brilliant, it's got that Joss Whedon sparky sort of dialogue. Um, all of the actors are completely settled into their roles by this point. Uh, any one of them, you know, virtually steals the show. It's fantastic, really, really, really good. Um second one was uh well, conversely, it was a DC film. So it was a Dark Knight Rises, obviously completely um on the coattails of The Dark Knight, which had been the second one of the trilogy. So this is still Christopher Nolan, still um Christian Bale, and yeah, again, it's it's it's okay. I think that um the the Bane characters not done particularly well. You know, everybody was loving Tom Hardy at this point, but you know, he put on a ridiculous voice. You know, Christian Bale was already putting on a ridiculous voice when he was Batman. Uh Tom Hardy was doing Sydney one when he was playing. I don't know what the hell he was uh planning for, but there we go. But you know, still a massive hit, so who knows? You know, what do I know? Um Hunger Games. So that first started on uh in 2012 with the very first one, so that was pretty much everybody's uh introduction to um well the books, I suppose. Um and Jennifer Lawrence, obviously, as well. Um, you know, it was a it's it's a young adult success in terms of the books, uh, about kids who are put into a sort of an arena, I suppose, or certainly uh it's a game, just it's a little bit like the running man, that sort of thing, which obviously was a Stephen King thing. It's kind of based around that, so it's basically a fight for survival, fight to the death. Um, but this is kids and they have to come out of their districts. Um and this is you know, it's a franchise that's still going on. There was um initial trilogy, which they bulked out to four for the last um book, and then I think there's some prequels have been remade since or been made since in the last couple years, another one due out this year. Um I've dipped in and out of hunger games, with nothing against it, but it's not one I've followed too closely, being honest. Uh on the other hand, what I do follow closely and always have is the James Bond films, and Skyfall was the biggest one yet, I think, at that point. Absolutely massive hit. It was the 50th uh anniversary of the Bond movies as well. Uh, I want to say it was the 25th film. I could be could could be could be 25th, but it certainly was a 50th year one, it was really big, it you know, the Adele theme song was absolutely massive. Uh it was, I think, played up as if it was going to be Daniel Craig's last one, although it obviously didn't end up being. Um, and yeah, it's a it's a good film, it's it plays with the continuity a little bit that I'm not too happy with in terms of um, you know, I've always been of the believer that the reason that there's different bonds is that it's just a code name that's handed down. This one you know firmly cements in that he is he was a kid called James Bond, who sort of you know grew up and moved away from home and all this sort of stuff. So, but apart from that, there's some absolutely brilliant stuff in it. Um and yeah, it's a great film and it was a huge, huge success. Uh enough to sort of tempt Dan and Craig to do a couple more, in fact. So that was all good. And another series that was starting in this year uh was The Hobbit. So obviously they're the prequels to Lord of the Rings. Pete Jackson initially was involved as a producer, but um Guilamo del Toro was originally gonna uh direct those ones, but he dropped out kind of at the 11th hour. Peter Jackson stepped in and yeah, they uh you know famously they really wanted Martin Freeman to be the young Bilbo. Uh he was committed to doing Sherlock on TV at the time. I can't believe that's this old as well. Um and you know, rightly so, it was a great series. So they really admired the fact that he was, you know, willing to fulfil his commitments and waited for him basically. So went away, produced, you know, did a lot more pre-production and that sort of stuff waiting for him. Um and yeah, all the better for, I think. It's I think I mentioned before when we talked about Lord of the Rings, it's not as uh highly regarded, I don't think, as the Lord of the Rings films, but I think, you know, everything's there. It's maybe you know it's expanded a little bit more from what the book was, and that's what people don't like about it. I don't know. Um obviously it's majority of its pretty new characters as well, so yeah, but I love them. I think they're really, really good, especially in the extended versions. That's great. So, yeah, that was your top five financially the most successful films. Um, some other notable ones, uh, for me. Absolutely love 21 Jump Street, which was um Lord and Miller's remake, really, of the old uh 1980s stroke nineties, I guess it was Kale and the 80s, early 90s, uh TV series, which was basically about undercover cops that were trying to break up crime rings in schools and colleges and stuff. Uh notable for being a big sort of debut for Johnny Depp, sort of put him on the sort of movie sphere. Um, but I remember it really as being the next thing