Disney does it again! How can you take one of the greatest adventures in the last 100 years and screw it up?  Yep, John Carter went Hollywood. Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote A Princess of Mars in 1917 as a love story, adventure story and most of all a story of undying friendship. I wanted the movie to reflect the incredible emotion I felt when I first read the book, unfortunately, it did not.

John Carter is a southern gentleman and a former officer of the Confederacy loaded with worthless Confederate currency and hunting for gold. In John Carter that is apparently supposed to make up for the loss of his wife and child. Carter manages to find evidence of a “Cave of Spiders,” supposedly filled with gold just waiting to be picked out of the walls. Unfortunately the Union Army wants Carter to aid them in fighting the Apaches that terrorizing the populace. He refuses, violently, manages to escape and, in a nice irony, steals the commander’s horse.

When Apaches attack the soldiers chasing Carter, finally, we see the hero. He snatches the commander from the clutches of the brutal Apache and carries him to a nearby cave. Of course, predictably, it’s the Cave of Spiders. Finding technology there Carter inadvertently transports to Mars and the adventure of two lifetimes. John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) meets the love of his life, Dejah Thoris, and Tars Tarkas a 12 foot tall green alien with 4 arms, two giant tusks and a temper to match. Up to this point the movie is pretty enjoyable.

Unfortunately, the rest of John Carter is a hodgepodge of technology, evil aliens called Therns and an ego maniacal would be Emperor of Mars called Sab Than. Someone forgot about the book, forgot about the principle of a simple story done well and instead just spent a lot of money on fluff.

John Carter is “the best swordsman on two worlds.” Tars Tarkas is the greatest strategist on Barsoom and the deadliest warrior. Kantos Kan is one of the greatest commanders and pilots on the planet. So what do we get in John Carter: a bunch of confusing confrontations with balding aliens (Therns), excessive over the top flying machines and a nutty device that apparently dissolves people. I’ve read A Princess of Mars 30 times since I was 8 and even I was thoroughly confused.

I expected Lord of the Rings, Gladiator or Braveheart style battles with John Carter and Tars Tarkas back to back killing Warhoons, Zodangans and Tharks, amid piles of bodies (this only happened once and it was the best part of the movie for me). What I got was some neat technology, creepy aliens and Star Trek transporter-like technology.

One of the most puzzling element of John Carter was the casting. There were some great picks: Lynn Collins as Dejah Thoris, James Purefoy as Kantos Kan and even Dominic West as Sab Than among others, but then there was Taylor Kitsch as John Carter. He was adequate, but without the screen presence of great action heroes. Noone steals a scene from Bruce Willis, Harrison Ford or Sean Connery. Even the evil Matai Shang (Mark Strong) managed to steal scenes from Kitsch. John Carter is one of the first and greatest action heroes. They seem to have forgotten this for John Carter, the movie.

Disney could have saved themselves a hundred million dollars, developed a “period” style action movie with flashing swords, primitive flying machines, developing friendships and a great love story and had a really good movie. Add in all the missing fight scenes from A Princess of Mars and it would have been great!

Rating 3.5 stars out of 5.