A FEW THOUGHTS ON WHY EVERYONE NEEDS TO CHILL OUT ABOUT JOHN CARTER

(photo by StampyTurtle on Flickr)

So, John Carter is in theaters now, and there's an odd dynamic developing. This isn't the first time this has happened, but it's the first time I've been caught in the crossfire, so I'm noticing it more, to wit: the kind of things people who liked the movie are saying about people who didn't. For weeks now there have been stories all up and down entertainment media about the fact that John Carter cost $250 million, and was not only expected to suck but to lose more money than any movie in the history of the business. I weighed in on this narrative earlier this week, maintaining optimism both for its commercial and artistic prospects, partly because I knew I was going to have to review it for Next Projection. When I did, I discovered that there was a reason the narrative about it being shockingly expensive and not very good had developed. It was because, to my eyes, it was shockingly expensive and not very good.

But opinions are, as the poet said, like assholes, in the sense that everybody's got one and they're frequently full of shit. I try my best to be enlightened and not let anger fuck me up—though it frequently does—so I'll lay my cards on the table about my own perspective:

1—I went in, as I always do, wanting it to be good.
2—It was a little clunky.
3—Its clunkiness was exacerbated by being projected in an unwatchable format.
4—I can't say this enough, 3D is bad enough but 3D IMAX is a hate crime against cinema.
5—In spite of the unspeakably awful presentation, I tried my best to be fair about the movie.

But in spite of being the most serious intellectual in three counties, possessed of immaculately refined tastes, and fucking awesome, occasionally, people disagree with me. Which is fine. Without different perspectives, there'd be no discourse, and were there no discourse, we might as well feed ourselves to the fuckin wolves. And so it is that a number of people, a lot of whom I respect greatly, liked John Carter, and found it to be the thing I thought it missed the mark in trying to be: a rousing SF fantasy popcorn epic. You say it owns, I say it makes Dune look like it was directed by Robert Bresson. It has ever been thus.

But the pro- and anti- camps have been talking a bit of shit, and it's getting a little out of hand. I'm going to be paraphrasing a bit here and there, and withholding names because I don't have anything personal against any of the parties involved (so if you see yourself quoted or paraphrased, don't be mad, please.) But here's the basic gist of a few strands of the conversation:


“Any critics who thought this was confusing need to go back to critic school.”

One very crucial hair needs to be split here: when a critic describes something as confusing (as I did John Carter, if not in so many words) that critic is not necessarily admitting to have been personally confused. I personally knew what was supposed to be happening in John Carter, but the way in which things unfolded was a bit fucky. This is what I, and most critics worth half a shit, mean when we say something is confusing.


“It's boring that everyone's piling on and trashing John Carter.”

This carries with it the implication that liking something that everyone dislikes is more interesting. This one's kind of sticky, because it's true that each should make up his/her own mind, and not reflexively go with the all out of comfort and solidarity. Especially in communities that can be as insular as the film blogosphere, there's a lot of apparent sameness. It's not just in criticism, either. When I was in college, I used to go to a lot of dance concerts, because physically fit girls in leotards = win. They were a lot of fun, and not just because of the leotards, but one thing that I noticed was an awful lot of virtually identical choreography. It wasn't because the girls were lousy choreographers; some were better than others, as it is in all walks of life. It was because they were always doing guest spots in each other's pieces and sitting in on each other's rehearsals, and as happens in any endeavor, sometimes they found themselves with like an hour to finish their 'ography and had to throw in some tried-and-true maneuver just to finish the damn thing. And the tried and true, by nature, has been tried and proven to succeed, so rather than do some lunatic shit that might not work, better to play it conservative. It won't wow anyone, but it also won't have them being like, “Wow, you suck.” Of all the examples of proximity breeding sameness, the college dance concerts always sticks out because it was physically demonstrable. Criticism is a different beast only in that ideas don't have tits that look really good in leotards. Or something like that.

Now, a dancer can potentially sprain an ankle or blow out a knee doing some crazy difficult shit no one's ever tried before. Movie critics aren't at that kind of risk, but back in the day Paul Schrader did get fired for panning Easy Rider, and I've been accused of having no soul for not loving the Star Wars movies, and for not having a sense of humor for hating Waiting For Guffman. Now, Schrader went on to write Taxi Driver and fuck Nastassja Kinski and I have a middle finger each for the Star Wars and Guffman people, so this isn't the apocalypse or anything, but unpopular opinions lead to fights and sometimes there's better shit to do.

On the other hand, not all sameness is created equal. Sometimes, what appears to be a bunch of sheep baaing and dickteasing Welsh people have among their number a wolf or two in drag. Which, in this case, means people like me who didn't like John Carter because we didn't like John Carter, independent of anyone else's opinion. It may be black and rectangular like a monolith, and it may make everyone go apeshit and start braining each other with leopard bones like a monolith, but it ain't necessarily a monolith.


“Yay! I'm glad you like John Carter too! [unlike these other sticks in the mud].”

Hey, being able to share how much you dig something with someone else is awesome. And, no shit, I'm glad someone liked John Carter. I wanted to, and might have if it hadn't been for that bullshit IMAX fuckshit. The movie was basically sitting in my lap, shouting at me, and prying at my ocular nerve with a crowbar for two-plus hours, which is exhausting at best. If it was up to me, I'd be right there with y'all fapping to happy memories of Lynn Collins and being all into it when the Thark or the Tharks or whatever the plural is crashland the hovercraft into the thing at the end and help Tim Riggins kick ass. I mean, shit, I'm right on board with both and I didn't even like the picture. But I'll make this deal: I'll assume you all like the picture in the same good faith in which I didn't.


“John Carter was fucking retarded. Anyone who likes this movie is also.”

Fuck you. Stop conflating your own dipshit opinion with empirical fact. A lot of people who are a lot fucking smarter than you liked this movie.


Anyone who's deriving pleasure from the picture flopping and the potential damage to Andrew Stanton's career

You all can blow those huge white furry ape things Tim Riggins owns in the gladiator scene. There's an ugly tendency in modern culture to hate all success with the same fury as undeserved success, and that shit needs to stop. Even though I find Pixar's memetic omnipotence a little disturbing, Andrew Stanton sufficiently made his bones with that company with Finding Nemo and WALL-E that it's only right that parent company Disney tell him, “Hey there! We like money and you made us lots of it, so now we're going to let you do whatever you want.” It reflects well on them that they let him do that, too. So Andrew Stanton wanted to make a $175 million movie version of an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel. So it ended up costing between $250 and $300 mil instead. Big fuckin whoop, Disney's got money. And yeah, a guy who spent his whole career with complete control over every element of his films shot in live action with people and weather and a crew he had to keep fed and coffeed and days when everybody's just not feeling it ended up with something that's a little less perfect than his earlier pictures. Again. So fucking what. He made the Mouse a shitload of money. They can write this one off.


The only point to all of this is, there aren't sides. We're all people who like movies. Judging someone on the basis of their liking or not liking one isolated thing is dumb, whether it's to align yourself with them or against them. And letting yourself get worked up about someone liking or disliking something you like or dislike is also dumb. Let's all just breathe in, breathe out, and move on.