While JOHN CARTER may have been a commercial and critical disappointment, the Andrew Stanton adventure movie has grown on fans since it hit Blu-ray, myself included. Set to be a franchise starter for Disney, JOHN CARTER instead faded into infamy. Many also looked at the movie coupled with BATTLESHIP as the death knell on Taylor Kitsch‘s career.
Since then, Kitsch has tried to shake those flops and has turned in strong performances in movies like SAVAGES and LONE SURVIVOR. This past weekend he delivered a powerful turn in Ryan Murphy‘s AIDS drama THE NORMAL HEART opposite Mark Ruffalo and Julia Roberts. There may be hope for Kitsch’s career yet, but there is pretty much zero chance we will ever see a JOHN CARTER sequel.
Speaking to Variety about his aspirations to be a director and taking challenging roles like THE NORMAL HEART, Kitsch reflected on JOHN CARTER and whether the bad press impacted him at all.
I mean, look man, it wasn’t an uplifting experience. My biggest regret would have been if I didn’t do enough personally. If I didn’t give it everything I had. If I hadn’t prepped enough. I don’t have that regret, so that allows me to let go. I still talk to Lynn Collins almost daily. Those relationships that were born won’t be broken by people we never met.
He also shared this about the potential sequel.
I miss the family. I miss Andrew Stanton. I know the second script was fucking awesome. We had to plant a grounding, so we could really take off in the second one. The second one was even more emotionally taxing, which was awesome.
JOHN CARTER had the impossible task of living up to the trailers that heralded it as the movie that inspired STAR WARS and AVATAR when many fans saw it and felt it was derivative of those films. Andrew Stanton had the incredible task of creating this entire world from scratch and delivering a unique film experience. I wish we would have gotten to see the further adventures they all had in store for us. At least we can still look back on the movie we got and enjoy it.
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