A Twofer This Time, John Carter and Act of Valor

Disney does John Carter

The CGI and scenery look good, I'm curious how they handle the story.

Act of Valor

This one I am definitely interested in seeing. Reading the comments for the trailer made me realize way too many people base their image of the military upon the game Call of Duty.

One a side note, even though I realize the Viso advertising at YouTube is how they make money, it slightly irritates me that some of the advertising before the trailer is other movie trailers. If I wanted to see the trailer for Brokeback Mountain 2 - Lube Run, I'd go look for it.

I'm not so sure about the CGI to be honest. Great for the flying machines, not so much for the Martians. The plot of the original books was pretty basic - Space Conan! - and I imagine his background will have been rewritten just a bit. It could be a fun sleeper hit, but I'm not overly optimistic.

Fun fact: People in the military really enjoy Call of Duty too, and it really shows in this trailer. I really hope you didn't think this trailer - with explosion proof doors, jumping from fireballs, shooting unarmoured vehicles with LAWs, visible lasers, glamorous cinematography, rescuing helpless hot babes etc - was an accurate representation of military life. SEALs (on 'active duty'?) have a vested interest in making themselves look as awesome as possible after all. It was almost worth it for the Harrier shot though. :sadface:

You can tell from the trailer that this will be a loose adaptation. Hint, there were no Therns in the first book.

Frankly, the reuse of music from the Godzilla soundtrack in this trailer gives me less hope that they will do it right

I've heard of the books but never read them. Does John Carter possess some level of superhuman strength while on Mars?

I am getting flashbacks to El Hazard which maybe taken cues from those stories?

Earthman on Mars... Gravity works in his favour there.

Why not? The copyright on them has expired.

I don't get it, why is Noah Wyle on Mars!???

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carter_(ER)

It does look good, I also have heard of the stories but have never read them. I also love how they used Kashmir as the BGM for the trailer.

Act of Valor is amazing.

Why do I get the feeling Ray also takes it at face value? Something Awful reviewed it here, revealing no surprises. It's basically a two-hour version of Yvan Eht Nioj with a silly plot and a marketing deal with Battlefield 3 (no Call of Duty movie this, clearly).

This post has been edited by Kegluneq on Feb 29 2012, 02:09 AM

Ebert and others has the same sentiment where its an interesting way to build a film but the story behind it is a giant "meh".

Yeah, Act of Valor was just one giant recruitment video filled with terrible acting (from REAL soldiers~) and the latest toys... for serious, I think they wrote the plot based on "how many different things that we have can we show?"

More to come in the podcast (whenever THIS week's gets posted... still waiting on LAST week's to get compressed).

I don't think they were going for story there. They wanted an action film based around the sort of thing that navy seals actually do. So, plan some action sequences, string together a 24-esque from-one-emergency-to-the-next excuse plot, and Bob's your uncle. I doubt real life situations are very dramatic anyway.

The background I heard is that the filmmakers were doing training films or something with the seals and thought it would be cool to do an outright fictional movie in the same vein.

I didn't think the acting was bad at all, though perhaps I'm just not suited to be a proper acting critic.

BTW, what defines propaganda exactly? Is any movie with the military in which they are not the bad guys automatically propaganda? I know some people see it that way, though I hope not everybody does. I've heard that the Transformers films, what with the military cooperation and accurate use of terminology and such did turn out to boost recruitment a little. But that sort of thing seems more like a side effect than intentional propaganda.

Of course not - plenty of good films have soldiers as heroes without being labelled propaganda. Most tend to provide a slightly more balanced view of military life though.

However, it's not exactly difficult to see how this film could get that label. It started life as a recruitment video, it stars real soldiers, it received special treatment from the DOD, it glorifies military exploits. It does sound a lot like that Nazi propaganda film in Inglourious Basterds. Back before propaganda was a dirty word it would have been fine to refer to it in that way. (This is a good (honest) HuffPo piece on the relationship between the Pentagon and Hollywood.)

One thing that worries me is the contrast between people claiming the film is awesome and so realistic, versus the critics who say the individual characters have no distinct personality. Ultimately I'd say the film was doing a disservice to its members if it didn't dwell on negatives alongside the positive.

Consider the fact that the good guys are made to be as accurate as possible (to a heroic ideal of what a SEAL is), but the villains are invented out of whole cloth (to be as evil as possible).

In this movie: Are there any "bad guys" with second thoughts or compelling reasons to have the thought processes they do? Are there any soldiers who are terrible people who nonetheless do their job professionally? What about "good people" soldiers who commit atrocities through carelessness or out of fear or bad information? Are people unnecessarily put in harm's way because it will improve some officer's career if he provokes a situation? Basically, this is called propaganda because war is often (always?) ugly, unfair, and complicated but the movie (likely, I haven't seen it) portrays it as heroic, necessary, and ultimately beneficial without any deep thought going into it.

Honestly, Act of Valor bothers me.

It bothers me that there's a total disregard for OPSEC during the movie on the level of Geraldo drawing the path of the invading forces in the dirt on LIVE TV during the original Desert Storm.

It bothers me that the DOD had something to do with this and STILL allowed them to reveal tactics and weaponry that could be used by the enemy to exploit our weaknesses...

It bothers me that fellow military members sold out and none of the aforementioned two questions actually occurred to them at all. Hollywood probably just walked in with a giant bag of money and dropped trou', pointed, and said, "start suckin'" and they set right to work...

This is a blatant propaganda piece. There's no redeeming value in it, except to make high school graduates spooge in their collective pants and run pell-mell to join the Navy so they can become Navy SEALs swab decks.

The fact that FEpower and Ray loved this farce of a movie is the cherry on top of the ugliest sundae in the world.

John Carter looks like it was cut from the same cloth as the Transformers movies, only this time you won't see Megan Fox or HOT FORGETTABLE BRITISH CHICK or hear Shia LeBouf scream BEEEEEEEEEEE all movie long.

In short, both these movies look like pure garbage.

This post has been edited by Squidworth on Feb 29 2012, 06:56 PM

Wasn't act of valor originally supposed to be a DoD recruiting film or something?

I just can't get over how amazing the film is...

plus, this comes off VERY passive aggressive, considering.