Special Report: John Carter, the Flop that Wasn’t a Turkey (Part 2)

Michael Sellers Most Read

This part two of a three part series entitled John Carter, the Flop that Wasn’t a Turkey.  You can read Part One here.

by Michael D. Sellers

John Carter: The Flop that Wasn’t a Turkey (How did it happen?) Part Two

On April 20, 2012 Disney Studios Chairman Rich Ross resigned in the wake of the release of John Carter, a film that had earned $269M at the global box office in the six weeks of its theatrical run but which,  because of its high cost of production and marketing,  caused the studio to take a $200M write-down in the first quarter of 2012.  Ross had not been responsible for greenlighting John Carter; but the marketing campaign in its futile entirety had unfolded on Ross’s watch.  In his resignation letter Ross wrote:

…..the best people need to be in the right jobs, in roles they are passionate about, doing work that leverages the full range of their abilities. It’s one of the leadership lessons I’ve learned during my career, and it’s something I’ve been giving a great deal of thought to as I look at the challenges and opportunities ahead……..I no longer believe the Chairman role is the right professional fit for me.

The question of whether Ross, a “TV guy” who had done extremely well managing Disney’s global TV operation, was the least bit passionate about or even fully grasped the unique complexities of theatrical movie marketing, would hang over his departure. As Jerry Bruckheimer famously observed, movie marketing offers a unique challenge in that it must motivate fans to “get off the couch” and pay twelve dollars  during a particular window of time — a “call to action”  that far exceeds anything in the channel-flipping TV world.  Movie marketers  live and breathe this challenge, and tend to believe, not without good reason, that it takes a certain breed of executive to successfully create a culture where the alchemy that is movie promotional campaign is executed consistently and imaginatively at a high level.  Ross, by his own admission and the record he created, was not such an executive.

That fundamental challenge of movie marketing–motivating millions of people to get up off the couch and line up to see a movie on opening weekend– lies at the center of the question:  “What really happened to John Carter?”  It is by no means the sole factor in the failure of John Carter to become the hit that it had to be to break even.   And we will deal with the other factors in the course of this series.   But rarely in Hollywood has there been such a perplexing “epic fail” of marketing, and it was Ross who was at the helm when the Disney marketing machine sailed into its iceberg with John Carter.

While the actions of Disney marketing are difficult to fathom as seen from the outside, companies with the historic success of Disney don’t intentionally sabotage their own projects, nor do they enter into a release campaign without giving serious thought to the strategy behind that release.  So what was the strategy?  What were Ross and his brain trust really expecting and hoping would happen with John Carter, and why did they calibrate the campaign the way they did?

Most critically — why did Ross approve an A+ level budget of $250M, putting John Carter on the short list of most expensive films ever, then fail to support it with an A+ marketing campaign that included the full force of Disney’s ability not only to do the “usual”–trailers, TV Spots, print ads,  billboards, etc — but to also bring in the kind of licensing, cross-promotional tie-ins, and merchandise that are needed to “feed the beast” of a tent-pole theatrical film at the highest budget level?

To understand, it is necessary to start with the production of the film itself.

The Production of John Carter — A $250M Experiment?

There are two vastly different versions of what happened during the production of John Carter. The version that dominated pre-release coverage of the film was captured  in a Hollywood reporter piece by Kim Masters, who described it this way:

In the case of Disney’s March space fantasy John Carter, there was clear allure to taking a chance on director Andrew Stanton. He wrote and directed Pixar’s Finding Nemo and WALL-E, which together grossed about $1.3 billion worldwide. But the 3D extravaganza has undergone a complete re-engineering [since the original shoot was complete], and the budget, originally $200 million, is widely rumored to have ballooned to $300 million. …. One source associated with talent on John Carter says Stanton, 46, initially was allowed to pursue his vision with “no checks and balances, no star, no producer, nobody to keep him in check.” In December 2010, when he showed a 170-minute cut to executives at Pixar and Disney, they found the story unclear and the characters not engaging. Stanton then began to re-engineer a film that already had been shot, creating storyboards of new sequences and cutting them into the footage. A few months later, he embarked on extensive and costly reshoots. Disney, which had anticipated John Carter as a trilogy, held off on discussing the next installment.

Master’s article, and others like it, painted a picture of a film which had started off with a reasonable budget, and had “ballooned” into a $300M final product due to “costly reshoots” which were undertaken in an attempt to remedy mistakes made in the original filming.  This narrative of a confused, out-of-control production helmed by a first-time live action director who was in over his head dominated the reporting on the actual making of the film.

Disney was curiously detached and did little to dispel such accounts.  There were no statements from Ross or Sean Bailey, Disney’s President of production, offering any counter-narrative.  It was only when  Stanton and producers Lindsey Collins and Jim Morris were on the final press tour in the run-up to the release, that the film-making team  confronted it.

Stanton’s statement were the strongest of the three — claiming that the reshoots were part of the original shooting plan and not an ad hoc reaction to unexpected problems, and making the case that once a budget was agreed to, he stayed on budget and on schedule — so much so that Disney rewarded him with his request to have additional days added to the reshoot.

“I want to go completely on record that I literally was on budget and on time the entire shoot. Disney is so completely psyched that I stayed on budget and on time that they let me have a longer reshoot. …. That is just fascinating to me that people would think that’s true…[that the reshoots were unplanned and remedial] …I actually stayed on budget and on time because I knew that I had a reshoot.” (THR Link.)

So who has it right?

Re-shoots:  Remedial Corrections or Part of the Plan from the Beginning?

To understand whether or not the production of John Carter was “troubled”, with a “spiraling” production spend due to “costly reshoots” , it is helpful to gain some perspective on reshoots and their role in major Hollywood film-making.   Traditionally, the Hollywood approach to live action film-making  emphasizes a lengthy pre-production  that yields a “blueprint” for the film, followed by a single period of “principal photography” whose objective is to get everything “in the can”, followed by editing and post-production.  Under the traditional model, reshoots are considered remedial and hence, logically, the existence of reshoots is empirical evidence that something is wrong with the production — that something went wrong during the principal photography and “costly reshoots” are necessary as a remedial and unplanned exercise.

But while this traditional view is understood to be the norm, most directors acknowledge that a period of reshoots (which are more properly thought of as “additional shooting” since the object is not to reshoot what you already shot, it is to get additional shots that clarify and enhance the story) can be invaluable because, at the point where the film has been assembled, instead of shooting 10 times what will actually show up in the film, the shots that are executed can be very carefully calibrated to fit within the actual edited film.  Director Bill Condon, explaining re-shoots for Breaking Dawn, said:  “A film is a lot like a puzzle, with each piece – each shot, no matter how brief – needing to fit exactly with the ones around it. Our Part Two puzzle is finally coming into full view, and in a few weeks we’ll be heading back north to pick up some additional shots – the last tiny missing pieces.”  Red Tails Director Bill Hemingway, describing re-shoots for his film about Tuskegee Airmen, said:   “We all knew there was going to be additional photography. It wasn’t a surprise.”   He described the reshoots as ” little character moments and effects-driven scenes that were needed to “make things clear; to strengthen individual characters.”   One director, a veteran of five Hollywood feature films, said: “I always program a 2-3 day mini-shoot that comes after the film has been assembled.  It’s inevitable that by the time you get to that point, you will have a list of shots that can be obtained very efficiently and which will greatly help the film.  Those 2-3 days can make as much impact on the film as two weeks of filming during principal photography because in the re-shoots, you’re only getting what you know you need, whereas in principal you’re trying to get everything you think you might need.”

Stanton went on record early on as being more passionately committed to re-shoots than almost any other live-action director, so much so that he viewed his approach as revolutionary for live action, yet grounded in what has been termed the “Pixar process”:

You know, I planned reshoots for after I got an assembly, so I had real objectivity about what it needed.

That’s all we do at Pixar. The truth is, we rip down and put up our movies a minimum of four times over four years. How I learned to make a movie by shooting it four times. That’s how me make them. People wonder what the magic elixir of Pixar is. It’s this: we shoot the movie four times!

To me, that’s just how art is formed….It’s like me saying to you, you can all go and write a piece about what we talked about today, but you only get to write it once. You don’t get to change a word once it’s set down. And that’s how movies are made, and it’s fucked up. It should be that you should somehow be able to balance economics and let the artist be an artist, and not be afraid of failure or trial and error.

Stanton’s producer Lindsey Collins says.  “It’s the way we’ve always worked and certainly at Pixar that’s how we work – we get it all up there and put it up and we watch it and go, ‘That’s not working, let’s move that over here..So it doesn’t surprise me at all that that’s how Andrew worked on this one.”

So if the reshoots were — as credibly seems the case — part of the plan from the beginning,  is there any other evidence to support the claim of an out-of-control production?  For example, did the production fall behind schedule (the number one cause of over-budget performance)?  The answer: No.   Did the Studio display signs of concern and anxiety, hovering of the production and otherwise giving the impression that there was trouble in Utah? The answer: No.    Quite the opposite would be the case.  Neither the head of production Sean Bailey or Production Executive Brigham Taylor even visited the set in either London or Utah during the 100 day principal photography shoot.  Even during the reshoots, which took place in Playa Vista, a brief 30 minute drive from Disney Studios, there was no regular studio presence.

What do those who worked on the film say about it?   A number of crew members who worked on the film agreed to talk off the record for this article.  (They are under a standard studio Non-Disclosure-Agreement which prevents them from commenting publicly.)  All were in agreement that the production ran smoothly; was as harmonious as these things tend to be;  and did in fact stay on schedule throughout the hundred days of principal photography.

