Who better than John C. Wright….

Founder of the Space Princess Movement, to offer a brilliant and penetrating review of John Carter of Mars?

Or if you want a spoiler-free take, here’s mine: Star Wars Episode II meets Dances with Tharks. I can see why the filmmakers make the choices they do with Carter’s character. You can’t have a hero who starts out saying, “Because I’m just so naturally strong and righteous I of course waded into battle with my foes and defeated them” (as Edgar Rice Burrough’s John Carter does–reminding me more than anything of Captain Hammer). But giving us the standard issue Postmodern Hero with doubts about himself, the need to come to terms with his Dark Past, so forth makes him something other than John Carter, manly pulp fiction hero of my grandfather’s boyhood. A pity, but the past is another country and our age is almost uniquely crippled in it ability to imagine or appreciate any age or culture that is not Us Right Now.