that the producers of the 18, which again I've mentioned many times, is my favourite TV show of all time, but it's kind of what the team, you know, Stephen J. Cannell um and all the directors and writers from that show went on to do after that. So there's there was that, there was wise guy, there was things like the comish as well. Um and yeah, it couldn't really be much more different from uh what the 18 was, but you know, it it's it's a good show. It went for about five seasons. Uh don't think it was sort of broadcast over here originally. Um not on anything I remember. I sort of um caught up with it really on DVD when it was released. Um I think you can see it on stream as I want to say it's on Prime now, the original series. But yeah, the movie um completely went off on a tangent, sorry about that. Uh is Channel Tatum and Jonah Hill. They are again young sort of what bicycle cops who are um put into this programme, which is still going well or has pick been picked up since the 80s, and basically to infiltrate criminal activity in schools. But it's very, very tongue-in-cheek. It's not it's not s exactly a spoof, but it's very, very much played for laughs, played for comedy, and as opposed to things like the Dukes of Hazard remake and things like that, absolutely works. It's absolute gangbusters, really, really, really funny film, but great action in it as well. Absolutely, you know, some brilliant cameos at the end if you've not seen it, and yeah, did really well and deservedly did a sequel, uh 22 Jump Street, a couple of years later, and there was plans for a lot more. You know, there's the jokey bit at the end of 22 where there's sort of fake footage of all the sort of sequels that would be coming and little movie posters and all that sort of stuff. But when there was a big Sony leak, uh the emails all got hacked years later. Turned out there was actually plans for MIB 23, which was going to be a Men in Black and 23 Jump Street crossover. Um and yeah, the mind boggles, uh, what that would have been. But yeah, crazy. But brilliant film, 21 Jump Street, check it out. Also, really big fan of Cabin in the Woods, which was uh another Joss Whedon one. So this came out the same year as the Avengers, um, but I think was probably filmed before that. Uh but directed by Drew Goddard, but written by Josh Sweden. Again, if you love that sort of dialogue that he does, then it's absolutely there. Chris Hemsworth, I think just prior to um playing Thor was in this, but you've got a lot of people from Whedon's TV show TV shows that are in there as well. Um and yeah, it's really good. It's very it wrong foots you, you sort of think you know where it's going, you think it's going to be an evil dead sort of haunted cabin thing, and then it turns out to be you know, there's an even greater mystery and uh conspiracy going on behind it or below it, in fact. Um, but very, very good. Uh we also had Ted, which was another sort of close call, really, for being the movie of the year. Absolutely love it. So this is Seth McFarlane, obviously hot off family guy, American Dad. Uh and this was uh I guess his first sort of successful live action thing, um, although obviously the main character in it is a computer animated bear, but done fantastically. I mean, you get to this point, you get to 2012, you know, you the CGI is absolutely flawless. You know, you've obviously got all your Avengers and um Hobbit and all this sort of stuff there, but this uses it purely for sort of comic effect. He's a um possessed teddy bear who comes alive uh and was initially a celebrity in the 80s, which there is now a TV series of, which is kind of the prequel to the films of this and uh Ted 2. But um yeah, and it's this is sort of catching up with him and his grown-up sort of human friend, who's now played by Mark Wahlberg, and how they sort of negotiate through their you know no longer famous sort of has been life, and you know, negotiating uh John's relationships with Marcunis, all that sort of stuff, but very, very funny. Um completely a sense of humour that Family Guy is. If you you're not into that, then you'll probably be offended by a lot of this, but it's very cool. Very, really like it a lot. Um franchise is still going, TV series in its second season just being broadcast at the moment, and I think there's an animated sequel series coming as well. I saw something about the other day. I think that's true. Um we also had Dread, which was the second attempt and much, much more successful to attempt, uh doing the Judge Dredd character from 2008 Comics. Uh you'll probably remember, although you may have tried to blot it from your memory, the uh Sylvester Stallone version from the early 90s, uh well, maybe around 95, uh, where it just didn't get it right, you know. It just wasn't right. He just he never had the helmet on half the time, and you know, silly monsters and all that sort of stuff. This one, this one is Carl Urban, uh, and absolutely goes for broke. Um and it's violent and gory and hard-boiled in the right way, and yeah, the whole of Mega City One, the whole sort of universe of it just