Les chroniques de Mars

I'd read some pretty brutal stuff about this flick and was happy to find an entirely competent and often clever b-movie. Admittedly, I was a huge Edgar Rice Burroughs fan as a kid, but I'm not sure that didn't prime me to dislike the movie.

It wasn't a big budget movie, but I think the money they had was well spent. The special effects were not the center of the film but they didn't detract from the story either. The acting was surprisingly unembarrassing and I personally found the dialog very good. The updating of the story was subtle and funny.

One of the other reviewers said this isn't the film we were waiting for, and I suppose that' right. It is, though, the film we got. All in all, it struck me as a sincere labor of love that did credit to the memory of Burroughs himself, the master of the pulps.

1) Find a big-budget movie you can somehow associate your cheap knockoff with. That's easy, they are in development for years, while your ripoff can be made in a few weeks.

2) Try to claim it is linked to some book in the Public Domain. H.G Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Rice Burroughs won't turn into literary Zombies and march on your offices. (Although that would be more interesting that most asylum films, come to think of it.)

3) Get some washed up actors. People that you might have heard of, but aren't getting good roles these days.

4) Cheap Special Effects- Get some of those kookie You-Tube kids to make your monsters...badly edited them into the film.

5) Pad out 10 minutes of plot with an hour of fight scenes and wandering through the desert scenes.

Okay, Really, I'm going to say some nice things about this film. It's actually better than your average Asylum film, but that's like saying it's the least trampy Jerry Springer guest.

They've actually remained somewhat faithful to the Burroughs story, updating it a bit. (Carter is still from Virginia, but now he's an ex-Green Beret instead of an ex-Confederate officer.)

Honestly, the weakest part of the film was Traci Lords. She's never been a good actress, and you can tell she's in her forties every time they did a close up. Honestly, the girl who played the lizard chick was more attractive. Or at least firm in the places a woman should be firm.

Hey, I noticed something else. Ever notice in an asylum film, they have a lot of gunplay, but the muzzles of the weapons are almost always out of frame when they are being fired? I guess someone didn't budget for blank ammunition, but sound effects are always cheap. And Martians have 50 cals and Kalishnikovs, just like we do on earth.

I've gotten through half of Princess of Mars. Not sure I can do the 2nd half. It's not that it's bad--in fact it's OK as far as super low-budget fantasy flicks go (I love the old Amicus Burroghs flicks with Doug McClure). They only used a few of the original story elements, but I guess putting six arms on Tars Tarkus or red body paint on all the "humans" would have been cost prohibitive. But what's up with casting Traci Lords as Deja Thoris, the princess? Even if you're kind in your estimation, Lords is well over 40. Not bad looking for a woman her age, but certainly not a good enough actress to make you forget that she's WAY too old for the part. I just couldn't go on with the film once she became a big part of it because I couldn't' stop thinking how virtually ANY young Hollywood actress would have been more watchable. In fact just about any woman who works at a Hooters would have been more watchable! I don't want to sound age-ist, but if a female actress of marginal acting ability is going to be running about in a skimpy outfit for over an hour on screen, she'd better be super-exceptionally hot for her age or young enough for it not to matter. I mean, really--did anyone rent this because they saw the name Traci Lords? And I want to reiterate--this is not a personal attack on Ms. Lords. I just don't think she's doing herself, or us, justice by still trying to be "the hot young chick." And Deja Thoris should be a hot young chick.

Well. This is by no means the worst movie I've ever seen. I've seen (if you can call it that) one or two Asylum movies before, and some of them are physically painful to watch. 2012: Supernova? Arrrgh!! AVH: Alien vs. Hunter? I nearly gnawed off a limb in an effort to dull the excruciating experience. The Asylum exist to produce unbearably cheap knock-offs of well-known sci-fi and horror movies, and they survive purely by tricking the ignorant into watching their deliberately and deviously diluted versions by mistake. Someone should give these guys a good spanking and ground them for life on a deserted island.

Anyway. You can understand that my expectations for "Princess of Mars" were very low indeed. But I wanted to check it out, just in case they had actually read the original book. And I was surprised: they had. But in a characteristic fit of plagiarism (and, probably, because filming in the desert is cheap) they'd also decided to fuse the concept with Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. Even so, I was actually mildly entertained by Princess of Mars (and yes, I can still stand to look at Traci Lords). The acting was hammy and the production values were unimpressive (but at least they were there); it looked like what it was: a thoroughly derivative low-budget C-movie bordering on the farcical. But that can be entertaining, too! As the movie went on I was thinking that, hey, this was in the same league as Bloodrayne and stuff like that, and I might actually end up rating this a 4 out of 10! A good rating for a craptacular excuse for a real movie, appreciating that it might be trash but at least it's funny and entertaining trash.

Unfortunately, the ending was so stupid and pointless that I have to cut that rating in half, and end up with a 2 out of 10 mark. Properly, the movie doesn't really deserve more than 1, but for maintaining a certain watchability almost all the way to the end, and for being funny despite its ROTJ derivation, I retain one more star.

All in all, still a massive disappointment that can in no way be recommended.

Clearly "Princess of Mars" is The Asylum's cash in on the "John Carter" movie that was out in March 2009, as "Princess of Mars" came out in December of the very same year. Is that a trademark of The Asylum, to take something that others made famous and then just sponge and leech of that success?

At any rate, and regarding the motivation behind this movie, then The Asylum actually managed to pull of a fairly decent movie here, compared to some of the other more questionable releases they have spewed out.

The story, if you are familiar with either the "John Carter" movie or the E.R. Burroughs novel, is about John Carter, a man from Earth, who end up on a distant red planet, where he have to save their world from impending doom.

Pretty straight off the copy and paste storyboard here, without anything new or overly interesting to be added to the story. But still, the movie was enjoyable for what it was. A word of warning though; if you have seen the "John Carter" movie that was out earlier in 2009, then chances are that you might want to stay clear of this version. Imagine a weird hybrid of the 1980's "Flash Gordon" movie mixed with Disney's "John Carter" movie, and you have the end result coming out as "Princess of Mars".

One thing that did puzzle me, though, with the technology and resources available to the human-like race on this red planet, why would their princess be clad so scantily like a common... Well, you get my meaning. It just didn't make sense. Or did it? Well, you have Traci Lords in the role as the princess, so of course, why wouldn't the director be having her running around half naked?

The creature effects were adequate to look at, except for those bipedal reptiles that they used for mounts. They were just horrible to look at. Awfully animated CGI and they walked like they all had bad indigestion.

I will say that The Asylum did put out a fairly enjoyable Sci-Fi movie here, but in the wake of Disney's "John Carter", then the movie pales in comparison.