Yet a nagging question persists, and that is — did the studio really lay off Stanton and the production precisely because he was being, as Stanton called it, a “good citizen” by sticking to the schedule and following the plan.   Or did the “hands-off” policy reflect something else — a certain disengagement from the film, an indication that the film, as big as the budget was, simply wasn’t that firmly on the radar of Ross, who by that time had Marvel and with it, an entire stable of franchise worthy characters with built-in audiences, each easier to deal with and more likely to produce success than John Carter.

Or, was there an element of appeasement to Stanton and Pixar?

Stanton’s own comments shed some light on what Disney would have faced had the studio decided to tangle with him:

I was pretty hardball. To be honest nobody ever fought me, but it was the fan in me that gave me the guts. That, and I have a day job [as Head of Story at Pixar].  I just felt like if anybody had a chance of making this without it being fucked up by the studio, it might be me. They’re too afraid of me – they want me happy at Pixar. So I thought I should use this for good, and make the movie the way I always thought it should be made. If at any one of these points if they were going to push back, I would have pulled out. It’s the best way to buy a car – I don’t mind walking away. So it pretty much got me through to the end. I never saw a studio person on the set until the reshoots.

The Pixar Process Applied to Live Action Film-making?

There is no doubt whatsoever that Stanton came into John Carter with a strong commitment to  what has been termed the “Pixar Process” of film-making, a process which emphasizes trial and error.  “Make your mistakes early,” Stanton would repeatedly tell his team, echoing the Pixar philosophy that it is only through “getting it up there” and seeing its flaws, that the character and story will be revealed.  Yet following such an approach at Pixar, where everything springs to life from the computers at Emeryville, is one thing — and doing so in a live action setting where massive resources must be mounted and where the daily “burn rate” of production cost is dozens if not  100’s of times more than the Pixar daily burn rate  is, to say the least, a complicated prospect.  It is because of this high “burn rate” for full-scale live action location production that under the traditional Hollywood live action system, the emphasis is on pre-production, with the shooting script  becoming a complete blue-print for the film, followed by a production period that gets it all “in the can”, then an editing period where it all gets sorted out and the film is completed.  Re-shoots are not typically built into original production plan — although Stanton would certainly not be the first director to do so and the mere fact that additional shooting days are scheduled for a film is not automatically reason to believe a film is in trouble–even a traditionally mounted one.

But while Stanton and company would repeatedly sing the praises of the Pixar process–would the film-making team in fact have the latitude to execute the film according to such a process?  Objective reality would seem to say no — at least not in a very complete way.   The production plan that Stanton and company agreed to called for 100 days of principal photography and only six days of reshoots — hardly comparable to the “reshoot it four times” system that applied at Pixar for Wall-E and Finding Nemo.  Even with the reshoots expanded to 18 days, the production reality of John Carter  it still falls far short of the kind of repeated “reshoots” that a Pixar film goes through.    To even come close to the “Pixar process”, the plan would have to called for several extended reshoot periods as the film gradually revealed itself through successive renderings.  Recognizing the impossibility of such an approach in live action film-making, Team Stanton never suggested anything of that sort, and Disney surely would never approved such a plan which would have driven the costs of production even more into the stratosphere.

And so the production was mounted with a general commitment to the philosophy of the Pixar process, but without the actual structure that such process required.  It would be a hybrid production whose 100 day main shoot, 18 day reshoot arrangement was  90% “old school”, but whose spirit of collaboration and  “building on errors” would be 90% Pixar.

How did the creative team respond to the approach?   “Stanton was amazing to work for,” one top creative participant in John Carter said recently.  “His interpersonal skills are among the best. He has a way of making you feel you’re on his level even if it’s unlikely that you really are.  He encourages you to try things and constantly reassures you that no ideas are bad ideas, and that the process is an open, collaborative one–guided by Stanton’s overall vision to be sure, but really empowered by the rest of us.”  Another put it this way: “It felt a little ‘scrambled’ at times, not as button downed as I’ve experienced with other director, but there was an underlying confidence that if there was a sense of things being slightly unfocused — that sense was on the surface, and underneath the surface there were processes at work that would yield something more profound than our usual way of working was likely to.  So we bought into it.”

But as much as everyone “bought into it” — the fact remained, Stanton was relying on a process that was built on the notion of, in effect, four complete re-mountings of the story – four complete “reshoots” of the entire production …. when in reality, he was getting one shoot of 100 days, and a second one of 18 days, and that was it.  Knowing the Pixar process, and Stanton’s commitment to it — and viewing the limitation of the 100/18 scenario, the question has to be asked: Did Stanton really have the opportunity to apply the “Pixar Process”, or was that an illusion, a dream that could not be achieved?

The Marketing Takes Shape — Who Was In Charge?

As the production continued, first through principal photography from January to July 2010 and moved into post production, the marketing plan for John Carter was being developed at Disney under the leadership of MT Carney, who joined Disney in April 2010 as the handpicked choice of new Studio chief Rich Ross.  Carney, a Scottish born, New York based marketer with no experience in film marketing (her expertise was packaged goods), was brought in by Ross in the face of healthy skepticism both within the halls of Disney, and more broadly throughout the competitive but close-knit Hollywood theatrical motion picture marketing community.

Throughout the production period Rich Ross  had little engagement with Stanton or the producers, leaving this to be handled on a long-distance basis by head of production Sean Bailey and production executive Brigham Taylor — as well as John Lasseter, the Pixar chief who concurrently ran Disney Animation and was a key player in Stanton’s “Brain Trust” of mostly Pixarians.  One of the few times Stanton did meet with Rich Ross was in the spring of 2011 around the time of the reshoots.  It was in this meeting that Ross abruptly asked, “So why hasn’t the name been changed yet?” as if it had already been decided that the title would be simply “John Carter”, rather than “John Carter of Mars” as it was still being referred to at the time.   Stanton was taken aback.  He had been the originator of the title change from “A Princess of Mars”, the title of Burroughs’ book, to “John Carter of Mars”, claiming that he felt that “Princess” in the title of a Disney made movie would drive the male audience away.  But he had never contemplated dropping “of Mars”.

“Stanton wasn’t in love with the title change, but he accepted it,” said a production insider who was among the early group to hear from Stanton about the meeting with Ross. “From a creative point of view he felt that John Carter becomes “John Carter of Mars” through the course of the first movie, so the change worked for him on a creative level even though from a marketing perspective, he had his doubts.”

Stanton himself described the title change episode as follows:

At the time there was panic about Mars Needs Moms. That wasn’t convincing to me to do anything. Then they did all this testing and found out that a huge bulk of people were saying no off the title. You can’t lie about that stuff, that’s the response you’re getting. I was like ‘Eh, that’s what the movie is.’ But I don’t want to hurt people from coming to the movie. Then I realized the movie is about that arc [of John Carter’s character], and I said, ‘I’ll change it if you let me change it at the end. And if you let me keep the JCM logo.’ Because it means something by the end of the movie, and if there are more movies I want that to be what you remember. It may seem like an odd thing, but I wanted it to be the reverse Harry Potter. With the latest Harry Potter they had Harry Potter and the Blah Blah Blah Blah, but you just see the HP. I wanted the JCM to mean something.

It is interesting to note that while the initiative came from the studio and was backed, according to Stanton, by market-testing  — Stanton’s remarks also imply that had he wanted to , he could have dug in his heels and Disney would have kept “of Mars” in the title.  This gets at the heart of what would eventually became a major question — indeed, perhaps the central riddle of the entire matter: “Who controlled the marketing?”

In the aftermath of the debacle, a narrative would emerge that suggested that Stanton was, if not directly in charge of the marketing, at least the main author of the disastrous marketing campaign.   Yet virtually any studio executive in Hollywood would agree that the director, while he is an important figure in the overall marketing brain trust, is almost never regarded as the right person to be making major decisions about how to market a film.    “It’s just two entirely different head spaces,” says one former studio head.  “With every film there’s marketability, and playability.  Marketability is the idea of the film as embodied in everything that comes out before the release: trailers, TV spots, billboards, publicity.   Playability is the film itself — does it “play” well?   The director is arguably in control of  “playability”, at least up to the point where a studio has to exercise final cut authority.  But the studio marketing department is in charge of marketing and the director, by virtue of his close association with the actual film as opposed to the idea of the film as embodied by the marketing, is  almost by definition considered to have suspect judgment when it comes to marketability.  He’s too close to the actual material, whereas the marketing department has enough objectivity, and historical and marketing data, to be able to make the tough choices that may or may not sit well with the director.  Directors don’t run marketing campaigns. They’re too busy and they’re too close to the material.”

And indeed, it seems clear by all accounts that the initiative for the title change came from the studio, not from Stanton.  But  Stanton clearly felt — perhaps because, as he said, “they were afraid of me….they want me happy at Pixar” — that the studio needed his cooperation and indeed, if he had been willing to “walk” over the issue of the title, he may well have prevailed.  But he didn’t; he accepted the point of view of the studio, and in particular the assertion by Ross that the need for a title change was backed up by testing data that showed “of Mars” was a liability.

But the title change was just the tip of the iceberg of the marketing discussions and strategizing that were taking place at Disney.  Although the majority of the marketing spend of $100m would take place in the final 3 months prior to release, marketing efforts were well under way by the time principal photography began in January 2010, and strategic decisions about John Carter marketing were near the top of the agenda that faced MT Carney when she arrived in April 2010.

