I’m been pretty unenthusiastic about Disney’s John Carter. Let’s just get that straight. From the first trailer to the almost 10 minutes of footage screened at D23 this past year, I remain unconvinced.  While the work of fiction by Edgar Rice Burroughs are universally adored, and borrowed from, I have never been compelled into his world.  In fact, after seeing the trailer I have been calling it the poor mans “Avatar”.  I am fully aware the unfairness in that statement so don’t right me hate mail about how Cameron’s Avatar borrowed from the Mars novels.  I understand that the books came first.  However, in this fickle world of entertainment it sometimes comes down to who gets there first.  In that respect Avatar got their first.  The John Carter story feels very similar to Avatar in the theme that a white human finds himself on a distant planet with obligations to save the people who reside there. He also might find himself falling for the “princess” character.  Thus my opinion that John Carter won’t draw the audience it probably deserves.

In fact, Germain over at Slashfilm.com has highlighted an interesting point that Vulture brings up stating that John Carter has to earn $700 million to justify a sequel. Now, in any other circumstance I’d question why people are talking about sequels when the film itself isn’t even out yet.  It seems Hollywood likes to shoot for sequels these days as opposed to getting film #1 right. However, the Mars series is vast and I am sure the filmmakers have thought about that a few times during production.  In Germaine’s piece he states

$700 million would put the film in the top 50 highest grossing films of all time, something Stanton previously experienced with Finding Nemo. However, that’s a tough mountain to climb for a movie with an unproven lead star, unspecific title and little in terms of general audience buzz six months out from a March 2012 release.

Those last few points, however, are virtual mirrors of what people said before Avatar came out and that seemed to do pretty well. We also know that Stanton is a stickler for story and visuals, so you’ve got to be pretty confident the film will at least be good. Then there’s that Disney marketing machine, sure to kick into high gear around the holidays, that will plaster the film everywhere. Of course, that huge marketing push is part of the reason why a $250 million movie costs more like $400 million before one ticket is bought. But, if it works, it could pay off big.

Now all this seems pretty serious.  I made this Mash-Up for fun based purely on the idea that the John Carter trailer looks just like the Avatar trailer. So last night I threw this together as proof.  I have embedded the John Carter trailer first in case you haven’t seen it. Below that is my mash up which features the audio from John Carter trailer with the Avatar visuals.  I actually didn’t have to do that much editing to find the right parts to fit.  In fact some of them are pretty organic. My favorite bits are when Jake Sully is parrying Quarritch. You actually hear the sword sound.  Again, later in the trailer, the power loader machines are rolling out of the cargo ship and the John Carter audio lends itself perfectly for that.  This was just fun to do and proves my undying love for Avatar.  Bring it on John Carter.

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itZzle5luL4′]

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