seems just fully formed and and it should totally have gone on to make more films. There should have been a lot more in this series. Um Carl Evan was brilliant in it. Uh I actually met him at a con around this sort of time, I think it had not long been out. Um he was sort of promoting this in the um the Star Trek movies and stuff that he was in. Uh I've got a very cool picture of me uh fist bumping him, which is uh very, very cool. Um yeah, Looper was another big sci-fi hit. Uh Bruce Willis uh one of his I suppose one of his late his last sort of big movies, um a big sort of sci-fi hit, um, with Emily Blunt in that one and the young version of Bruce Willis's character was uh the um lilla. I can't remember his name. He's also in the Dark Knight Rises, uh used to be in Third World from the Sun. Damn, I should write stuff down. I can't remember his name off top of the edge, it'll come to me in a minute. Uh what else we have? Pitch Perfect, so that was a another trilogy, and I think there's more of them coming, uh, which is basically a bit like Glee if you were watching that TV show around the same sort of time. It was about uh a musical group in college and a competition to be the best. I can't remember much about it. Anna Kendrick in it, very good. Uh Rebel Wilson obviously made a big sort of debut in this and and became pretty big uh briefly. Uh she's smaller now. Um Argo, another Ben Affleck directed, um classic actually, really, really good. It's about a true story of how they managed to get the CIA, I think, managed to get some hostages out of oh, here's me not showing my political knowledge. I want to say Lebanon or uh somewhere in the Middle East, basically where they were in an embassy, trapped in there, they weren't able to leave, and they basically set up an entire fake movie shoot to be able to get uh the CIA agents in there to smuggle them out. Completely true. Um and really, really good film. Uh definitely watch that one. Uh what else we've got? Flight, which is a Robert Zemeckis film uh about Denzel Washington as an alcoholic pilot who manages to save loads of people's lives by landing a plane that was going to crash. Uh a little bit like the um Miracle on the Hudson, you know, the Sut Sully story. Uh but it turns out that this guy that Denzel Washington's playing is actually an alcoholic, and you know, was it his fault that the plane was crashing in the first place? So it's the big sort of legal um sort of ramifications of that, but that's very, very good. Obviously, Denzel Washington's great in it. Uh the sessions, which is Helen Hunt and John Hawkes, about uh a paraplegic guy who uh it's it's kind of a counselling thing, uh, although the services that Helen Hunt offers aren't your usual uh talking therapies, let's put it that way. But that is a very, very good film. Lots of cool kids ones out this year as well. Wreck it Ralph, um obviously about a computer game character uh and the world in which computer game characters live, so there was a lot of sort of in-jokes about other sort of early computer games and all this sort of stuff. That went on to a great sequel as well, uh Ralph Breaks the Internet, uh ones that my kids really like. Uh you also had Pirates, uh, which was the Ardman one, so another proper traditional um uh claymation um plasticine animation. Very, very, very good. Well made, I mean, some just spectacular looking animation in it. Really, really good voices. Hugh Grant is the main uh pirate captain. It's uh Martin Freeman in there, David Tennant, um, and it's just a a mental plot about um Queen uh Victoria uh who's trying to like eat all of the endangered species because she's got this weird lunch club, but she's it's it's great. It's absolutely bonkers, um, and fully, you know, fully got that Armin sense of uh whimsy and yeah, it almost sort of harkens back to a better sort of time, but it wasn't a better time, it was pirates, but yeah, it's um Charles Darwin's in there. There's a talking monkey that doesn't talk, he just holds up cards like Bob Dylan in that old video. It's very odd, very, very strange. But uh well worth a watch. Uh Brave was a Pixar one um about uh she's not really a princess, but I think she's sort of been adopted into that Disney princess world. Um she was basically this spunky kid that really wants to be a hero and you know do what the men do. Uh back in a time when women couldn't do that, but that's good. Uh Amazing Spider-Man, so the first Andrew Garfield one. Again, if you refer back to one of our earlier episodes, we talked at length about all of the different Spider-Man ones, so you'll know that I am a fan of those ones, definitely. Uh Andrew Garfield and uh Emma Stone, absolutely brilliant chemistry in that one. Um diarting all over the place, but we've got some more kids' ones there. Rise of the Guardians, which was uh Chris Pinehu Jackman, they're basically sort of mythological characters that all sort of work together. So you've got the Easter Bunny, you've got Santa Claus, you've got uh Jack Frost, uh who's the the uh star of the film. Uh it's cool, very, very cool. It's um yeah, it uses