It ws at this point, the spring of 2010 with the film in the midst of principal photography, that the decision as to whether or not to give John Carter an all-out marketing push was made.  Would John Carter, budgeted at an astronomical $250M, get the full force of Disney marketing, meaning cross promotions, merchandise, and licensing in addition to the usual theatrical elements of TV spots, trailers, Billboards, and the like?  Or would it just get the basic package?

By the time principal photography wrapped in July 2010, the answer was becoming clear:  John Carter would get the basic marketing package, no more.   By all accounts this is a decision that Ross made, in consultation with Carney, and it reflected a number of factors.    First, there was doubt that John Carter had “the right stuff” to succeed.  It was, after all, a legacy of the Cook era; it was a literary adaptation of a 100 year old novel with only a small and aging fan base of mostly baby boomers who had read the re-issued paperbacks in the 1960’s;  and the main reason for approving it in the first place had been to keep Andrew Stanton on the lot and home with Pixar rather than off making his live action debut with another studio, a la Brad Bird and Mission Impossible.

Second, there was the matter of marketing partner equities to be considered.  There was not an unlimited pool of potential cross-promotion partners, and hot on the heels of John Carter was a much more promising property, Marvel’s The Avengers  which had mega-blockbuster written all over it.  Would making an all-out push for these kind of partnerships dilute the pool of partners for The Avengers?

And finally there was the “x-factor” of Stanton himself.  True, the odds would be stacked against the $250m John Carter if it didn’t’ get the benefit of an all-out marketing push.  But the whole project was, in a sense, an attempt to appease Stanton’s live action ambitions without losing him to another studio.  Let it be on his shoulders, the thinking went.  Stanton had shown that he has the ability to deliver a film that dazzles both audiences and critics.   Both Finding Nemo and Wall-E had critic approval ratings north of 90%, and audience ratings int he same zone. Was there any doubt that if Stanton delivered these kind of results with John Carter, it would succeed?  And if he didn’t deliver such results — well, it would be time for him to go home to Pixar and get back to doing what all of Disney really wanted him to do, which was to get back to making more Finding Nemo’s and  Wall-E’s.

And so it was that, about the time that principal photography was ending in the summer of 2010, Disney’s marketing strategy was set:  It would be a standard worldwide theatrical marketing push, without any creative cross-promotions or licensing, and with a heavy emphasis on letting the film sink or swim on the strength of Stanton’s own skills as a film-maker.    If Stanton could pull a rabbit out of the hat and deliver a film that critics and audiences adored, it would succeed.  If not – – if he just delivered an “average” film, there would be no mega-marketing push to save it.

It was all on Stanton to deliver an exceptional film.

The First Rough Cut is Viewed by the Brain Trust

By December 2010, Stanton had completed his first 170 minute assembly of the movie.  As is often the case for VFX-heavy films, the first assembly, while instructive to the actual team immersed in editing the film, was difficult for “outside eyes” to view because of the many incomplete VFX shots — shots which in this case included many of the shots of the 3D animated Tharks whose characters were essential to the story.

But the time had come to share the film and get feedback — and so it was that Stanton showed the 170 minute rough cut at Pixar to his “Brain Trust” group — Lasseter, Brad Bird, other Pixarians, as well as Sean Bailey and Brigham Taylor (but no one else) from Disney.     By multiple accounts, the reaction to the material was mixed.   The middle section of the movie dragged; and Lynn Collins’ feisty portrayal as Martian princess Dejah Thoris was in need of significant recalibration.  There were also concerns about the opening, with the movie beginning on Mars with an exposition heavy scene where Dejah Thoris, in her capacity as “Regent of Science” for Helium, presents a new “9th ray” device –in the process giving the audience a mind-numbing dose of Barsoomian politics and science that, the consensus view determined, was too much to lay on an audience in the opening minutes of the movie.

The studio execs, Bailey and Taylor, viewed the film and provided notes but there is no indication that they were in any way assertive, or were really major players int he evaluation process.  It was the Pixar crowd who took the lead in providing Stanton the kind of “tough love” feedback that he sought from them.

Meanwhile, Bailey and Taylor went back to Disney and made their reports there, and those reports conveyed the idea that, based on this first viewing, Stanton had a reasonably entertaining film in the works but nothing that would generate a critical or audience response  on the scale of Wall-E or Nemo.   “They came back saying it was ‘just okay’ — not a turkey, not a clear winner.   There was lots of heavy lifting to be done and the chance of a breakout success, always remote for this material, seemed less likely, rather than more likely, after the initial viewing,” said one Disney production executive who agreed to speak off the record.

Another Disney insider said:  “Bailey absolutely expressed concern about what he had seen, to Ross directly among others.   Not “the sky is falling” level of concern — but clear concern that the process being followed at Emeryville might work beautifully for animation, but might result in an egregious fumble in live action.”

If Ross expressed concern, his chosen channel to do so was through Lasseter and all indications are that Lasseter was solidly behind the project and Stanton, and believed that the process under way would yield not only an adequate film, but an excellent one.  “Lasseter had Stanton’s back for sure,” an animation player at Disney recounts. “He had been a big part of getting Dick Cook to option the property for Stanton  in the first place, and he clearly had faith in the creative process that was under way.”

And so in January 2011, a little more than a year before the film was to be released, Stanton went back to work prepping for the reshoots based on his own notes and those of the “Brain Trust” that had viewed the rough cut.  It was clear that the six days that had been budgeted would not be enough — a minimum of 12 would be needed.   Stanton never doubted that it would be approved, and in any event –whether this was, as Stanton maintained, covered by savings from principal photography or constituted a journey into the contingency, these were not “costly reshoots” — they were primarily a green screen exercise on the same stage in Playa Vista where Howard Hughes had overseen the production of the Spruce Goose.  The main characters who would be needed were Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins who were on “run-of-the-show” contracts, so there was no incremental cost with their salaries;  no costly locations shooting logistics to deal with; no major construction, etc.

But would the reshoots solve the puzzle that the film had become?

And would the film itself be strong enough to overcome gap between the A+ level budget of $250M and the B level marketing effort that was about to unfold?

The seeds of disaster had been thoroughly planted, but there were new twists in the equation that were about to be visited on the production and the studio — twists that would take an already unstable situation and make it worse.

Next Week:  Part Three

  • The re-shoots expand from 6 to 18 days
  • The Nielsen Test Screening that gave false comfort to the film-makers
  • Head-butting between Stanton and the marketing team over the first trailer, and whose vision finally prevailed
  • Stanton and MT Carney; a match not made in heaven
  • The main trailer and initial TV spots fail to generate favorable buzz; what could have been done to correct course, but didn’t happen
  • The John Carter “Titanic” hits its iceberg
  • Is there a path to a sequel, or is it “game over” for John Carter?


96 comments

  • @Rebecca. With work prints they usually use a temp music track of other music that is similar to what they want for the emotional resonance of the scenes. The actual score usually is added after they get closer to a final cut.

    In the world of fan editing, you pretty much have to cut to the music cues so it doesn’t sound all choppy and you keep the dialogue in sync. Which means you can lose certain whole chunks but you generally can’t do fine editing within a scene without screwing up the sound of it.

  • @ Bob.. Good fan edits. Most of which I would have done as well. I really hope that 170 min rough cut gets leaked… that would be so cool. Just a random question do you (or anyone out there) know if there would be music along with that, or would it just be the dialogue and some sound effects? Just wondering as I am not educated in actual film editing at all.

    Thanks

  • Dojar do you have insight into how disney plans to market the film on DVD and Blu-Ray? will we see commercials with more info about who john carter actually is, the story, the author, or how its made by the director of Finding Nemo and Wall-E? I hope you can give us some insight in Part 3 of this special report what they are thinking now from some of your sources. They’ve obviously over-thought the marketing process way too much so far. I just hope they get the dvd-blu-ray release right.

  • Oh man, Dotar, did you ever pique my interest with that revelation of 170 minute work print of the movie and the comments about Lynn Collins performance. Did they have to have her dial it down or dial it up to compensate for Taylor Kitsch’s fairly flat take on the character ?

    To Dotar and MCR, that link to the Conran version was great fun to read and his conceptual art was to die for, if only Stanton wasn’t so determined to move it away from how it has always been visualized. But it is still a fuckin’ beautiful film.

    Dotar is right, and although this not APOM, chapter and verse, it is a pretty good representation of the thrust and feel of the world. And has, and will continue to create new ERB fans as it further moves to home video and cable TV.

    The film is an unpolished gem. Unlike Dune, which had a big hole in the middle of it, where the human story of Paul and Channi and the heroism of the Fremen should have been, there is a complete movie here that just needed another go around in the editing bay.

    I did an edit from some bootleg copies and I went from the Disney logo to the John Carter tile card directly into the NYC sequence. If you are going to create a bookend then you have to start and end up in the same place. Without throwing Martian names and conflicts at you, the NYC sequence draws you in and introduces you to John Carter right away.
    It engages your curiousity, who is the guy following Carter ? Whoa, he died suddenly and very mysteriously, he built a tomb for himself that only opens from the inside !

    I lost about 30 seconds of the finacial details being discussed and cut right to the journal being handed to young Edgar. I used the title card for the western outpost but lost the whole business with the shop keeper and the men in the store and went directly to John being asked to go meet Powell.

    After the teleportation light show, I cut in just the opening battle to introduce Sab Than and the Therns and their weapon and right at the last line of that scene, ” and with none to stand in your way ” went back to Carter opening his eyes on Mars.

