I have been… well, I have been just incredibly busy lately. I mean, like wow. Significant overtime every week since I started my new job, significant percentage of time spent working (instead of “other”) even during the normal 40 hours, no time to finish a single book, nor to even play at a single video game, nor to watch a single movie. Well, sadly that’s untrue, I had time to watch one movie. But I had time to watch it weeks ago and did not have time to review it, which is the actually sad part of that story.

Because, yeah, watching John Carter? There was nothing sad about that at all! Except for how little I remember, of course. There’s this rich Civil War vet who has recently died, and he provides the stories of his adventures to his nephew and heir, none of which would be all that meaningful in the scheme of things except for how the journal in the bequeathment tells of an unexpected journey to a distant land full of flying airships, tall, green insectoid warriors, a particularly awesome canine companion, and of course a princess[1] in search of a savior for her people. It’s all very mythic and heroic, and I think it could have been the next big storytelling event, except that apparently it was just horrifically marketed to anyone who didn’t have fond memories of the century-old books on which it is based.

This is for me a huge disappointment, because I don’t care if everyone in Hollywood has already cannibalized the set pieces and the themes and if the purported audience did not understand what the point of the preview was. Because this is a damn fine story, no matter how stolen and how miscomprehended today, and if people would just walk into the theater and watch it, they’d be all “yay, that was good, make more of them for me now please!” And I know this will not happen, and that even if my review had not been too late, it still would have been far too little. Nevertheless, I will continue to wish[2] and to be willing to go see it again if anyone has interest and a more-flexible-than-mine schedule.

Maybe I’ll grab the books on Kindle if I can find a sufficient overlap of “cheap” and “moderately edited” in the reviews, and then be horrified by just how sexist they are in print! If I do, you will be the second or so to know. I promise.

[1] Spoiler alert: …of Mars!
[2] I mean, still bring back Firefly first, if we’re talking about screen wishes in my arsenal. Obviously. But still.