John Carter
I rented the movie John Carter last night. I now wish I had supported it by going to the movie theater. It was an honest movie. My feelings regarding it:
- The movie had an interesting plot, and the lore is very intriguing.
- It’s action was less spectacular, but I didn’t mind one bit. I wanted to know what happened next, not how well or poorly Martians or Tharks can fence.
- The visuals were very believable.
- While it left a few things unanswered, it felt OK in this movie, since there was a valid reason why the main character wouldn’t know everything.
Yet, the marketing. Or lack thereof.
This year has so far seen 3 impressive marketing campaigns for movies: The Avengers, Batman, and Spider-man. There are trailers and advertising for each of those movies coming out everywhere. On TV, in stores, in restaurants, toilet paper. They really made you want to go see those movies.
The marketing for John Carter was to show the trailer before 2 big movies, and that’s it. The trailers didn’t even show off it’s strengths: it showed the action parts of the movie, which I previously pointed out weren’t even the movie’s selling point. It made us all think “Oh boy, another sci-fi action movie. Will it be good? I’m confused.”
Marketing is powerful! Marketing doomed an excellent movie, John Carter. And marketing got us all to go see The Avengers, which had excellent acting, but had a boring story, and no lore. It was entirely action. It’s apparent that Marvel knows the value of excellent marketing, and Disney did not.
Still, I think you’ll like it.
