Man of Steel fans are basking in the glow of a $125M opening weekend, achieved in spite of a 57% “Rotten” rating from critics, while John Carter fans are shaking their heads and wondering how a similar film with similar elements and equivalent marketing challenges could achieve such success in spite of critics backlash.  Let’s break it down a bit.

The Marketing Challenge

Both films faced an uphill battle.  John Carter (of Mars, dammit)  faced lack of awareness among most of tbe target audience of the underlying source material.  Man of Steel faced apathy and a sense that Superman just wasn’t relevant in 2013.   The two challenges are different …. are they equivalent?   I would argue that Superman had enough going for it that the realistic worst case opening, even with bad marketing, would have been in the $50M range, whereas John Carter’s “bottom” was . . . well, it’s hard to imagine it doing worse than the $31M it did on opening weekend.   So the point would be that a performance by Man of Steel in the 50M opening weekend range would have been an equivalent disaster to John Carter’s $31M.  But that didn’t happen, did it.

The Marketing Approach

Aside from spending more money ($150M, reportedly, versus $100M for John Carter), what did Warner Brothers do that Disney didn’t?  As Scott Mendlesson notes: “Obviously credit goes to Warner Bros’ marketing department, which cut a series of emotionally potent trailers that actually hid most of the big action beats …”   Indeed — it’s hard to argue that the WB trailers were infinitely better than the Disney trailers.  The decision to find the emotional core of the film was a wise one — and when you contemplate the fact that Disney had, after all, Andrew Stanton directing–it just highlights the strangeness of the decision to make trailers that featured endless battles with a white ape in an arena and virtually zero emotional content.

Of course there is more to the marketing than the trailers — but the trailers and TV spots are the backbone and WB made a series of great decisions, and Disney stubbornly made bad decision after bad decision in their tone deaf promotion of John Carter.

Let’s move on from the marketing to the films themselves.

How Similar was the Critics Response?

Pretty similar, it turns out.  John Carter was at 54% “Rotten” on opening weekend before eventually drifting own to 51%.  Man of Steel is at 57% “Rotten”.   This is close enough that neither film can say that the critics were a positive factor.  In each case, success had to be achieved in spite of the critics, not because of them.

What About Audience Response?

Man os Steel had an A- Cinemascore; John Carter was a B+.   Other indicators seem to suggest that the audience response to Man of Steel has been slightly better on opening weekend than was the case with John Carter.  But chances are, we will see a dropoff next week that is fairly “in pattern” with the dropoff that John Carter experienced in the second weeks.

What About Studio Decisions?

WB made a series of decisions that turned out to be very smart, and Disney made a series of decisions that turned out to be not so smart.  WB got Christopher Nolan, architect of the immensely successful Dark Knight series, on board as producer and with that single decision, insured that the film would have a “cool” factor that was vitally needed, given audience apathy and the sense that Superman was a little too bland (too “vanilla?”) for modern audiences.   Nolan brought David Goyer with him for the screenplay — another “cool factor” move that made good sense, and thus the hiring of Zack Snyder as director came with a context to it — that context being that the director of 300 (good) and Sucker Punch (not so good) would be part of a strong team and have strong oversight.  The team then went forward and made a series of smart casting decisions.  They picked an unknown in Henry Cavill to play Superman . . . . and they made a pick that has been universally lauded.  Then they supported that choice with an iconic supporting cast — Russel Crowe, Kevin Costner, Diane Lane — and for Lois Lane, they went with Amy Adams.  Compare that to the John Carter choices — Taylor Kitsch as John Carter was a rough equivalent to Henry Cavill in terms of market appeal  (not much going in), and thus the supporting cast decisions become critical.  Ciaran Hinds, James Purefoy, and Willem Dafoe just don’t register in the marketing the way that Crowe, Costner, and Lane did.  And then you have Amy Adams on the one hand, and Lynn Collins on the other.  This is not meant as criticism of the actors themselves or their performances — it is an observation regarding the “cast design” as envisioned by the producers and director.  One has great appeal in the marketplace — the other has limited appeal.