all those sort of mythological children's characters but who sort of work together as a team, you know, like an Avengers kind of team to combat evil. Um there's also what we got Searching for Sugar Man. So this is a documentary about um an artist called Rodriguez, or Sixto Sixto Rodriguez is his actual name, uh, who was an American folk singer, but had released two albums that hadn't been very successful uh over in the States initially, but had sort of built up this cult following and were massive in for some reason South Africa, but he just you know virtually disappeared off the face of the earth. He was expect you know, people believed he was dead for many, many years. Um, and this is a documentary about two South African fans who are kind of following up leads that he might actually still be alive and might still be around, so it's following them on this quest to find out what actually happened to Rodriguez. Um, but very fascinating documentary. Uh and it I'd not heard of the guy before, admittedly, you know, even with my background in sort of um record shops and stuff, but um the albums that he released uh in 1771, uh Cold Fact and Coming from Reality, I was recommended them just prior to this film coming out. And wow, brilliant. Just really, really good. I mean it's folk rock, but it's got uh I don't know, elements of yeah. I mean, Bob Dylan, if he could sing properly, that sort of stuff, but um yeah, a little bit kind of Jimi Hendrix in there as well, but yeah, it's a it's an odd, it's it's not really like anything else, really, but definitely check it out if you get a chance. It's um very good documentary and some very good music in there as well. Uh you had the third man in black, so still Tommy Lee Jones, but also his character played by a younger one, uh, which was Josh Brolin, so teaming up with Will Smith uh for the bulk of it. Um what else possibly Oh Prometheus, which was Ridley Scott returns to the world of uh Alien, but this is in a prequel sort of set, you know, however many billions of years beforehand, and how the sort of um engineers they're called sort of created life on other planets, life on Earth, they sort of seeded it, and that's quite an interesting thing. Um where did the whole film works as a whole? Not so much. Um, you know, it was an attempt to sort of create a a real backstory in the alien universe. Obviously the sort of moving on through the the uh franchise, things have got pretty muddled with the alien vs. Predator, all this sort of stuff. So I think it was a valid attempt to get a bit more sense back into it again, uh, but not a widely loved film, I don't think. And then they did another one with Covenant as well a few years later, um, which again more of the same, but I think when it comes down to it, what we really want from an alien film is aliens uh eating people and kidnapping them and uh killing them in various violent ways. So um it sort of fell a little short there, but yeah, there we go. Lorax, another great kid's film actually based on a Dr. Zeus book, but again, expanded and brought in lots of new characters and you know, some brilliant world building in there. Uh that was a big favourite of my kids when they were little. And yeah, great. Danny DeVito is the Lorax who speaks for the trees, so when trees are cut down, he's um he's the sort of guardian of the trees. Uh and then it's about another character called the Wancler who uh has a business using the tufts of a Tuffalo tree, I think it's called. Uh, but yeah, very good. Uh brilliant music, very funny scenes, lots of these little um bear and bird characters that are sort of doing all this cool funny stuff in the background. Um I'm nearly there, don't worry, we're nearly on the main one. Um you got Chronicle, which was a fantastic debut for a guy called Josh Trank about kids who um develop superpowers. Um really, really successful, quite low budget, but you know, uses every penny, uses it, you know, fantastically. Should have been his calling cards would go on to greater things. The next thing he did after this was Fantastic Four, but God did he get it wrong. I mean, everything about he just changed stuff for the sake of it, you know, uh the colour blind casting as you call it, but just I mean I've mentioned before, wasn't a huge fan of the newest Fantastic Four cast, although the film was okay. I really like the old Tim Story Fantastic Four films. This is just it's not even somewhere in between, it's just everything about it sucks. Every character was just wrong, it wasn't interesting, it wasn't well made, it's just uh one of the worst films I've ever seen, I think. Um yeah, horrible, horrible film. Um but anyway, that wasn't that wasn't this year. Chronicle was this year, which showed a lot of promise, but unfortunately uh he didn't fulfil that. But Chronicle is well worth checking out. Um and again, slightly missed opportunity is the first attempt at Jack Reacher. So uh as we all know from reading the books and now watching the Amazon Prime series uh with Alan Richon, Reacher is just this huge, unstoppable man mountain um killing machine, and the