Trailer
Plot summary
In 1881, Edgar Rice Burroughs inherits his uncle John Carter's estate and a journal. It tells of Arizona after the Civil War, where Carter prospects for gold and refuses Colonel Powell's demand that he help fight the Apache. Arrested for refusing, he escapes, and a gunfight leaves Powell wounded. The two shelter in a cave, where a bald stranger in a shining robe attacks them. Carter takes the man's blue-glowing medallion, speaks the words he heard, and wakes in a desert where he can leap enormous distances. Four-armed green Tharks capture him and take him to their ruined city, where their leader Tars Tarkas keeps the medallion. Dejah Thoris, princess of Helium, learns from her father Tardos Mors that she must marry Sab Than of Zodanga to end a long war.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about John Carter (2012)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- John Carter grossed $284 million worldwide but became the film with the largest estimated box-office loss adjusted for inflation ever, losing $149-265 million, and resulted in a $200 million writedown for Disney.
- Test footage for an animated A Princess of Mars produced by Bob Clampett was believed lost for years until Edgar Rice Burroughs' grandson found some in the early 1970s. Had it been released, it might have been the first American feature-length animated film, preceding Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
- Taylor Kitsch quickly became Andrew Stanton's choice for John Carter after a scene in the Friday Night Lights television series in which Kitsch's angry character is left behind by the bus, his pose echoing a book cover in Stanton's collection.
- Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio were hired to write a John Carter adaptation, and John McTiernan and Tom Cruise were approached to direct and star. The project collapsed because McTiernan felt visual effects were not yet advanced enough to recreate Burroughs' Barsoom.
- Andrew Stanton reshot much of John Carter twice, far more than was common in live-action filmmaking at the time, which he attributed to his animation background.
- Willem Dafoe and Samantha Morton played their Thark roles in motion capture suits while walking on stilts, with cameras on their outfits capturing their expressions to create their characters' faces.
- John Carter's highest-grossing opening was in Russia and the CIS, where it broke the all-time opening-day record with $6.5 million and earned $16.5 million over the weekend.
- Because of its box-office performance, Disney canceled plans for Gods of Mars and Warlord of Mars, the rest of the trilogy Andrew Stanton had planned.