    Lost the first part of Dejah’s exposition fake out speech.

    Lost Matie Shang’s over long “and then we are going to do these evil things” speech,
    the effect of which is to keep it moving along as we get to Woola coming to the rescue much quicker.

    Pretty much that is all it needed to polish it up quite a bit and make it a little easier to understand for people not familiar with the books.

  • Let me respond to this Dotar. First though I have never called anyone any names or have felt that I’ve treated anyone badly or that they don’t have a brain. If I did, if that’s how it comes across than I apologize. I don’t have anything personal against anyone posting here.

    OK? I just want that known. Now in response to your comments:

    “Are you so caught up in your own interpretation of the fine points of the screen depiction that you just don’t care about this whole exercise as a gift that gives us millions of readers of Burroughs who never would have done so?”

    I think if there has been a positive it has been that this film will introduce new readers to ERB. That has never been an issue I’ve had with this movie, even though as you will admit Disney did a poor job of letting people know this was based on a series of books. How many people watching the promotion knew about them?

    But let’s put this in another perspective: I am an ERB fan. You are too. So does that mean you and I should be defending the Bo Derek Tarzan the Ape Man? Or the Amicus films? Or the Asylum Princess of Mars? I’m also a Robert E. Howard fan. Should I defend Marcus Nispel’s Conan the Barbarian? Now I know those are bad movies but at the same time didn’t they do the same thing that John Carter did? Introduce possible new readers to those characters?

    “Is John Carter and Star wars your only frame of reference?”

    No but it was clearly Andrew Stanton’s. Again he’s the “genius” who loves these books, yet he turns the characters into carbon copies of characters from a film series inspired by ERB. The major concern among most ERB fans prior to the film’s release was that most people would dismiss the film as a Star Wars ripoff. In some cases it was John Carter ripping off Star Wars ripping off ERB (The arena sequence for example) but it seems that Stanton was busy taking ideas from Lucas rather than Burroughs.

    “The point is, rather than say, I don’t agree with how he did it but it’s a valid choice, your attitude is — it’s not the right choice; it’s a stupid choice; it’s detestable choice; it’s indefensible;”

    And what if it wasn’t a “valid choice?” I guess this comes from your point of view of being a Hollywood insider and my point of view of being a fan on the outside. I just don’t see why I should lie and say I think something is valid when I don’t think it is. I know that doesn’t make me popular but I was always told to be honest. Maybe to a fault I admit but I still think honesty is the best policy.

  • Ejz wrote:

    The Braintrust suggested a fix for the opening: why don’t we discover Mars through John Carter’s eyes, when he arrives? “That’s lazy thinking, guys,” Stanton replied. “If I do that, then thirty minutes in I’m going to have to stop the film to explain the war, and Dejah, and who everyone is, and we’re going to have even bigger problems.”

    I had missed that quote. Wow, it’s funny/sad that the Braintrust would independently arrive at the same solution Burroughs did — and that Stanton would react to it as “that’s lazy”. Too bad. I think that the decision to introduce Barsoom the way it was introduced, and not allow it to unfold through John Carter, really robbed the film of some magic that would have helped it tremendously — as it helps the Book. Imagine just the small change of not introducing Helium and Zodanga until suddenly, after Carter had been for a month among the Tharks with no sign of human existence or a Barsoomian world beyond the Tharks, and with Carter feeling the “stranger in a strange land” poignancy that would come from that–suddenly the airships appear and a new world of Barsoom opens up. Carter ends up responsible for Dejah Thoris; they have “quality time” together, and she educates him about her world, all the while the two of them feeling their connection. I just think that would have been a much stronger approach. But I don’t rile against Stanton for the choice he made. I understand why he made it. It is defensible, but it’s not the choice I would have made.

  • MCR in response to Kevin wrote

    “We really should be defending this movie to the hilt, MCR and Henreid, not fault finding, especially if you want to see anything else from the books come to life. ”

    Why? I’m not making any money off of it. I didn’t work on it and had no stake in it financially. So why should I defend it, especially since there are flaws in it. As for wanting to see another movie based on the books I’m all for that-as long as Disney and Andrew Stanton are not involved. I don’t think anyone else wants another marketing disaster and I for one don’t want anymore of Stanton’s “improvements” for “weak” material. Who knows what he would have really done with Gods of Mars. And given his pointless reworking of the Therns you know that film would have had zero resemblance to the book.

    MCR my biggest problem with you is that you just seem to refuse to consider the big picture. Here’s the big picture. You are a fan of ERB as am I. You, I presume, want ERB’s legacy to grow; more people to know about him; more people to read the books. As a result of this movie, approximately 30 million people worldwide have been exposed to ERB through the movie. At least a million people who had never heard of A Princess of Mars have ow downloaded it and read it. (It was Number 1 on several lists for the month of April.) As a result of the movie a large and lively community of people thinking and talking about ERB and the movie has sprung up. More movies will grow that new generation of Burroughs fans.

    Do you have no stake in that?

    Are you so caught up in your own interpretation of the fine points of the screen depiction that you just don’t care about this whole exercise as a gift that gives us millions of readers of Burroughs who never would have done so?

    I can understand that you have your opinions about the movie. I just don’t how you let those overwhelm any larger consideration of what is at stake.

    MCR wrote:

    Dotar Sojat wrote:
    ” In Stanton’s formulation we, the viewers, are supposed to understand even when Carter himself doesn’t consciously understand it, that there is a hero within him who needs to connect with a cause, and we are supposed to be drawn along his journey to self-awareness.”

    So you’re saying Stanton’s John Carter is Han Solo? Because that’s basically what that character goes through-just without the useless dead wife. Now Solo is a fun character but would anyone have wanted him to be the lead of Star Wars?

    Also: “Where we differ is that while you and MCR just detest him for not getting ERB’s Carter, I’m more tolerant of it.”

    Well believe me it’s more than just Carter that Stanton didn’t get. How about wimpy Tars Tarkas? Easily led Dummy Sab Than? Pointless Sarkoja? Evil Emperor Matai the Merciless? It seems all the characters were bland and needed to be “Stantonized” in order for this movie to work in his eyes.

    Is John Carter and Star wars your only frame of reference? And I know it’s more than just Carter you detest. The point is, rather than say, I don’t agree with how he did it but it’s a valid choice, your attitude is — it’s not the right choice; it’s a stupid choice; it’s detestable choice; it’s indefensible; I know what it should have been and anyone with half a brain has to agree with more or they don’t have have a brain. That’s the vibe you put out there, MCR, and it’s getting really, really tiresome. I would respectfully suggest that try having your opinion AND being respectful of other people’s opinion, including Stanton’s, mine, and a lot of the other people around here. Try actually thinking a situation through from someone else’s perspective instead of being locked irrevocably into your own bubble.

    And as I said at the outset — try to just once in awhile think of all the new ERB fans that have been introduced to the material because the horrible, egotistical, unworthy Andrew Stanton picked up the phone and called Dick Cook and said, “I’d like to take five years out my 25 year career to make a movie based on Edgar Rice Burroughs A Princess of Mars”. Had Stanton not taken the initiative to make that call, those million plus people who have read A Princess of Mars around the world in the last month would not have done so. If you really are an ERB fan, you would take a breath, consider that, and treat the whole situation as something other than your personal soapbox.

    This is the toughest I’ve been with you but it doesn’t compare to how tough you are with Stanton and anyone who disagrees with you. And make no mistake, what set me off was not debate about the merits — it was your statement: “Why? I’m not making any money off of it. I didn’t work on it and had no stake in it financially. So why should I defend it, especially since there are flaws in it. ” For a supposed ERB fan, that’s really a troubling statement.

  • Kevin-

    I couldn’t agree more, friend. I’ve learned from a different blog spot, though, that the best thing to do is just try to ignore guys like MCR. Engaging him will only encourage him to spout off more. Guys like him are always the most relentless, avid comment-ers. The orthodox never mollify, and never let go. They win by attrition. Other post-ers will come and go, but will finally get sick of having to defend the movie and move elsewhere. But he’ll still be here posting, talking to himself in an empty room.

    Pascalahad-

    Go to any NASA website and you’ll see that Mars does in fact look exactly (not just sort of) like parts of Arizona and Utah. Stanton had to thread a needle with this aspect: he wanted to keep it ‘of its time’ and yet today we now know what the surface of Mars really looks like. An astronomer will tell you that real, true-color photographs taken at ground level show Mars to be a little more ruddy red (with a pink-ish sky) than Stanton’s version, but that’s really nitpicking.

    Dotar-

    I don’t pretend to know, but the reason I was saying their marketing was a “net” negative was because it seems like you need to factor in the over-all cost of an ineffectual campaign. It seems like you need a third number in that marketing equation – the over-all cost.

    Set aside the awareness number, because they did get people to hear about it, and just consider the ‘get them to go’ number. Even if the 29% went up to 30%, then, yes, maybe technically it’s a gross increase and a marketing positive, but if you spend $100 mill for such meager gains, then doesn’t it become a “net” negative because the campaign also needs to pay for itself? Don’t you need to consider rate of return? It seems like spending $100 mill in a poor promotion – even if statistically positive – is a much bigger screw-up than spending $50 mill in the same campaign, because you then have to cover the extra $50 mill in cost.

  • One more thing…I’ve also missed any JC coverage in the American Cinematographer magazine. That was disappointing. Nice Cinefex article in the latest issue though.