first name that comes to mind when you read that it's not Tom Cruise, is it? Really, let's be honest. So, but they're not bad films, you know. McHugh did them, uh Christopher Macquarie, um and they're alright, they're good action films, they're just not Jack Reacher. Uh he's he's pretty good, he's quite brutal, he's really scrappy in it. Um and he can certainly deliver, you know, the dialogue and all that sort of thing. You know, we all know Tom Cruise can do action. Uh the Mission Impossibles have have proven that. Um so they're good, they're good. They watched this one and um Never Go Back. So the first one was based on uh OneShot, the Jack Reacher novel, um, and the second one was Never Go Back. They're good films, you just you just have to sort of detach yourself from what you know should be Jack Reacher, and you can really enjoy them actually. They're good. But uh that brings us on to my film of the year. So John Carter. Um it's seemed to me it was one of these films that was uh sort of critically I think they call it like uh review bombing now. It just seemed to have got this bad word of mouth before anyone had seen a single frame of the film. Uh obviously it was Disney invested a lot of money in it, but it just seemed like there was a lot of anti-Jon Carter uh sentiment out there before it happened. But I was pretty intrigued by it. I mean it's based on uh the books by Edgar Royce Burroughs, um they're known as sort of John Carter and Mars, but they were actually called the Barsoom series, uh, about a Earth guy who finds himself sort of transported onto Mars and has to sort of um, you know, battle the bad guys and win the woman and do all that sort of stuff. Um Ed Garris Burroughs is the guy who wrote Tarzan, so he was no sort of stranger to pulp um fiction. Uh the the books were by the time the film came out, the the first book was a hundred years old. So I mean we're talking about stuff that was written in the um very, very early 1900s and you know predict as a lot of the best sci-fi did, predicted all this stuff that would sort of happen. Um, you know, they didn't have the knowledge of the planets that we do now, what Mars was like that you know there probably wasn't civilizations living up there at the time. Um but you know, it speculated a lot, it was speculative fiction, I guess, which is you know some of the best sci-fi, and just absolute boys' own adventure sort of stuff, really. It literally is pulp um sci-fi. And yeah, it was this is a fantastic attempt. So it was um the it was directed by uh Pixar's Andrew Stanton, who did things like Finding Nemo, uh, and he had been obsessed since childhood of with the John Carr character, and it you know, it was his passion project, his life's dream. Uh the rights had sort of bounced around all different film companies and all this sort of stuff over the years. Uh, you know, it'd been the books had been in constant publication. I think there's eleven books in total, I think, and I I haven't read any of them, I must admit. Um but I really want to. Uh I've just never got around to it. Um they're pretty expensive now on eBay. I was looking while I was watching uh the film this weekend. I was sort of checking out what was available, and they are really expensive. You can get some lovely sort of editions and box sets of them and stuff, but you're talking hundreds and hundreds of pounds, so one day I'll keep scouting around the old bookshops and we might find something. But what I really like about it is well, it's sort of twofold. One is the yes, it's a sort of a sci-fi, you know, hero. It's the basis of a sort of a lot of stuff that we would know now. So I think this might be one of the things that sort of harmed it, is it seems a little derivative of everything from you know Star Wars to I mean, I get big He-Man vibes off of it. Um, you know, Master of the Universe, he he sort of looks like he could be, and I think that's one of the things that really sort of I enjoyed about it, is like at that point, you know, there there hadn't been a successful live-action version of um He-Man, although my fingers are crossed for the one that's coming out later this year. Uh looks along the same sort of lines as this one, actually. I think, you know, in terms of the CGI and stuff. But it was one of the first sort of films. I said CGI by this point was absolutely flawless, and you just thought, yeah, you could do you could do He-Man properly now, you know, and this is this is a long way to be in there, uh, and it just sucks you in. It's it's some fantastic world building, obviously it was intended to be, you know, a series of films, um, certainly from the director and the writer and from Disney as well. You know, they they put a lot of money into it. Uh the the world building fantastic, the design of everything's brilliant. I think the casts are really good as well. Um, but yeah, it just it came up against this sort of negativity and didn't happen. It was you know, it was a financial success in the terms of it made more money than its original budget, but apparently by all accounts they spent even more money