Princess of Mars

Transferring a book to the screen is never an easy or simple process. Often, a lot has to be left out... exposition, subplots and plot lines, characters and internal monologue. What can go up on the screen is further constrained by the money and time available, by the talent in front of and behind the screen.

Is this the "Worst movie evah!" Not hardly. If pressed, I'd give that honour to Tim Burton's 'Planet of the Apes', a work which cost more than the previous Apes franchise of five movies and two TV series all put together, but which was appallingly stupid - unbelievable talent and money went into making a painfully awful movie.

On the other side of the coin, here we have an action adventure movie made for very little money, with little in the way of resources. Yet it's amazing how they managed to actually make an enjoyable, watchable film.

I'm not necessarily a fan of Asylum films. A lot of them suffer from the worst sin of film-making, tedium.

But Princess of Mars is anything but tedious. There are no shortage of rocky moments, including awkward scenes with Kantos Kan, and there's definitely stuff to dislike. Shortcuts, or shots where there was no time or money to do more than get something in the can.

But flaws aside, it's a relatively faithful telling of the novel. The biggest changes are the reduction of the role and backstory of Tars Tarkas, and the elimination of the Zodangan war, as well as the cosmetic stuff - short stubby two armed Tharks, riding giant birds instead of eight legged horses.

A lot of the true heart of the novel and the characters remain. John Carter is light hearted and heroic, Dejah Thoris is regal and idealistic, Tars Tarkas is noble. The relationships develop naturally between them, the acting is usually decent and sometimes quite good. The location shooting in the Vazques rocks is a highlight, the place looks genuinely weird and alien. The script, apart from the occasional clunky line, moves quickly and efficiently, there are witty lines.

Frankly, my advice is to go look at the trailer. A lot of times, the trailers are better than the actual film. Or the trailers contain all the good parts of the film and the actual film tends to be mostly filler. In this case, the trailer is actually a good showcase for the film. If you liked the tailer, you'll enjoy the film.

In the meantime, I'm pretty happy with it.

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.

It's just not too clear where the movie makers were trying to go with this adaptation of the Edgar Burroughs story. At first glance, it looks to be a tribute to the style of old drive-in sci-fi features, where an intrepid astronaut pioneers unchartered space. Along the way, our space hero will bravely fight giant creatures, duel bad guys, establish friendship with the Martian locals, romance a blonde alien, bring about peace between warring tribes, overthrow a despot, and so on.

They give us all that old school sci-fi stuff, but there's no cohesion to anything. The "plot" is just a parade of unlinked chapters. The story is modernized, which is a mistake. Yes, everybody knows the Rovers have found nothing up there, but who cares? Keep the naive retro feel of a mysterious and foreboding Mars. That was the fun of the source material. But now, the action doesn't even occur on Mars! The 19th century soldier turned Spaceman Spiff has been redone as a Gulf War Marine, and sports millennial tattoos. The Princess herself is Xena Warrior Princess one moment, and helpless fairy tale princess the next.

Still, those Martian green celery-head guys were lovable (even though you can see skin poking out from beneath the masks). The indigenous bug creatures, and the fights against them, are amusingly cheap, yet done with gusto. Overall, an amateurish film, but has a bit of odd charm to it.

If this film had only used different character names, I would have rated it higher, because it would have been a dumb, laughable Science Fiction flick, possibly even enjoyable at some "it's raining and there's nothing else to do" level. You get the feeling that the writer had read the first John Carter book a long, long time in the past and remembered the characters' names without remembering what the story was about, or even what a thark was supposed to look like (I'm sure that Burroughs' warrior tharks didn't have tusks that wobbled). This plot was silly; Burroughs' was engrossing. The biggest disappointment was Traci Lords. While it was her body that was ravaged in many films, here, it was her face that looked ravaged - she just looked so OLD. (Fortunately, I never expected her to know how to act, so I wasn't disappointed there.) The big sword fight seemed to be performed by two actors who'd never held a sword in their lives; all the intercutting didn't cancel that out (why couldn't they have used stunt men?). A truly bad film.

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.