  • Pascalahad, as I’m not familiar with the books, it’s interesting to read about some of Barsoom’s visual descriptions that *could* have been included. However, I disagree with your opinions about the ‘non-distinctive’ look.

    On one hand, the fact that Barsoom did *not* look completely alien helped give the film its dreamlike quality. As if it’s somewhat ambiguous if it’s real what JC experiences or not. This plays for me with a wellworn scifi and fantasy trope, which can be encountered in anything like ‘The Wizard of Oz’, ‘Peter Pan’ etc. etc.

    On the other hand I really appreciated the ‘earthern’ look of the film. Instead of say the purple / blue videogame look of ‘Avatar’. Or the blue and greenscreen look of say the ‘Star Wars’ prequels. Or the squeaky clean look of say ‘Narnia’. It looked and felt dusty and tangible. That it was shot on 35mm, making ample use of locations helped a lot as well. But hey, I still have a soft spot for ‘Dune’ and consider ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ one of the best films ever made.

    Regarding the digital altering of the landscape, I feel this was done very tastefully.

    Although, while the cities of Zondanga and Helium were quite different, the people themselves, its armies, were a little too alike in their design. Yes, one had red banners, the other blue. But looking at their armory and ships in passing, and especially in rapid shots, it was hard to really distinguish them. (The wedding procession in Zodanga had the beautiful red-blue banner integration though.)

    Structurally, having seen the film 3 times, I do agree that the Barsoomian opening was not the way to go. In the Newyorker profile, the discussion about the opening is referred to:

    The Braintrust suggested a fix for the opening: why don’t we discover Mars through John Carter’s eyes, when he arrives? “That’s lazy thinking, guys,” Stanton replied. “If I do that, then thirty minutes in I’m going to have to stop the film to explain the war, and Dejah, and who everyone is, and we’re going to have even bigger problems.”

    I agree generally with the braintrust. Perhaps it’s lazy thinking, but it would have worked better for the film itself, regardless if other films or stories have done similar things. It would have strengthened the framing device of ERB and it’s magnificent payoff at the end. And it could have added momentum on Barsoom. Someone suggested that the opening battle could have been placed right after JC is transported from the cave. That could have been a viable option.

  • “We really should be defending this movie to the hilt, MCR and Henreid, not fault finding, especially if you want to see anything else from the books come to life. ”

    Why? I’m not making any money off of it. I didn’t work on it and had no stake in it financially. So why should I defend it, especially since there are flaws in it. As for wanting to see another movie based on the books I’m all for that-as long as Disney and Andrew Stanton are not involved. I don’t think anyone else wants another marketing disaster and I for one don’t want anymore of Stanton’s “improvements” for “weak” material. Who knows what he would have really done with Gods of Mars. And given his pointless reworking of the Therns you know that film would have had zero resemblance to the book.

    As for absouletely hating it I listed things I liked about this movie in another thread. I don’t think it’s a total disaster but it’s not the masterpiece many of you are defending either.

    Dotar Sojat wrote:
    ” In Stanton’s formulation we, the viewers, are supposed to understand even when Carter himself doesn’t consciously understand it, that there is a hero within him who needs to connect with a cause, and we are supposed to be drawn along his journey to self-awareness.”

    So you’re saying Stanton’s John Carter is Han Solo? Because that’s basically what that character goes through-just without the useless dead wife. Now Solo is a fun character but would anyone have wanted him to be the lead of Star Wars?

    Also: “Where we differ is that while you and MCR just detest him for not getting ERB’s Carter, I’m more tolerant of it.”

    Well believe me it’s more than just Carter that Stanton didn’t get. How about wimpy Tars Tarkas? Easily led Dummy Sab Than? Pointless Sarkoja? Evil Emperor Matai the Merciless? It seems all the characters were bland and needed to be “Stantonized” in order for this movie to work in his eyes.

  • Yes, pascalahad, you could follow it. I’m talking about the critics who couldn’t. Those critics should be fired. It’s OK to be critical about a few things, but not like MCR has been – he seems to absolutely hate it. Why bother to post. If you can;t say anything nice then don’t say anything.

    Mars actually dose look like the western US. NASA is known to tweak its pictures. If you Color correct them, they look like Utah.

  • The flow of the movie didn’t feel good to me, at all, and I’m not mentally deficient. Loving the movie (and I came to love it) doesn’t mean we should be blind over its flaws, because they exist, otherwise the movie would have been a resounding success, bad marketing or not.

    One thing I didn’t see discussed regarding the adaptation of Stanton is “why the generic look”? Barsoom as described by Burroughs is very specific-looking, from the moss-covered landscape (that produces no dust and is sound-proof), to the fast-moving moon that roams through the sky at night. Was that deemed too fantastic to use?

    And even if there was no intention to follow Burroughs’ description, why not just altering digitally the landscapes so they appear other-worldly? Why the “earthern” look? The side-effect is that nobody, fans or non-fans alike, reporters or casual viewers, were engaged by the first images and trailers from the movie.

    Disney’s marketing was bad, no question about it, but it was not helped by the non-distinctive look of the movie. The best imagery I got of Barsoom was the Mondo poster.

  • I’m 55, can barely remember the paperbacks I read so many years ago and am happy Stanton and the others updated the character. They even updated Dejah… she was more like early Lois Lane, or worse in the books. The important thing I take away from multiple viewings of the film is that it holds up, flows well (maybe not quickly enough for the mentally deficient who complained they coudln’t follow it) and has been entertaining every viewing. I can’t even say that for “Star Wars” which I also saw a zillion times. I also have talked to other audience members and friends who saw it and except for one, who is a real movie critic, they all liked it.

    No screen adaptation of a book is flawless, and most take liberties. We should be thankful that the characters have finally been put up on the screen in a big budget effort where it shows. Since the book is so old, and we know the general audience for big budgett movies is young, what they did makes sense. We really should be defending this movie to the hilt, MCR and Henreid, not fault finding, especially if you want to see anything else from the books come to life. DVD and on-demand could generate a less expensive sequel. Otherwise we’ll have to wait for the rights to go back to ERB, Inc. and wait another 90+ years to see another film.

  • A thought on the “basic marketing package” that Disney marketing gave the movie, one that has probably been mentioned before at some point.

    That plain, yellow, Arial Bold typeface that Disney marketing plastered all over the posters, billboards, trailers, and T.V, spots. It’s almost as if the marketing team wanted always leave the potential audience with the impression of blandness and/or genericness no matter what people may have seen in the trailers.

    C’mon who in their right mind uses such a typeface for a science-fiction or fantasy movie? I wish a picture of the full “John Carter of Mars” title card that Stanton put in at the end of the movie had made its way online — even just using “John Carter” from that would have been infinitely better to that yellow Arial Bold typeface that marketing chose.

  • Henreid ….. here’s the full quote that goes with “it was almost in spite of John Carter that I liked the books.”

    Again, not to diss anything, but it was almost in spite of John Carter that I liked the books. That was where we put a lot of our work in. How to make him somebody to root for, not that I wouldn’t. But it’s not that unique to just this story. It’s often that the hero is the least interesting person and that the interesting characters are the people around him. I felt like I’d rather watch damaged goods than somebody who has their act together. I went for someone who pretty much resigned himself to the fact that his purpose in life was over and sort of went with the thinking that it’s not for us to say what our purpose in life is. You may think it’s done or finished or ended or been missed, but life’s not done with you sometimes. It may take awhile to figure out what your other purpose is or what your greater purpose always was. That’s sort of the tact I took with Carter and it’s really what made Carter perfect to play the role. He’s the bad boy/wrong side of the tracks and that really worked a lot better.

    So yeah. you’re pretty right that he just didn’t “get” Carter the way those of us who did buy into it, “got it”.

    Where we differ is that while you and MCR just detest him for not getting ERB’s Carter, I’m more tolerant of it. Why?

    Well, for one — what he’s describing is exactly what comes up in every damned movie about a person who is actually heroic: “It’s not that unique to just this story. It’s often that the hero is the least interesting person and that the interesting characters are the people around him.” Amen to that — happens all the time in screenplay’s about a true hero who does heroic deeds. Anyone who has labored in development in Hollywood, or screenwriting, has bumped up against this a thousand times. It’s a fact that 90% of the screenwriters and development executives in Hollywood would agree with what he’s saying — it’s almost mantra, not unique to Stanton.

    I personally think that it would have been refreshing to try and take John Carter and not change his essential character — just work with what Burroughs gave us…..a guy who is ageless and doesn’t’ know why…..who because of this is, perhaps, a little disconnected, perhaps watching people grow old around him, and who is an outlier for sure…..searching for connection, and finds it on Barsoom. I think there was plenty to work with there that Burroughs didn’t mine, but which could be mined without changing the character, and which could have produced the all important “arc” that modern film-makers and critics demand.

    But Stanton went for a more radical change. Or did he?

