The movie John Carter has a boring, non-descriptive “could be anything” title is based on a series of pulp novels from the 1910s by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It looks like a dozen other big budget movies so the uninitiated might be fooled into thinking it’s a generic clone. And is does have similar trappings which has got to be tough on the marketing department. But what looks like a copy of a copy of a copy is actually one of the originators… but that doesn’t help it’s chance at the box office.

John Carter is based on the first book of the John Cater or Mars series (A Princess of Mars). In this story, an American Civil War soldier (who fought for the Confederacy <GULP>) finds himself destitute and on the run in the Old West when ZAP he’s teleported to Mars. The Mars fiction writers imagined in the early 20th century, that is.

Surprisingly, I was really impressed. A movie that had no right to be good given the low expectations from me, the press, the production history, and all the people I’ve talked to about it. It turned out to be a solid, above board sci-fi action flick. Fairly well written, fairly well acted… it looked fantastic. They cleared put a lot of money into the production.

It’s a solid movie. It’s no Avatar, in comparison, but it works and doesn’t seem be catering to the lowest common denominator (except maybe for the big CG dog-thing).

Score: 84