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Ian Boucher has written a comprehensive article  in What Culture taking on the issue of why Marvel Studios fans don’t like John Carter.  I won’t steal his thunder by going into too much detail here — it’s worth reading the entire article.   For example, he explores how the much criticized promotion failed to do something that it hasn’t really been criticized for, and that is — failing to convey anything about the “big picture” that would be experience dover the course of the entire projected series of films.   Of course Disney didn’t want to do this because it didn’t want to create expectations in that regard — but Boucher writes interestingly about the difference between going to see a Marvel film with expectations in this regard, and the murky sense of what the John Carter big picture was.  He also takes on curious dimensons such as the uninspiring “poses” that John Carter given in posters and artwork; as well as the generally different state of mind of a Marvel-indoctrinated potential viewer, and how that state of mind was so different for John Carter — and how all of this amounted to the idea of John Carter failing to jell in the mind of Marvel fans, who could have been a good audience for John Carter had the promotion resonated for them.  The critique is not limited to the promotion — it also includes some observations about the film itself, which Boucher generally liked but which had elements that he feels predictably failed to resonate with Marvel-indoctrinated fans.

Click on the image or link below and give it a read:

http://whatculture.com/film/10-reasons-why-marvel-studios-fans-dont-like-john-carter.php

As a one-time quasi-professional guitar picker who gave up doing it professionally several lifetimes ago (er ….. that should be “failed to make it professionally”)  but has tried to keep it up over the years — I am just in awe and amazed by the artistry of astronaut (and International Space Station Commander!)  Chris Hadfield who music video cover of David Bowie’s Space Oddity Youtubed down from the ISS absolutely rocks.   The vocals and guitar were recorded on the International Space Station, and the rest of the music was recorded down here on earth.  The video is produced by Hadfield’s son Evan,  and edited by Andrew Tidby. Oh — and Hadfield and fellow astronauts Roman Romanenko and Thomas Marshburn just landed safely in Kazakhstan — so Hadfield’s mission turned out a little better than  Major Tom’s.

But seriously folks….this is just beyond awesome. Watch.  And remember — those aren’t special effects.  They are the real deal.

And here is an article on the safe return to earth and more about Hadfield.

And this one:  Ten Things About Chris Hadfield

Lisa V. Tomecek is is the author of the upcoming novel Oath of Blood and is a friend of Edgar Rice Burroughs, The John Carter Files, and assorted denizens here at JCF.  I’ve had the pleasure of corresponding with her lately on Facebook — and today she’s published a wonderful post on her blogsite.   Here are the first two paragraphs and a link to the rest of the article.  Highly recommended.  And by the way, there’s a lovely mention of JCG and the letter recently published here by 82 year old ERBophile Thomas McGurk if you click on the link at the end of the excerpt.

Of Deserts and Dead Sea-Bottoms

I am one of those people who finds meaning in ritual. Not necessarily a spiritual or religious kind of ritual–though those can certainly have their merits–but the word at the root sense of its meaning: the repetition of meaningful action. I find these sorts of things, when purposefully done, to have a refreshing and grounding effect on the psyche. They help to clarify things that have become clouded, to clear out the cobwebs that slowly and surely accrete in the corners of our lives.

One of the great mental cleansing rituals to which I subscribe is the vacation, and within the context of vacation, if I am to be traveling, the passing of the long hours with audiobooks. It should come as no surprise, then, that when my husband Ryan and I set out this past week for the deserts of West Texas in what was part research trip, part escape from the drudgery of daily life, we passed the time in just that way. Nor should it come as any shock that, being the sort of person I am (and, thankfully, the sort of person he is) we filled those hours with the adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs‘ first hero, the peerless John Carter of Mars.

That, too, is a bit of a ritual–at least for me. I tend to associate the deserts of the Southwest withBarsoom, and any time I point myself in that direction, I am inclined to touch base with the part of me that finds so much significance in those stories. But I am (of course) getting ahead of myself. As befits the subject, there’s a long story that will make sense of why and how and when all that began for me–and why it still matters today, especially as concerns my own writing life.

Read the rest here.