(Spoilers) John Carter Review

***SPOILER WARNING: Spoilers may be found in the post below about VARIOUS ITEMS. And I'm going to add in a bit of filler text here to limit how much of the main article gets shown in a preview. That should take care of most of it. Hopefully. And away we go. SPOILER WARNING. ***

Saw it when it hit TV. Wanted to see what the buzz was about.

Overview
John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) from Earth during the 1800s ends up on Mars where he fights for a faction against powerful beings. Action adventure?

Good or Bad?
How did I hear about this movie? Probably when it hit the news that the movie with the really big budget didn't do that great at the box office. My expectations were, thus, very low going into this.

I was extremely surprised and impressed by the end of it. John Carter felt like an epic adventure. I would describe it as the story of a man from Earth who lost his way but rediscovered himself after an accidental trip to Mars. It's revealed that John Carter's wife and child were killed some time in the past. What made him special on Mars was his super-human strength -- as a result of the difference in gravity and what his body was acclimatized to? In this universe, Mars was populated by a fairly advanced human-like species and giant humanoid, green "aliens." There was gunpowder and swords but flying/floating aircraft, so it was like pirates or sailing ships in the air?

The movie was entertaining as far as I was concerned. There was extensive use of CGI/special effects and everything looked high quality. Everything felt large. Many scenes were in huge, populated cities, others in huge empty deserts. Michael Giacchino of Lost contributed to the music, which I loved. Acting, live and voice, were more than adequate for my liking.

One of my favorite scenes involved an orchestral arrangement and a one against a thousand battle with John Carter alone. Intermittent scenes of him burying his wife and child were mixed into the sequence.

It was a fun, action movie with an interesting premise that I enjoyed a lot. I've rewatched it a few times at this point and found it just as good -- some of the novelty wore off during subsequent viewings. Surprised it didn't do better at the box office.