Why did Disney think "John Carter" would be a hit?

You've probably read by now that "John Carter" is a box office bomb. It's been all over that Disney will lose $200 million dollars because of it. Normally, a movie like this would come and go after making a modest amount, but the fact that it cost so much to make means that all conversations about the movie will be about it's box office performance, not it's quality. I have to ask, though - why did Disney spend so much money on this movie? They must have thought it was a safe bet. But why?

"John Carter" is based on a series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the writer who also created Tarzan. He introduces the character of John Carter in the "Barsoom" series, which began in 1912. It is very old-fashioned science fiction in that it romanticizes the previously mysterious and captivating planet of Mars. The movie tells the story of Carter, a Civil War veteran, who gets transported to Mars and tangled up in the conflicts of the planet's inhabitants.

The movie currently stands at a 51% on Rotten Tomatoes, with a painful 34% among Top Critics. The summary of critical opinion is that "while John Carter looks terrific and delivers its share of pulpy thrills, it also suffers from uneven pacing and occasionally incomprehensible plotting and characterization." Audiences weren't wowed by it either since it wasn't the smash anticipated. It's worth noting that sometimes movies do very well but are considered flops because they are being measured against the cost in making it. "John Carter," however, only made about $62 million stateside, which is not impressive at all. To give you some context for comparison, "21 Jump Street" has already made $71 million domestic, and even "Act of Valor" made $66 million domestic. "Safe House," which also received a 54% from Rotten Tomatoes, earned $122 million domestic.

So here lie the two big questions - why did Disney put so much faith in "John Carter" and why did it fail? First, let's address why Disney invested so much into it. Large-scale, sci-fi/action adventure movies can be very lucrative if they strike a chord with the viewing public. If you can build off of nostalgia for an established series of novels, even better. In the era of "Avatar," studios are willing to shell out the big bucks for movies with stellar visuals. Additionally, the Disney name still carries some weight when put before a film title. But in the end, "John Carter" didn't perform.

Like many people, I have a few opinions about why this is. First, there were no big names to draw in the crowds. If you know who Taylor Kitsch is at all, you probably know him as that guy who was on "Friday Night Lights." You know, that critically acclaimed show that no one watched. Between Sam Worthington, Channing Tatum, and now Taylor Kitsch, there seems to be a sale on bland hunks in Hollywood for leading roles. The rest of the cast is equally obscure, with the exception of Willem Dafoe. Although looking at the cast list, it's a veritable who's who of "that guys." It's filled with people who you probably recognize, but would never be able to identify by name. "Avatar" was led by two semi-nobodies, but you had the pedigree of James Cameron behind the picture. "John Carter" was directed by Andrew Stanton, an established Pixar director making his live-action debut here. "Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol" was the live-action debut of another Pixar man, Brad Bird. One of these men hit it big in live-action, and it ain't Stanton. Also, never underestimate the importance of good writing. Even if a movie looks amazing, if the story lacks any impact, its chances for success are slimmer.

A minor point I'd like to mention is the presence of the word "Disney" in the marketing campaign. The movie is PG-13, but the Disney label might keep some folks away. Disney is still associated with children's entertainment. My youth was the time of the Disney Renaissance, filled with brilliant children's movies, but they were still aimed at the younger crowd. If all you know about "John Carter" is that it's that Disney movie set on Mars, you're probably not going to be dying to see it, in my opinion. That's just not enough for true mass appeal. On this topic, I think the story itself isn't a big draw. The concept of "the mysterious Red planet" is very old-fashioned. Mars once set the literary world ablaze as writers' imaginations overflowed with possibilities for intelligent life in space. But it's 2012, and while Mars fiction will always be around, it doesn't have quite the same appeal as it did in the early 1900s when John Carter first set foot there in Burrough's novels. The concept just felt painfully antiquated. And if you don't have big stars or a well-known director/writer or a premise intriguing to the mainstream, maybe you can at least draw in the fans of the source material. To be perfectly honest, I had never heard of the John Carter novels before this movie came out. I'm positive there are many people like me who saw previews for this movie, a Disney sci-fi epic with a (still largely) unknown lead with a title like "John Carter," and barely registered it.

Whether it's due to all of my reasons or none of them, "John Carter" bombed big time. A sequel was planned, but it's not clear if that's going to happen or not. Despite plenty of source material to draw from, it's unlikely Disney will sink more money into this franchise.

Reflecting on the Police Procedural: the Quiet Genius of "Southland"

Last Tuesday, the season finale of "Southland" aired. This is a show that I am certain will never make waves, never break through to the mainstream, never get much attention. It has (and will for the duration of the series) fly under the radar. But it's quiet presence, in my opinion, perfectly reflects the quiet genius of the show itself.

Watching "Southland" is unlike watching any other cop show on TV right now. That sounds cliche, I know, but I truly mean it. One of the things that has always appealed to me about the show has been its dedication to gritty realism. It's shot on-location in Los Angeles, there is no background music (save for the occasional snippet of overheard bar/party music), the actors aren't all abnormally attractive right down to the last extra, and the show's move from NBC to TNT allows for crasser, less PC dialogue. It even stands out among other great cop shows. "The Wire" was brilliant, but felt like being immersed in a novel. "The Shield" was an intense experience more akin to walking through an LA-based, corruption-themed Hell House. "Life On Mars" and "Dexter" (the early years), while excellent, were never solely focused on the job of law enforcement as they were on the gimmicks. "Southland," on the other hand, is like a documentary that follows cops around on their daily patrol. It's a police procedural in the truest sense of the term.