    I’ve heard people argue that he “completely changed the character”. I don’t think so. He completely changed half the character. He completely changed the overt, self-aware portion of the character, thus giving him an attitude that is vastly different from the John Carter of the books, and this is what is bothering you and MCR and the rest. But what about the other part of his character – his unconscious self, the portion of a person’s character that is embedded and is revealed in choices and actions, not necessarily words and attitude? Look at the character revealing choices Stanton’s John Carter makes: He saves Powell even though there is no real reason for him to do so; he defends Woola in the fracas at the Thark hall when the Tharks set up on him, showing compassion; he reacts “it’s not a fair fight” when he sees Zodanga’s advantage over Helium, then leaps into action and saves Dejah Thoris, then fights for the underdog Helium side in the airship encounter; he relents from his “I don’t fight for anyone” mantra when Tars tells him that to accept “Dotar Sojat” and a Thark chieftainship is the only way to keep Dejah safe; and finally he chooses to sacrifice himself to the Warhoon horde to protect Dejah. Granted, running counter to this is his conscious self “moping” (as MCR calls it), repeatedly saying he wants to go home to his cave of gold even though this is not what he truly needs. In Stanton’s formulation we, the viewers, are supposed to understand even when Carter himself doesn’t consciously understand it, that there is a hero within him who needs to connect with a cause, and we are supposed to be drawn along his journey to self-awareness. And oh yes ….what was holding him back from commitment was, in fact, the code that ERB’s John Carter lived by — a code of loyalty and service, which Stanton’s John Carter placed in his dead wife and did not find any easier to transfer than ERB’s John Carter would have.

    I wish you would believe me when I tell you that for a quote unquote “modern audience”, the mantra in Hollywood is that you have to give them this kind of “character arc” — not what ERB gave us, not a man like ERB’s John Carter who knew who he was; knew the code he believed in and wanted to live by; and only needed to find the object of service and devotion to be whole and ready for whatever external challenges he might face. So … with ERB, John Carter knowing and willfully lived by a code and used it to meet the tests that came his way, while Stanton’s Carter has the same code embedded in his being, but because of personal tragedy or whatever is resisting it on a conscious and ultimately superficial level.

    Does that mean I am defending Stanton’s choice? Only to the extent that I recognize the pattern and know that 9 out of 10 (or 99 out of 100) Hollywood directors would have done something like this, and that to have not done something like this would have felt extremely, extremely risky because the Burroughs approach is — by the logic of Hollywood, not just Stanton — outdated and out of synch with the viewing public that Stanton had to connect with.

    I do NOT personally buy that logic, but I see it/hear it all the time, and I’m pretty sure that a roomful of development executives and screenwriters would gang up on my 10-1 for trying to fight it, and even I would have some doubts about doing it my way, which is ERB’s way ….if I were really and truly faced with the weight of the $250m decision….. and because of all this, I am inclined to cut Stanton some slack. And you know what — if you talk to people who didn’t read the books and are under 30 or 35, they felt perfectly comfortable with Carter as drawn by Stanton. It’s only us ERBophiles who experienced the magic of the books and who believe that ERB caught lightning in a bottle who are so bothered by it.

  • No problemo.

    “To be honest, I never actually invested in Carter 100%. He was always a kind of Prince Valiant, did-it-right-from-the-get-go kind of bland, vanilla guy. I think it was his situation that was more fascinating to me. It was a stranger in a strange land, guy thrown out to circumstances.”

    …it was almost in spite of John Carter that I liked the books.”

    http://www.slashfilm.com/john-carter-set-interviews/

    There’s also another similar quote from that same batch of press set-interviews that was over at http://www.comingsoon.net, I believe.

  • Paladin — thanks for the substantive, thoughtful comment.
    Here are my notes on your comments:

    For example, from the same set of facts, you can imagine that if this movie had been extraordinarily outstanding, then it could have overcome its poor promotion, or conversely, if the actual movie we got had just had decent marketing, it could have been successful that way, too. This is where values enter into the scheme. Why should any film have to ‘overcome’ its own marketing? Is it fair to set the bar so high that any film would need to be near-perfect to succeed? Without even considering some hypothetically ideal film version of POM, but simply using the JCM movie that Stanton delivered – was its fate fair and justified?

    I think that Disney must be held accountable for the fact that they should have delivered a marketing campaign that, with a movie that scored 50% with critics and 75% with audiences, would equal success. In other words, it was hugely unfair to leave it to Stanton to hit a grand slam home run. That will certainly be part of my summation. I guess that’s part of the problem with a long form approach like this ….. I’m analyzing first, then offering a judgment later. I feel like I have to do the careful analysis, showing an ability to see the thing from multiple points of view, in order to earn the right for the judgment part.

    You say that this movie had a market campaign graded B. I would argue that the marketing was closer to a D effort. Using a swimming analogy, let’s say the film is a competitor taking off to swim across some treacherous economic waters. Ideally, its marketing is supposed to be an aid to help it make the distance. With A-quality marketing, the swimmer gets a life vest. B-marketing provides a little less degree of buoyancy, but still some assistance keeping afloat. So then C-marketing would be of neutral effect, neither help nor hindrance.

    But my point is that I think JC had a promotion that actually served as a net negative. With the terrible trailers which only confused people, with really horrible poster art, with all the news about cost over-runs and Disney political psycho-drama, it just served to actually turn off the public and bait the pack-mentality of the critics ( the piranha?). If a promotion is a hindrance instead of a help, then it also becomes a drag the more you spend on it because the movie has to earn that money back, too. If a promotion is a wasted effort, then spending $10 mill is actually much better than spending $100 million. I think a case could be made that John Carter got a D-marketing campaign – in effect, a weight – like sending the poor guy off the dock to swim through a perfect storm with his pocket full of nickels.

    This is like last week when I wrote that Stanton hit a double and I think you said it was a standup triple — and I replied that I was only referring to the numbers: 51% critic rating, 75% audience rating. The issue of whether the critics really rated it fairly had not yet been addressed–I was, at that point, trying to just “run the numbers”

    Same here. I was using A+ to refer to the completeness of the elements–A+ would include the full arsenal of the normal movie marketing elements plus a full arsenal of creative cross promotions, merchandise, and licensing. The B marketing just referred to the elements and the spend, not the quality of thought. If we consider that, I would probably rate it an F.

    But the other thing to consider is that marketing can broadly be broken into two distance functions — a) creation of awareness, and b) conversion of awareness to trial. The net effect of the marketing was to create a “b” level of awareness — low 70% “aware”, but a “d” level of “definitely interested” which is the movie tracking estimate of “likely to convert”. And yes, in the last two weeks , they actually managed to drive the “definitely interested” figure down from 29 to 27% — so meaning, at that stage, among those who had been made aware, the marketing had a negative affect as you say.

    I think the bottom line is that I don’t really disagree with you — I just haven’t gotten to that part of the analysis yet. And when I do ge there, I will try and acknowledge those things the marketing did accomplish (a B level of awareness), and hold them accountable efor the failure to convert, and the actual negative effect in the final two sees. Not aonly that — but that is the most unforgivable moment, because by that time they knew full well what wasn’t working, and yet they did nothing to change the message.

    Anyway, we’r egetting there.

  • Sparky Santos wrote

    Ross knew he was on the way out; Thus, I’m betting he used fall back patsy Carney as a smokescreen for a classic stock manipulation scheme.

    I’m looking for someone to articulate a stock manipulation theory in detail. Have you seen that? Or can you provide?I can see the dots but can’t connect them all.

  • Dotar-

    First off – great job! It’s obvious you’ve done your homework, and now with the interviews, you have really set yourself apart – you’re moving into book territory instead of just writing an article that anybody else could do if they were willing to do the research. Kudos, Dotar!

    You’re presenting this subject using your characteristically deft, well-reasoned manner. You always try to be objective in presenting the facts, and that’s a good goal to have. And yet, although one can try to draw logical conclusions, this is where it gets tricky. Someone can take a set of facts and draw various divergent conclusions, all simultaneously true and not mutually exclusive. Unlike science, in this exploration, values do (and should) count. It all just depends on what lesson you want glean.

    For example, from the same set of facts, you can imagine that if this movie had been extraordinarily outstanding, then it could have overcome its poor promotion, or conversely, if the actual movie we got had just had decent marketing, it could have been successful that way, too. This is where values enter into the scheme. Why should any film have to ‘overcome’ its own marketing? Is it fair to set the bar so high that any film would need to be near-perfect to succeed? Without even considering some hypothetically ideal film version of POM, but simply using the JCM movie that Stanton delivered – was its fate fair and justified?

    You say that this movie had a market campaign graded B. I would argue that the marketing was closer to a D effort. Using a swimming analogy, let’s say the film is a competitor taking off to swim across some treacherous economic waters. Ideally, its marketing is supposed to be an aid to help it make the distance. With A-quality marketing, the swimmer gets a life vest. B-marketing provides a little less degree of buoyancy, but still some assistance keeping afloat. So then C-marketing would be of neutral effect, neither help nor hindrance.

    But my point is that I think JC had a promotion that actually served as a net negative. With the terrible trailers which only confused people, with really horrible poster art, with all the news about cost over-runs and Disney political psycho-drama, it just served to actually turn off the public and bait the pack-mentality of the critics ( the piranha?). If a promotion is a hindrance instead of a help, then it also becomes a drag the more you spend on it because the movie has to earn that money back, too. If a promotion is a wasted effort, then spending $10 mill is actually much better than spending $100 million. I think a case could be made that John Carter got a D-marketing campaign – in effect, a weight – like sending the poor guy off the dock to swim through a perfect storm with his pocket full of nickels.

  • Ross knew he was on the way out; Thus, I’m betting he used fall back patsy Carney as a smokescreen for a classic stock manipulation scheme.

  • MCR wrote:

    So what did Stanton ever LIKE about these books? Seriously I know this has been asked before and debated but the man doesn’t like the main character, doesn’t like ERB’s writing, doesn’t like anything except his own ideas.