than the budget on the marketing, so that obviously didn't make all of that back, which means you know it was technically a um not a a success in terms of making as much money as they spent on the advertising. Uh but yeah, there seems to be it there seems to be some talk that it was not advertised well. You know, the the fact that the the title is just John Carter doesn't really tell you anything about it. You know, the the book it's based on predominantly is John Carter Print uh sorry is Princess of Mars, which they think oh boys won't go and see that if it's you know called Princess something, so they changed it to John Carter of Mars, um, which you know again is pretty evocative. It tells you kind of a little bit of what it's about. You know, you couple that with some decent posters, you can kind of you know work your way into the sort of film it's gonna be. But again, they thought that might be a bit you know restrictive of you know people not wanting to go and see it if it's just hokey sci-fi. So they just changed it to John Carter, which let's be honest, it's not a great title, is it? It doesn't tell you anything about what it is. You could be talking about Noah Wiley's character out of ER, for all we know. Um, and yeah, it just didn't do anything, didn't sort of what is John Carter, didn't really tell you. They do make a little they acquis a little bit at the end where the sort of end title changes it to John Carter of Mars, because by that point he's become John Carter of Mars, he's sort of a citizen of Mars. But the the really good stuff, so even you know, amongst that whatever you did know about it going in is it's going to be this guy on you know Mars on an alien planet, um, battling monsters and all that sort of stuff. Brilliant, yeah, I'm in I'm in, I'm on board, that's great. Um and sorry, I went off on another tangent, but yeah, I was saying it's kind of you know, you can you think now looking at this sort of stuff that it's you know derivative of things like Star Wars, but actually when you think about it logically, you know, and even stuff like Superman, you know, he's on another planet and he's because of the difference in gravity, he's got he can jump and almost fly, and he's got you know more strength than he would have on Earth. But you know, we know that as coming from everything from Superman to Star Wars, but at the time, you know, a hundred years ago, it was completely unique. You know, this has this stuff had never been seen before, never been done before, never been written before. And you've got to take it in the context of this is the original story like that. Um, and I think it's a fantastic attempt at at translating that. It does really, really work. And you know, it's like if you watch Citizen Kane now, you know, oh well, we've seen a lot of stories like that, you know, we've seen a lot of these things that you know flash forward and flashback and all this sort of but you know at that point you hadn't. You've got to look at stuff in the context of when it actually came out and how unique these things were. So, you know, that to me was a big thing. But even knowing all that and going into it and expecting that sort of sci-fi thing, I wasn't expecting the sort of framing part of the story, which is again without spoiling it too much, because I think it's a film that not a lot of people have actually seen, just got a negative view of. So it's framed basically on Earth, uh, where this guy, he's an older guy, uh, he's rich, he's made his fortune somehow, um, and his nephew is called to say that uh John Carter's died, his uncle has died, and he's got this very specific demand about how his body's treated, so he can't be cremated or buried, he's got to be put into this sort of mausoleum which can only be opened from the inside and all this sort of stuff, and it's all kind of intriguing. Uh, and then it sort of flashes back to the end of the civil war, and uh he's John Carter's search of gold, and he finds this cave and is transported for and it's just it's really really good, and then it ends up and it's I don't want to give too much away, but it's a very, very clever framing device. And I don't know if that's sort of directly from the books or whatever, but it's you you know you kept guessing up to the last minute of how it's done and what they've done, and yeah, it's very clever, it's a very, very clever film, and I don't think it's given the credit it deserves, I don't think it got the audience it deserved. Um I think the cast have taken it quite bad from interviews and stuff that I've been reading. Um not only Taylor Kitch, who was uh at that point successful off the back of the Friday Night Light series, really good in that. Um if you haven't seen that, that's a brilliant series to watch. Um but yeah, everyone, you know, uh Dominic West, who's done a lot of stuff who's off the back of uh The Wire. Um to my mind his best character is in uh Brassett, the Sky series, and there where he's the uh drug adult doctor, he's absolutely brilliant in that, but he pops up in everything. Uh CGI is fantastic. The you you know there's