JOHN CARTER (2012)

Civil War-era soldier John Carter finds himself on the run from some Indians.  He's holed up in a cave when suddenly a funny looking dude appears and tries to kill Carter with a knife.  Carter beats the crap out of the guy and accidentally transports himself to Mars with the odd amulet the man was holding.  Once on Mars, John finds that because of the difference in gravity on Mars he's now superstrong and can jump super fucking high.  Added to this, John gets himself involved with an ongoing conflict between the three biggest groups on Mars...mainly due to the fact that the daughter of the blue group is hot as fuck!

As far as entertainment goes, JOHN CARTER is a good watch, but despite all of the bizarre creatures and action-packed sequences I still just felt kinda "blah" about the whole thing.  The biggest things that could have turned this into something more promising would have been: 1) different director.  I love FINDING NEMO and WALL-E is one of the greatest films of all time, but Stanton was just not the man for this job. 2) don't make Carter so depressing. 3) make Carter less indestructible. 4) make the Tharks less cartoonish and more threatening. 5) streamline the script.  There was way too much stuff going on.

Not a great film or a bad film, just merely a mediocre one.  That said, the ending was the best part and I probably would watch a sequel just to find out what happened.

RED DAWN (2012)

"Jesus bless the USAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!"  Oh, hey.  I didn't see you there.  Ever since I watched the RED DAWN remake a few days ago I've been marching around my house singing "God Bless America", saluting my cat, firing off fireworks, eating raw deer meat, drinking organic deer blood, plastering my truck with hundreds of Trump 2028 & NRA stickers, stockpiling millions of bullets and masturbating to Sarah Palin speeches.  I've never felt so patriotic before!

Following opening credits, that borrow heavily from the DAWN OF THE DEAD remake opening credits and tell us that North Korea is bad, we're introduced to our soon-to-be heroes at a Spokane, WA high school football game.  God must have liked the other team better because the Wolverines lose.  Afterwards, the football players rape some drunk chick...oh, wait, this is a fictional movie...I meant to say: they go eat freedom fries at a local hangout then go home and go to bed.  Cue the ominous sound effects and that bbder-der-der-der-der sound from BATTLESHIP, cause here come the North Koreans and they mean business!  But so do our pigskin throwing heroes.  They jump in their American made truck and wreck the shit out of everything on the way out of town.  They group up at a cabin and just one montage scene later they're ready to jihad the fuck out of these foreign buttholes.  Wolverines!!!

I think I've said it before, but I've always thought the purpose of doing a remake was to improve on the original.  The only thing this RED DAWN remake did was dumb it down and add lens flares.  It's not a bad film (I was entertained for the most part), but there was no surprises or standout scenes.  For a modern action movie, it all pretty standard: lots of shooting, lots of explosions, a tank, zero gore, zero blood, zero nudity, reality thrown far out the window, lens flare overdose, machine gun mounted on the top of a Mustang, enemy military so dumb that I'm not sure they manged to even find America let alone invade it, macho talking, "funny" scene with happy music.

The RED DAWN remake is watchable, but also totally forgettable. I wish the filmmakers had gone a much darker and grittier way instead.  If you need me, I'll be in my Y2K shelter praying for a Riverdale / Red Dawn crossover. Or, how about a Smallville / Red Dawn crossover!

Original - Red Dawn (1984)