“John Carter” is a bloated sci-fi epic made watchable by swell effects, passable performances and those little dashes of humor that reassure us that the filmmakers know this is all a lark – no matter what the budget. It begins as a Western, veers into sci-fi and finally finds its footing as a blend of those, with a dash of sword and sorcery – a Confederate cavalryman slashing and hacking beasties and baddies all over the dusty, dying Red Planet in the years just after America’s Civil War.
Edgar Rice Burroughs, who wrote the “John Carter of Mars” stories, appears as a character here, a young would-be writer (Daryl Sabara of “Spy Kids”) reading the journal of his late uncle (Taylor Kitsch), a swarthy, two-fisted Civil War vet searching for gold out West who stumbled instead into another civil war – this one a thousand years old and millions of miles away. This one’s taking place on Mars.
He’s landed in the end game of the Martian Civil War, when two cities -Helium and the mobile city of Zodanga – grinding from place to place on a gigantic crawler – are about to have their final battle. Shape-shifting pan-dimensional beings (led by Mark Strong) have set up Zodanga (led by Dominic West) to deflate Helium (led by Ciaran Hinds).
The armies are clad in gear borrowed from the ancient Romans and flit about in huge, fragile solar-powered flying galleys. There’s the scientist-Princess Dejah (Lynne Collins, who wears the obligatory alien-princess-bare-midriff look well) about to be forcibly married off to Sab Than (West) to bring peace.
Unless Carter, who has swagger – and great leaping abilities on the lower gravity of Mars – intervenes. Of course, first he has to get away from the Tharks, four-armed green nomads who stand 12 feet tall and practice a Spartan brand of warrior culture, musket-armed cavalry who admire nothing so much as a good battle. They brand each other over any offense to the community and practice infanticide.