In my opinion, one of the most fascinating parts of a good crime drama is the orientation of its moral compass. Black and white, traditional roles are like sweet treats. "NCIS" and the like are comforting little tales that present bad people doing bad things where, over the course of an hour, the good guys will come in and bring the criminal to justice. They're perfectly harmless, enjoyable nuggets of entertainment, but the morally gray cop dramas of (more often than not) cable networks really give you something to sink your teeth into. I loved watching the shit hit the fan on "The Shield," where every small misdeed built up over time until the show that seemed to glorify less-than-legal tactics ultimately condemned corruption in horrific fashion. Throughout the series, you sympathized with vile characters because they were, at the end of the day, all too human. "The Wire" stands alone at the top for a reason. It's modern-day society seen clearly in all its imperfection and contradictions through the lens of television, an artistic medium that often gets less credit than it deserves. "Southland" continues in this great tradition of moral ambiguity in that it brings up many storylines where I am genuinely unsure of which answer is right.

Take, for instance, one of the prominent main stories of this season involving Officers John Cooper and Jessica Tang. Tang, while pursuing a suspect, accidentally shoots a kid who was brandishing a toy gun. She hides the one piece of evidence that would have made it obvious it was a fake gun, leading to her superiors signing off on the accidental shooting while awarding her a promotion. Her partner, Cooper, is torn on whether or not to report her. When questioned, he sticks only to what he saw rather than what he thinks she did, leaving the decision to divulge more information up to her. She doesn't offer any, takes her promotion, and they part on ill terms in the finale. Their confrontation isn't as one-sided as we might think as Tang brings up Cooper's painkiller addiction from the previous seasons.

Tang: "You lied to save your own ass, and your fellow officers covered for you because they knew you were a good cop."
Cooper: "Don't try to compare me to you, because we are not the same."
Tang: "Keep telling yourself that."
Cooper: "I was an addict. I am an addict. I was weak and I will never forgive myself but I am fighting every goddamn day to fix it. You shot a kid. A kid! And you lied about it so you could, what? Move ahead?"
Tang: "It was a fucking accident! You think you know what's right and wrong. Who the fuck are you? God?!"

Had Tang left the plastic piece on the toy gun, revealing it to be an obvious fake, would she have kept her job? If she had come clean about it much later, would she have made sergeant? Does she deserve to make sergeant? Does one accident mean she's not a good cop? There's a quote from "Grey's Anatomy" that I always remember from, again, the earlier better seasons where Dr. Bailey mentions the difficulty of working in a profession with such high stakes.

Bailey: "I make one mistake with this scalpel and this man's dead. My husband, he makes mistakes at his job all the time. As far as I know he's never killed anyone but I have. And you will. Alex did. He made a math mistake and a man died for it. Run that past your accountant. See how he'd feel if every mistake he made, someone ended up dead."

There are certain professions where mistakes don't mean a clerical error, they mean the difference between life and death and that's not exaggerating. The television programs may dramatize this and make the characters and plots more colorful, but the reality still exists. And it is this reality of consequences that "Southland" handles so beautifully. One of the protagonists, Homicide Detective Lydia Adams, finds herself pregnant after sleeping with a married man. She debates whether to keep the baby, when to tell her superiors, whether or not to keep working. The audience is no clearer than she is on if she is making the right decisions or not. Therein lies the big difference between simple cop dramas and advanced cop dramas: an "NCIS" or "CSI" will tell you what the right answer is while a more advanced drama will not. A simpler show will lay out the right answer for you and use it to condemn a character or make us feel pity towards a character for choosing incorrectly. A more complex show admits that none of us knows the right answer and we have to just trust our inner judgement. And sometimes, as is possible, our inner judgement is wrong. To err is human. Look at Ben Sherman's storyline on "Southland." He gets overly invested with the wellbeing of the daughter of a prostitute and a pimp and begins to lose himself. His partner, Sammy Bryant, feels like he failed Sherman after he went back to patrol to help teach younger officers. If anyone knows the difficulty of restraint in the field it's Bryant, who fought to stay under control and not seek personal retribution after his previous partner was killed in front of him. But by the end of the finale episode, all is not well between Sherman and Bryant and we're left wondering what, if anything, will get through to Sherman.

I could go on, listing juicy moments from this season of "Southland." For any interested person, I highly recommend the first episode of the fourth season. One conversation that begins with "we're doing the right thing for the wrong people" is a particularly affecting comment on a criminal justice system that is flawed yet still the best we've come up with. If I had had the time, a weekly recap would have been interesting. But for now, all I can do is explain why "Southland" is a rare gem that deserves many more seasons, even if it never strikes a chord with the mainstream viewership. After all, that very same cool, deliberate intensity that keeps it from being a ratings smash is exactly what makes it such a rich, rewarding show.