Film

John Carter

Name: John Carter
Genre: Action, Adventure, Science Fiction
Released: 2012
Cast: Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Samantha Morton, Mark Strong, Ciarán Hinds

John Carter is Disney's hugely expensive, earnestly old-fashioned swing at Edgar Rice Burroughs' pulp Mars saga — a weary Civil War veteran flung onto a planet of warring tribes, flying ships, and towering green warlords. It plays like a golden-age adventure serial blown up to modern blockbuster scale: sincere, sweeping, and completely unembarrassed by its own romance. Best for anyone who wants swashbuckling wonder played straight, without irony.

TMDb rating

6.4

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Swap Mars for Arrakis and the bones are the same: a stranger thrown into an alien desert culture, prophecy, political intrigue, and a love story woven through the sand — done with obsessive visual restraint.

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Flash Gordon1980

Pure disco-glam pulp adventure with rocket ships, tyrant emperors, and a hero who's basically a walking jaw — everything John Carter wanted to be if it had let itself be sillier.

But The camp is deliberate and total; if you wanted a straight face, this absolutely isn't it.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Forbidden Planet1956

Decades before Carter, this film laid down the same template: a stranded human party on an alien world, an ancient vanished civilization, forbidden technology, and a father guarding a beautiful, otherworldly daughter.

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Brawny, brooding pulp fantasy with a hero built from muscle and myth, wandering a savage world of warring tribes and cruel kings — the register Carter reaches for in its battle scenes.

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Warriors of the Wind1984

Same myth, redrawn: a lone hero caught between two warring, ecologically fragile civilizations, brokering peace through empathy rather than conquest, with a princess who is the actual protagonist rather than the prize.

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