Andrew Stanton talks at TED.

http://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_stanton_the_clues_to_a_great_story.html

I'm planning on seeing JOHN CARTER later in the week. I'm hearing good things from the genre review sites, despite the absolute, absolute, sh**e job Disney's done for the marketing. I mean, why not call it JOHN CARTER AND THE PRINCESS OF MARS? It sells the pulpy attitude, it sells MARS (aka the main fucking selling point to people who have no clue what the movie is) and it sells the best character (and judging from the reviews the best character) the titular Princess! You can't say people won't see a movie with a long title -- HARRY POTTER or INDIANA JONES, and you can't say boys won't see a movie with PRINCESS in the title -- PRINCESS BRIDE, besides it has MARS in the title too! JOHN CARTER on its own sounds like a political biopic about a well-meaning Democrat senator in an improvished state who is screwed out of an election by a cigar chomping corrupt Republican.

I assume Disney cut the "of Mars" part out because it knew it had its hands full marketing this film and didn't want to risk alienating audiences who might have thought it was sci-fi based purely on the title (though anyone who's seen a second of footage would know it's sci-fi, anyway).

I guess Disney could have also hoped that simply calling it "John Carter" would help Taylor Kitsch have an easier time becoming a household name as the John Carter.

Too bad it all backfired, though. Film flopped big time, even though I didn't hate it at all.

Jack Wade wrote:

I assume Disney cut the "of Mars" part out because it knew it had its hands full marketing this film and didn't want to risk alienating audiences who might have thought it was sci-fi based purely on the title (though anyone who's seen a second of footage would know it's sci-fi, anyway).

That's retarded reasoning. We don't want to alienate audiences who might think it's sci-fi?? IT IS SCI-FI! Are they trying to trick audiences into seeing it?? Better to let them know what it is, so they have some reason to watch it. That's the biggest problem with the marketing for JOHN CARTER. You have NO impetus to see it, no call to action. No one has a clue what it is, because Disney doesn't want to tell you. Tell people it's sci-fi, so they know what kind of movie they are paying for and can make a choice to see it! JOHN CARTER doesn't sound like anything, at all. They haven't exploited the characters, the setting, hell they haven't even taken advantage of marketing that this is the FIRST real tale of this kind, that this is from the guy who created TARZAN and that EVERY sci-fi adventure movie afterwards, up to and including AVATAR, was inspired by this. The marketing has just been "here's some CGI action scenes of the kind you are so used to now that they are unimpressive."

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

I'm planning on seeing JOHN CARTER later in the week. I'm hearing good things from the genre review sites, despite the absolute, absolute, sh**e job Disney's done for the marketing. I mean, why not call it JOHN CARTER AND THE PRINCESS OF MARS? It sells the pulpy attitude, it sells MARS (aka the main fucking selling point to people who have no clue what the movie is) and it sells the best character (and judging from the reviews the best character) the titular Princess! You can't say people won't see a movie with a long title -- HARRY POTTER or INDIANA JONES, and you can't say boys won't see a movie with PRINCESS in the title -- PRINCESS BRIDE, besides it has MARS in the title too! JOHN CARTER on its own sounds like a political biopic about a well-meaning Democrat senator in an improvished state who is screwed out of an election by a cigar chomping corrupt Republican.

When I first heard JOHN CARTER I thought 'spinoff from E.R.?' ... weird, given that Dr. Carter was I believed named with Burroughs as inspiration.

The word Mars turns off women viewers according to some marketing (perhaps why the TOTAL RECALL remake is set on earth this time?). Like the marketing that proved 'conclusively' that women wouldn't see a movie with words like "STAR" and "WARS" in it back in the 1970s.

Okay, so call it the book's title. PRINCESS OF MARS. MARS gets the men onboard and PRINCESS gets the women. Really just anything but the obnoxiously bland JOHN CARTER. Who the fuck is John Carter?

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

Who the fuck is John Carter?

He's a guy, just like me, who wears a smelly t-shirt and drinks beer and likes football and tits. Not some fag in a homo science movie.

The White Tuxedo wrote:

http://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_stanton_the_clues_to_a_great_story.html

Great talk. One of my favorite directors out there today, pretty much based solely on WALL-E.

John Carter is the biggest example of blanket marketing gone wrong. In an effort to promote to everyone, they removed everything unique and interesting from the campaign and got nobody interested.

The only reason why I saw John Carter is one of my friends was a big fan of the books when he was younger.

The only thing that's interested me in JOHN CARTER is the surprinsgly scary looking monsters in one of the posters. Everything else looks generic, with yet another dull arse anti-hero that sounds like he's got throat cancer.

I hated WALL-E and FINDING NEMO, so I'll avoid this.

Taylor Kitsch is pretty boring, but that's not John Carter's biggest fault. Its biggest fault is that it's uneven, which is a shame because Stanton is traditionally a great storyteller.