    The answer was in the same quote that made you get all cranky again:

    I think it was his situation that was more fascinating to me. It was a stranger in a strange land, guy thrown out to circumstances. Also, there’s the oddity of the time period. I really love that somebody from the Civil War gets thrown into what we would consider the antiquated past of Mars. That’s been something that I’ve really tried to embrace on this and give it its special thumbprint.”

    Stanton is far from alone in feeling that John Carter as a character is a little vanilla. Even compared to other ERB protagonists — Tarzan, for example, or Carson , it’s a little bland. Remember Tarzan had the nature/nurture thing going on and had to control his savage impulses and struggle to find his better human nature ….and his better animal nature. (Read Burroughs’ “The Tarzan Theme”)

    Again sorry to complain but honestly reading these quotes it’s becoming more clear the real enemy of this movie wasn’t Disney but Stanton.

    First of all, this series is trying to elevate this to something other than “Disney is the enemy” or, for that matter “Stanton is the enemy”…..come on, let’s don’t go there.

  • So what did Stanton ever LIKE about these books? Seriously I know this has been asked before and debated but the man doesn’t like the main character, doesn’t like ERB’s writing, doesn’t like anything except his own ideas.

    Maybe like Cameron and Lucas before him he should have just created his own universe since clearly Burroughs’ was a “flawed” universe that he had really little respect for.

    Plus his idea to add dimension to John Carter was to turn him into a selfish moper? I don’t think I’ve seen such a bad “dimensionalizing” since Bryan Singer turned Superman into a deadbeat dad/peeping tom.

    Again sorry to complain but honestly reading these quotes it’s becoming more clear the real enemy of this movie wasn’t Disney but Stanton.

  • I found another quote from Stanton about his perspective on the John Carter character, like the one Patrick shared, also from a Collider interview. (http://collider.com/andrew-stanton-john-carter-interview/143238/)

    “…the thing that has got to work first and foremost is that the story overall works. And that I invest in the character. To be honest, I never actually invested in Carter 100%. He was always a kind of Prince Valiant, did-it-right-from-the-get-go kind of bland, vanilla guy. I think it was his situation that was more fascinating to me. It was a stranger in a strange land, guy thrown out to circumstances. Also, there’s the oddity of the time period. I really love that somebody from the Civil War gets thrown into what we would consider the antiquated past of Mars. That’s been something that I’ve really tried to embrace on this and give it its special thumbprint.”

  • I hope this ends up a book in the future. What a fascinating read. Great job. Looking forward to part III.

  • I’m not sure I’ve read a quote in which Stanton outright says he doesn’t like the character of JC, but here’s a Stanton comment from a Collider article:

    “Character was probably my biggest focus on the project: I needed to dimensionalize these heroes. Carter’s pretty much a do-gooder for most of these books; he can be very vanilla, very 2-dimensional at times.”

    I guess that could qualify as “not liking” JC as-is.

    http://collider.com/andrew-stanton-interview-john-carter/101272/

  • Dotar wrote:

    “When I think about the other screenplays I read, I still feel like we got the best John Carter movie we would have gotten from among those that have actually been placed into serious development.”

    Speaking of screenplays, is there any chance Stanton will release his script, so we can see how he originally envisioned his, er, vision?

    I’d kinda like to see a history of this project through the various screenplay drafts. I just read the Kruger script (first draft?) which was for Conran. Did Favreau ever get to the script-writing stage? The most frustrating thing about the “Hollywood process” I find is that every new director ordered up yet another script. I realize there are copyright as well as union issues involved in doing it this way, but it would be nice if Stanton (or whomever) could have picked out the good parts of previous scripts rather than starting from square one.

  • @Dotar Sojat
    I think you right with your statement i
    thougt sometime a longer cut would be better for the movie special for the politcal situation on Barsoom and for the character development and the love for Dejah Thoris!
    Special the falling in love part felt a little bit rushed.
    Also the introducing of the Warhoons was non exist because a lot of scene are cut because ”Disney” was afraid
    they are to scary for the younger audience!!
    I must say i never felt the movie was boring and was surprised that the movie was (for me) so quick ending!
    But it looks like there is a audience today the feel boring when not every 5-10 minutes is a big explosion or action!?
    I thought on DVD or BluRay comes a longer cut however the put some deleted scenes on the extras.

  • Henreid wrote:

    The newest piece of info to me was the detail about the work print. So the troublesome overload of Barsoomian politics that opens the actual film was the *solution* to the overload of Barsoomian politics in the ‘Science Project’ scene that originally opened the work-print? That was the original opening?!?!

    I had always suspected that the “open it on Barsoom” idea came from a marketing person who felt it was just taking too long to “get to the meat” without it. But no … it was part of the plan. The original scene was a more elaborate version of Dejah and the ninth ray with lots of politics/zodanga/helium/ etc. It explained more about what Zodanga was doing that was objectionable; more about what Helium was doing that makes it righteous — and did not include the Sab Than/ wedding proposal bit.

    The version we ended up with is a simplified approach designed to cure the problem of the too complex original scene.

    Pretty fascinating as there never seems to have been any real thought given to revealing Barsoom through John Carter’s exposure to it. I thought that was one of the real beauties of Burroughs’ way of telling the story….I didn’t hate hate hate this approach, but I wouldn’t have chosen it.

    By the way, Stanton made the decision to tell this like a “historical epic” ……with Mars as a historical reality. If you’re thinking of it that way, this makes more sense than if you’re thinking of it as a fantastic sci-fi adventure……

    He obviously loves the world of Barsoom, he loves the basic idea of a civil war soldier dropped into that world, he loves the idea of Tharks and airships and warring nations in a desert, but he never really respected the way ERB approached or connected any of those inspirations.

    By his own admission, he never even liked the character of John Carter.

    The thought that comes to mind — “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good”. I think your analysis of Stanton’s way of connecting to the material is probably about right. He started with the comics, then went to the books. It’s amazing to me how authentically he re-created the design of almost everything. With the exception of Zodanga……I mean – the Tharks, thoats, Woola, Helium….pretty close. I guess the flyers weren’t exact — but I agree, he loved Barsoom.

    When I think about the other screenplays I read, I still feel like we got the best John Carter movie we would have gotten from among those that have actually been placed into serious development. In other words- rather than comparing it to an ideal “perfect” adaptation, comparing it to what we know of the other ones that were actually shaping up.

    Final note — if you could help me find that quote that he didn’t like John Carter, it would help me with something else I’m working on. I read it too….I just can’t find it now that I’m looking for it.

    Help!

  • Fascinating, sir. Research/dissect onward into Part 3.

    The newest piece of info to me was the detail about the work print. So the troublesome overload of Barsoomian politics that opens the actual film was the *solution* to the overload of Barsoomian politics in the ‘Science Project’ scene that originally opened the work-print? That was the original opening?!?!

    One can imagine a writers’ meeting —
    “Guys, I don’t care how — but SOMEHOW we have to undermine the ‘ERB-reading-DJC’s-manuscript’ framing device we have insisted on using. Nobody respects internal consistency in storytelling anymore, anyway. We must-must-must introduce the audience to Barsoom through unnecessary exposition that the narrator of the manuscript wouldn’t know about, otherwise the framing device would work and it might feel something like the book!!”

    Sigh.

    To me, the problem was always that Andrew Stanton (for all his talent) didn’t truly love – or even understand – the book he was adapting.

    He obviously loves the world of Barsoom, he loves the basic idea of a civil war soldier dropped into that world, he loves the idea of Tharks and airships and warring nations in a desert, but he never really respected the way ERB approached or connected any of those inspirations.

    By his own admission, he never even liked the character of John Carter.

    That he was the wrong guy for the job creatively, critically, and commercially seems to be one of the basic truths these articles continue to excavate.

    It’s too bad about licensing, though —
    I’d have bought the hell out of the action-figures.

  • HRH the Rider wrote

    On a technical point, could you include footnotes, or at least a list, of the articles you are referencing? Some people (okay, me) would like to trace some of these quotes back to the source (even if said source is anonymous),

    Ha….I was just going through putting in links when I saw this. I’m still cleaning up the article…..and that was part of it. Now it’s got all the links in there to public record info. I’m now also talking directly to people who have direct access to items being discussed that have not appeared in public — all of whom so far are either under an NDA (production people) or have corporate positions to protect, so they’re not willing at this point to be identified. I hate using things like “a Disney insider said” and the like, but I’ve got no choice at this point. The situation is still too raw, it seems, to get anyone to go on the record. As a side note, it’s interesting how much paranoia there is among production staff and/or Disney employees…….it’s hard enough to get them to talk at all, but it’s always with a strict non-attribution commitment.

  • Disney has the rights to everything for a limited number of years. They have to launch a sequel within that period (my impression is that it’s 3-5 years based on conversations with ERB Inc) or the rights revert to ERB Inc. This applies to any use of the trademarked names John Carter, Barsoom,or A Princess of Mars

  • MCR wrote:

    I’ll just leave it and see what you think. It still seems to be that Stanton was making it out to be his idea and only after there was a backlash against the blandess of the title-and the sacking of Carney-did he change his tune. I suppose he could have been playing the nice studio employee bit but, well you know my opinion about him.

    Well, it seems the quote you reference is earlier since it’s the Edit Bay interview and in that one he does seem to take ownership of it.

    But keep in mind was that in the article today, there is an interviewed source who describes Stanton coming back from a meeting with Ross and telling the members of the team that Ross had said “Why isn’t the name changed yet” ….. and so we have that bit of “inside information” suggesting that that was how it went down. If it did go down that way, Stanton, in doing his job to promote the film, would not be expected to acknowledge that there was daylight between his position and the studio’s position — I mean, that’s just how it’s done when promoting a movie. So it makes sense that it’s only later, when things were getting ugly a few weeks before the release, that he acknowledged more about how it came down.

