Princess of Mars (2009) Reviews

• Not as bad as you would think, but still will disappoint John Carter fans

  ersinkdotcom2010-01-14

  The Asylum has done it again. Instead of waiting for the actual film they are going to be making a mockbuster of to come out, they have decided to cash in on the buzz surrounding it and beat them to the punch…to an extent. Completely scooping Pixar and Disney (yeah, right), The Asylum moved forward and made the first movie adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs's John Carter of Mars. Instead of actually having the audacity to tread on thin ice by calling the film John Carter of Mars, they opted for Princess of Mars. As an average uneducated sci-fi B-movie watcher, you'd never know the film was based on an Edgar Rice Burroughs's story or creation as they give him credit nowhere in the main titles. I don't know what that's all about. You'd think they would want to use everything at their disposal to promote and exploit this thing. It's their very nature to do so. Once again, this feels like it was done on the fly, which is what gives these movies their charm. The film editing and direction suits it just fine and operates to keep the lowest amount of special effects shot possible to still make it remotely entertaining. You know the drill by now. Shoot all the action sequences very close as to not have to spend too much time on wide shots or digital scene editing. Show the actors lurch up to jump, cut to a far away shot of them flying through the air, and then cut back to them landing in a crouch. Its genius and The Asylum team does it best! I've got to tell you that the special effects are nowhere near as bad as you would think they'd be. The Princess of Mars' transport ship does look dangerously like the model crew broke into Skywalker Ranch and stole Jabba's Land Barge from Return of the Jedi. They even have these speeder bike looking things they ride. Coincidence or someone on the Asylum "special effects" crew having a weird fixation on Lucas' Ewok-tainted third film in the original Star Wars trilogy? You decide. The actors. Ah, the actors. We've got Antonio Sabato, Jr hamming it up half-naked as John Carter with some of the worst badly placed tattoos I've ever seen. What male has a lower back tattoo? It feels like they actually paid him to be onset more than a couple of days. Then there's the cream of the crop – Traci Lords - using her same brand of acting she's come to be known for in flicks and TV shows like The Tommyknockers and Hercules. Strangely enough for a B-movie nerd extravaganza, she has more clothes on throughout the movie than Sabato, Jr. She suits the part of the Princess of Mars well, though. You can't help but feel a little stab of nostalgia for 80's movies like Red Sonja, Conan, The Destroyer, and Beastmaster. It does almost feel like they only paid her enough to be onset one day, however. The Asylum should do great with this release. All the John Carter of Mars fans that have been eagerly awaiting some kind of movie adaptation of the source material will no doubt rent or buy it. SyFy Channel is guaranteed to get good ratings when it's aired in the token Saturday prime time slot they show these types of films in. Now I'm not saying Carter fans won't be disappointed, but they'll see it nonetheless and it really isn't THAT bad.

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• It's great that they're still making movies like this today!

  unbrokenmetal2010-05-09

  I personally think it's great that you don't have to go back to the monster movies of the 1950s - the fact that they're still making movies like "Princess of Mars" today is fine with me. Surprisingly, the makers must have read the E.R.Burroughs novel, some elements of the story are recognizable with John Carter's arrival on Mars, being able to jump very high (due to lower gravity), meeting Tars Tarkas and Dejah Thoris, and fighting for the atmosphere station. Everything is put up to date, sometimes well (Carter being in Afghanistan instead of Nevada) sometimes not (the, uh, "technically explained" data transfer to another world, and that Mars not being our red neighbor planet, but a different planet accidentally also called Mars). Fortunately they did not use the Great White Apes, because how silly would that look nowadays with men in costumes? Despite the low budget, a funny flick if you have the sense of humor for trash sf.

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• Gah

  sarastro72010-01-09

  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.

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• This desperately needs a Phantom Edit

  RSLent2012-06-19

  This movie stumbles badly right away. There's no real need to update it, it works better if it isn't updated. But that's not the real failing. The scene where he is in the hospital being told by some mad scientists that he is being sent to Mars as some sort of science experiment was one of the most absurd that I have ever seen. It was unintentionally comic. Why in the world did they need to declare that Barsoom isn't Mars, but a planet in another solar system? Yes, we know that the real Mars isn't like the Mars that Burroughs imagined, that doesn't interfere with the story. There is a scene were he asks for something to drink, and he is given a rag full of sweat. Another scene where he asks for food, and he is given the excretion of some larva. Neither of these are in the book; they eat something that seems like cheese or tofu, and to drink, they drink the liquid of a cactus-like plant. Why they chose to make this change is beyond me. It seemed to be an attempt to disgust the audience, and didn't make the movie any better. A good Phantom Edit would cut out entirely the portion before he gets to Mars. A minute of two of narration at the beginning could replace the entire first part of the movie. It would also be necessary to snip out the part where you learn the bad guy is from Earth. You don't have to eliminate him entirely, just the nonsense of him being from Earth. I'd also delete the scenes where he is given sweat and larval excretions to drink. Other parts are more minor. Traci Lords is a bit too old, too clothed and too blonde to be a plausible Deja Thoris. She seems more a cranky sitcom mom than a princess of Helium. The tattoos on John Carter seem unlikely, a tramp stamp on a man? But these are minor, the major flaws of this movie are overwhelming, but if they were cut out, this would be, well, not a great movie, but not too bad. If you watch the movie, you see that throughout the movie, one of Tars Tarkas' tusks wobbles. A fairly minor thing, but it shows how quickly they made this movie was made.

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• The elephant in the room

  doktorf2009-12-31

  The elephant in the room is the man whose name is nowhere credited on this film. Perhaps that is a good thing. That man is Edgar Rice Burroughs. 99 years ago he wrote a story called Under the Moons of Mars. He wrote it strictly for the money and for the fun of writing it. After that story achieved some success, he went on to create Tarzan of the Apes and many other memorable characters. Over the last century his dedicated readers have suffered time after time the hackneyed interpretations of Tarzan while this, his seminal work, has been left un-filmed. In the old days, it could not have been done justice because of the low cinematic technology, and the mores of the times, but we had finally entered an age when this tale could have been done justice. What we have here just makes me sad. In fairness, this is an adequate and mildly entertaining b-movie, but it is not the movie we who love this tale wanted. This is NOT the movie that we have waited almost a hundred years for. Not by a very long shot.

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