#013: John Carter / The Martian (Pt. 1)

The Next Picture Show

Filmspotting

Tv & Film, Film History, Film Reviews

4.6 • 858 Ratings

🗓️ 2 February 2016

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, we look back to one of last year's biggest blockbusters — and an Oscar frontrunner — for inspiration, and turn up an interesting, misbegotten cinematic comparison point. Ridley Scott's THE MARTIAN is critically and commercially successful in a way Andrew Stanton's D.O.A. JOHN CARTER never even approached, but the two Mars-centric films viewed in tandem offer interesting takeaways about the nature of science fiction and fantasy, the perils of source-material fidelity and visual poetry. Can one's failure be better understood through the lens of the other's success? Please share your comments, thoughts, and questions about JOHN CARTER, THE MARTIAN, or both by sending an email to comments@nextpictureshow.net, or leaving a short voicemail at (773) 234-9730. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:09.0	Get Adobe Express for free. Search for Adobe Express to find out more.
0:14.0	It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.
0:20.0	Do you believe that someone out of the past can enter and take possession of a living being?
0:27.2	We may be true with the past, but the past is not through with us.
0:33.3	Welcome to the next picture show, a movie of the week podcast devoted to a classic film
0:37.4	in the way it shaped our thoughts on a recent release. This week's episode takes us
0:58.3	to the planet Mars, twice. Tasha, my Jeddak. Can you give us a lowdown on this week's
1:03.5	movie pairing? As you wish, my Dotaar Sajat. January is a famously dry month for the movies,
1:08.9	so while we could have themed an entire episode around Dirty Grandpa,
1:12.4	instead we decided to look at our Oscars watch list.
1:15.3	We pulled out The Martian, a Ridley Scott directed hit that's one of this year's eighth Best Picture nominees.
1:20.1	It's also recently been released to Blu-ray, DVD, and Video and Demand Services, so it's widely available. We didn't dig that far into the past to find our second movie set on Mars, although it would be tough to find one that offers a sharper contrast.
1:32.2	Released in March 2012, John Carter featured Pixar stalwart Andrew Stanton, bringing John
1:36.9	Carter of Mars, the second most famous hero from the mind of Tarzan creator Edgar Rice-Burrows,
1:42.2	to the big screen after decades of attempts from other filmmakers.
1:45.7	Keith, do these movies have anything in common other than Mars? I'd say yes and no. Adapted from
1:51.8	Andy Weir's 2011 novel, The Martian is science fiction with emphasis on science. Astronaut Mark Watney,
1:57.6	played here by Matt Damon, gets stranded on Mars and has to use logic and reason to escape.
2:02.6	He's challenged at every turn by a hostile environment where human beings were never meant to survive.
2:07.5	John Carter, on the other hand, is pure fantasy.
	...

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