    Anyway, there are two data points supporting the version I have in the post — Stanton’s interview in Feb 2012, and the ‘insider’ story of Stanton coming back from a meeting with Ross. And the third data point, the one you bring up, doesn’t really seem all that inconsistent, given the logic of how promotion is done. It does help explain how the wikipedia entry says Stanton changed the title.

    If this ever becomes a book, I would certainly include a reference to the interview you cite, either directly in the article, or in a footnote, but it would not change the overall rendition of “how the title got changed”. I would need to see more to become convinced that I haven’t gotten it right. If you know of any other evidence that sheds light on this, please share. This is an ongoing quest — I’m not trying to push a theory, I’m just trying to piece together what happened, and why.

  • Interesting analysis as always, Dotar.

    On a technical point, could you include footnotes, or at least a list, of the articles you are referencing? Some people (okay, me) would like to trace some of these quotes back to the source (even if said source is anonymous),

  • But aren’t the rights for potential merchandise now only in the hands of Disney? If that’s so, I can’t imagine the situation to get any better. Are we now in a stale situation, where Disney can sit on the property for years without doing anything with it? Only time will tell of course, but I don’t feel very optimistic about it right now.

  • I’m just responding since you asked. This is from the Edit Bay visit and can be read at http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Enter-Andrew-Stanton-s-Vision-Of-Mars-In-Our-Report-From-The-John-Carter-Edit-Bay-25621.html concerning the title change:

    “I’ve tried really hard to capture what I thought was universal and timeless about this book that is above and beyond the genre itself. Believe me, Mars is going to come into this thing, title and everything, before this whole journey’s over. You’ve just got to be patient. There was a grand design to all this thing. You’ve got to know that it was not a studio-driven hammer on me, and it was not a decision that came quickly. I put a lot of thought into what’s the most promising way to make a good first impression to a majority of the world that does not know anything about this, and invite them in and hopefully make them enjoy it as much as the people that do love it. That’s the best way I can put it.”

    I’ll just leave it and see what you think. It still seems to be that Stanton was making it out to be his idea and only after there was a backlash against the blandess of the title-and the sacking of Carney-did he change his tune. I suppose he could have been playing the nice studio employee bit but, well you know my opinion about him.

  • Khanada, believe it or not (and I’ll get into this more in the next installment of this) …… they actually convinced themselves that both “From the visionary novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs” and “From the Director of Wall-E and Finding Nemo” were not going to be helpful to the marketing. They felt the Burroughs reference made it feel dated — creaky/musty/old….and they were afraid of “cognitive dissonance” with the Andrew Stanton reference — animated movies used to promote a live action adventure. It’s the same kind of thought process that led them to drop “of Mars” from the title. There is such a thing as “over thinking”……the thing is, I remember when I met with Disney 9 weeks before the release and got some of their thinking “from the horse’s mouth”, I remember thinking …well, I disagree, but at least there is a logic to their decision. What I couldn’t understand was, when their approach clearly wasn’t working, they didn’t change course. They did in a way — at the very, very end of the promotional campaign they started using “Before Avatar, Before Star Wars, there was John Carter”. The problem was, that came just too late. It would have been stronger at the very beginning of the campaign, when they were creating the initial positioning for John Carter.

  • It is also telling to me that none of the marketing told potential audiences that Stanton (award winning director of Nemo, etc) was director of John Carter. Just like NO mention of ERB was ever made. Again, it looks like they set it up to fail.

  • MCR Wrote

    First though Pascalahad is right-ERB Inc has done a terrible job keeping ERB in the public eye. Most of his books that are copyrighted are out of print, there has been no merchandise outside of some pricey John Carter collector’s figures and they spend more time suing companies (the Dynamite lawsuit for example) then thinking this could get ERB’s work out there.

    My thought, based on having had a good bit of close contact with ERB Inc, is that the company has seen itself more as the “guardian of the brand” and “administrator of the state” than as an entrepreneurial business development organization. For the time that I’ve known them, the John Carter project has been hanging out there as the “big thing” that may generate all the other opportunities. Now that the John Carter release is behind us, and it will be awhile (if ever) before there is another one — the time may have arrived when a more aggressive entrepreneurial approach will make sense to those who make decisions there. I’m not critical of what they’ve done so far — it has seemed pretty reasonable to me. But now, faced with John Carter doing what it did (“flop” on the one hand, create millions of new fans on the other), things might evolve.

    MCR wrote

    Second with reference of the title. Why then if Stanton thought it was such a bad idea then did he accept full responsibility for it in interviews? He kept saying he did it for a variety of reasons-people don’t go to sci-fi films; women won’t go see a movie with the word “Mars” in the title; John Carter has to grow into being John Carter of Mars like Lawrence of Arabia (I guess we should praise Issus Stanton never made that, otherwise ti would just be “Lawrence.”) It only seemed after his arch-nemesis in marketing MT Carney left that he suddenly placed it all on them. Was Stanton trying to play nice or did he discover how badly his idea of changing the title was playing out and thought of finding someone else to blame?

    I don’t get that Stanton “thought it was such a bad idea”. He said they told what they wanted to do and why they wanted to do it and backed it up with testing and stats which he thought was persuasive. Are you referring to other comments he made that contradict the ones I quoted? I’m thinking there might be something like that out there, because even the Wikipedia page says Stanton was the one who changed it to John Carter. But my understanding is that a) he proposed the change from APOM to JCOM, b) Ross was the one who first brought up to him the change to John Carter and he reacted as cited in the article. If there is another version out there, I’d like to see it so I can factor that into the article.

  • MCR, I think Andrew Stanton was playing nice and as Michael’s article states, Ross wanted it changed and the research they had backed the title change, “he accepted the point of view of the studio, and in particular the assertion by Ross that the need for a title change was backed up by testing data that showed “of Mars” was a liability.” He was thereafter playing a good corporate citizen on that point. I talked with one moviegoer who flat out stated he wouldn’t have gone to “John Carter” if it had been titled “John Carter of Mars.” He came and liked the movie. He only knew about some critics not liking it or being able to follow it and the $200 million write down (which keeps changing, BTW).

  • Again some interesting points are raised. I’ll try to keep this short and sweet:

    First though Pascalahad is right-ERB Inc has done a terrible job keeping ERB in the public eye. Most of his books that are copyrighted are out of print, there has been no merchandise outside of some pricey John Carter collector’s figures and they spend more time suing companies (the Dynamite lawsuit for example) then thinking this could get ERB’s work out there.

    Second with reference of the title. Why then if Stanton thought it was such a bad idea then did he accept full responsibility for it in interviews? He kept saying he did it for a variety of reasons-people don’t go to sci-fi films; women won’t go see a movie with the word “Mars” in the title; John Carter has to grow into being John Carter of Mars like Lawrence of Arabia (I guess we should praise Issus Stanton never made that, otherwise ti would just be “Lawrence.”) It only seemed after his arch-nemesis in marketing MT Carney left that he suddenly placed it all on them. Was Stanton trying to play nice or did he discover how badly his idea of changing the title was playing out and thought of finding someone else to blame?

    Otherwise a great article.

  • One thought occurred to me while posting on the johncartertwo website, about merchandising. ERB-related merchandising has always been surprisingly hard to find. I’ve been interested in buying some when I discovered the books in 1988, and couldn’t find any. As we know, Edgar Rice Burroughs himself has been a pioneer in licensing, building a whole company, and buying trademarks that up to this day prevent a full use of his texts, even gone into the public domain. But hasn’t the ERB estate himself somewhat miss the boat on merchandising his legacy?

    I’m a roleplayer and boardgame player, and has never seen any RPG and boardgame designed after Burroughs’ worlds. Regarding John Carter himself, There was a TSR “pirate” wargame released in 1974, a licenced game at Heritage Models in 1978 (with 25mm miniatures), so far the only attempt at roleplaying game, and a SPI boardgame in 1979. That’s all. 33 years later, not an official product for John Carter, and nothing at all for Tarzan (a myth, no less!), not to say anything about Burroughs’ other cycles, all completely ignored. The call of Cthulhu role-playing game has been in constant publication for some thirty years, Conan has published as Dungeons and Dragons modules, than as a full-feldged role-playing by Mongoose Publishing for six years, Solomon Kane is currently published as a Savage Worlds setting.

    I can’t imagine it’s by lack of interest from the publishers. It’s certainly not by lack of interest from the players, the question about ERB-related rpgs sporadically surfaced on rpgs discussion boards, even before John Carter was made as a movie. Is it because the licence costs too much, or because the ERB company demands too much control over publications? Is not the lack of knowledge of the property also a by-product of the lack of prior licencing?

    Sure, the Disney marketing is to blame, but I think the lack of recognition goes far beyond their inability to market the movie. Did they underestimate the lack of knowledge of the Barsoom books among the general audience? How about the lack of recognition of the property before the release of the movie itself?

  • This really should be a book. What a crazy story. Do you really think they were actually trying to make it succeed? Or make it fail?

  • I swear there is a great book in all this. It would be great if you could interview Stanton some time. I can not imagine we will not his side of things someday, but I’d love it if you could be the one to give it in a book.
    Looking forward to part 3!

  • I’d love to see the first 170 minute work print. Or at least a version of that cut which utilizes the footage from the additional shooting to strengthen it.

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