Over the course of Christmas Day, I was watching movies with
my family. And by some chance, we decided to cover a double feature of two
recent science fiction blockbusters, namely Guardian
of the Galaxy and John Carter. I
had seen both before (in fact, I wrote my thoughts about Guardians here),
but watching them back-to-back gave me a reason to compare and contrast the
two.
Obviously, the two films enjoyed vastly different levels of
success. While Guardians just became the
highest grossing film of the year, John
Carter barely made
back its budget, likely ending any chance at a franchise. What exactly
caused such a
Well, there probably isn’t one simple answer. Or rather,
there is: Guardians is just a better
victory overall. But that’s not too helpful unless we break it down into the
minutiae. And while there are several reasons that Guardians is better, I’d like to focus specifically on one specific
storytelling aspect.