John Carter of Rigel

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Dude! This is Hollywood we are talking about... They cannot even produce a film based around real historical events without adding history altering flourishes that change much of the story, most of which are done without acknowledgement of the real history.

To be fair, history consists of people screwing up and dying, so a totally faithful adaption is probably a hard sell.

[Dan Gurden]

To be fair, history consists of people screwing up and dying, so a totally faithful adaption is probably a hard sell.

My favourite was U571... The Royal Navy operation to recover a working Enigma machine. Updated to a US Navy operation (probably easier than selling Jon Bon Jovi as a Royal Navy rating). Which got a LOT of flack, so much that the DVD release got something that was missing from the cinema release... A synopsis of the real ops that captured Enigma machines and who ran them.

Of course the final word was anecotal. I read somewhere that after the anti-hollywood internet ranting someone spoke with one of the RN veterans who was on the real submarine who stated something along the lines of; "The operation was kept secret for decades and nobody cared then, why should anyone care now?"

True or not... Everytime I see history changes in movies I remember that response and have found myself being a little more tolerant of them. Apart from Pearl Harbour, I really take the Team America line on that movie.

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Apart from Pearl Harbour, I really take the Team America line on that movie.

Wait, that it should've been done in Supermarionation?

[Sarge]

I heard on the radio that John Carter is now considered the biggest flop in movie history. We'd better not hold our breaths for a sequel.

[Owen E Oulton]

I did want to like this movie, but the liberties taken were beyond the pale. The plot involving the Therns was so out of place as to be laughable. They did a good job on the Tharks and Warhoon, but stumbled when it came to the storyline.

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Aside from the whole nostalgia angle, I'm not sure what exactly they were trying to accomplish with it anyway. The source material is buried so deep in the cultural strata of spacey adventure stories that any movie based off Burroughs is less an adaption than a meta-prequel to Star Wars. Like the subtextless and therefore redundantly predictable Starship Troopers sequels, it seems like a pointless exercise.