entire characters in there that's you know completely CGI, but it they all work really well. The CGI is flawless. Um you've got everyone, you've got um James Purefoy in there, uh, who actually I do know a little bit. He lives fairly local to me, uh, and he actually comes into my work sometimes. So I've chatted at length to him recently about he's in the new seasons of The Witcher. So I've got a little bit of uh behind the scenes inside gossip about um what happened with Henry Cavill and all that sort of stuff, and he's happy to sort of chat about all that sort of thing and take pictures and stuff, and yeah, he's good, he's a good lad. Um but yeah, he's in there in a in a sort of smaller role, admittedly. Um, but also like the the female lead in it, Lynn Collins, is absolutely spectacular. I mean she just wow, you know, absolutely breathtaking. Um and she's very, very good in it as well. So she is the you know the Princess of Mars, the sort of titular would have been if it had been called that uh Princess of Mars. She's not done around the same sort of time she was in one of the bad Hugh Jackman uh Wolverine film, I think it was Wol uh X-Men Origins Wolverine. So she's in that um and she's also done a bit in Walking Dead and stuff like that. But yeah, I think this sort of knocked the cast for six a little bit because of the sort of critical bashing that the the film got or you know the the perceived sort of failure of it. Um and yeah, it just seems one of those real missed opportunities, you know, in terms of it should have been more successful, they should have gone on to do this whole series. I'd much, much rather see more John Carter films than I would, you know, all these Avatar films, you know, that are costing probably twenty times as much as one of these would have cost to make. And you know, people are going absolutely crazy over things like Avatar, and to me there's not a patch on the story, you know, they are derivative of stuff that's gone before, you know, but basically um you know Ferngully or whatever. Um but yeah, I just it's a shame. There's it is a real shame that they they didn't go on more, they didn't make more films. Um I'd have loved to have seen all of them on on screen, and I just you know the fact that it wasn't a massive success um but you know they I think they made the best best film that was possible to make. You know, I don't I can't fault it. I think it's great. Um this the story was well handled, the effects couldn't be any better, the pace of it is fantastic. Um so yeah, if they yeah, no one's gonna be able to do it any better. So it seems to me that that it probably they're not gonna have another stab at it. I don't know. Maybe it'd make a great TV series, I guess, um if they did it, but you just can't help thinking that there's just this sort of bit of a stigma attached to it now that it wouldn't happen. Who knows? I mean it's been around for a hundred years, I'm sure it'll be around for another hundred, and uh in that sort of time there's not many original ideas around, so I'm guessing someone will come back to it and revisit at some point. Um but yeah, but definitely, definitely a recommendation for me. Um it was a strong year, it was a there was some definite sort of close runners for that. You know, I love Ted, I love Cabin in the Woods, 21 Jump Street, but to me they all got the success they deserve, those films, but John Carter didn't. So I wanted to talk about it to try and perhaps introduce some more people to it who haven't seen it. Definitely give it a go. Go in with an open mind. Um I think you'll really enjoy it. And if you do, you can thank Milestone Movies for it. Okay, so that is 2020 twelve. 2020? That's not how you say that word. 2012, um, which is yeah, 38 episodes. So we are winging our way to to 50. 50 is our cut-off for the uh celebration of my 50 years of of uh life and of movie watching. Uh so we are yeah, really pinging its way down. I mean, what are we down to three three months worth now? Wow, of episodes left. Crazy. But if you've stuck with us this long, thank you ever so much. There's not many, many more episodes to go, so hopefully you feel you can stick with me for the last few as well. Um please feel free to let me know your thoughts if you're a fan of John Carter as well. Uh if you watch it for the first time on the back of this, please let me know what you think. Um pop us a text, pop us a message on the old socials as well. And yes, there we go. Thank you ever so much for joining me. I will see you here next week. Again, I did promise on the last episode that I'd have the episode out by Monday this week. This is again Tuesday, so I've missed that little deadline, but it's just it's a hectic time, but I do love doing this, so as soon as I can get enough time to actually sit down and dedicate the the time to do it uh and not be rushing around doing other stuff, then I'll get in there and get on and do it as soon as I can. So thank you for bearing with me. Apologies if it was a little bit late again, but thank you again, and I will speak to you next week. Thanks and take care, bye bye.