DVD Of The Week: John Carter (2012)

Andrew Stanton's take on John Carter isn't a pure adaptation of A Princess of Mars - Edgar Rice Burrough's launchpad for his Barsoom cycle - but a distillation of elements from the first couple of books, with some elements added or expanded and others abridged.

Nineteenth Century Southern gentleman and cavalry captain-turned-treasure hunter John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) finds himself transported to ancient Mars (or Barsoom as the natives call it) and drawn into an alien war beyond his comprehension.

A mysterious race of shape-changing beings called Therns - and represented by the coolly evil Mark Strong - are manipulating the humanoid Red Martians of the cities of Zodanga and Helium into an apocalyptic conflict.

In the meantime, Carter is captured by the Tharks, a tribe of giant, four-armed Green Martians, who have their own conflicts with the Wahoons (another tribe of Green Martians) to worry about.

While with the Tharks, Carter meets the gorgeous Helium Princess - and scientist - Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins), whose marriage to the leader of Zodanga, Sab Than (Dominic West) could spell an end to the conflict... if it wasn't a duplicitous trick to leave Helium vulnerable to invasion.

Carter, naturally, falls in love with Dejah (and vice versa), and while striving to find a way home he also aids in turning the tide of the war - by getting the Tharks involved.

The sundry machinations of various parties make for a quite complex plot, against which the love story of Carter and Dejah plays out, and if the film has a fault it's that the motivations and objectives of the Therns isn't explicitly spelled out.

However, that's a small price to pay when we are presented with some of the most exquisite world-building I've seen on screen.

Barsoom, its creatures, its landscape and language come alive at the hands of master storyteller Andrew Stanton. He manages to simultaneously re-invent Edgar Rice Burrough's 100-year-old classic for the 21st Century and lovingly pay it tribute.

Remember - if you're old enough - that feeling you felt the first time you saw Star Wars at the cinema (the original, not the prequels)? Well, brace yourself for a return performance.

This is a sweeping, epic, summer blockbuster that you actually have to pay attention to, not a popcorn slugfest like the highly enjoyable Avengers but an intelligent and layered piece of pulp sci-fi.

I always had high hopes for John Carter, but the reality far exceeded my expectations. It is a truly impressive feat of film-making that deserves a far larger audience - and far more acclaim - than it got upon its release at the cinema.

Everything about it - from the nuanced performances and special effects to the breathtaking realisation of Barsoom - is pitch perfect. No-one involved with this masterful movie should be ashamed to say they had a part in bringing the iconic science-fiction character of John Carter to life.

For my money, this is looking like a strong contender to be the DVD Of The Year and if I had seen it at the cinema (I refused to take the risk - and pay the extra cost - to see it in 3D and yet that was the only way possible around here) it could also have been in the running for Film Of The Year.

Ignore a lot of the nonsense that has been written about this movie - and the negative reviews - and be prepared to visit another planet for the adventure of a lifetime.

I sincerely hope that - eventually - Disney gets round to making a well-deserved sequel to John Carter, but perhaps learns from its mistakes and markets it a bit more aggressively (like they did with The Avengers) next time round.