08/08/2025
🎬 John Carter 2: Gods of Mars
Taylor Kitsch | Lynn Collins | Willem Dafoe | Samantha Morton
“A legend returns. A planet remembers.”
Mars—Barsoom—is dying again. Not by war, but by forgetting.
A decade has passed since John Carter vanished, dragged back to Earth just as he found love, purpose, and a name among the people of Barsoom. On Earth, time has moved slower than it seems, but for the red planet, civil unrest and failing belief have pushed its fragile balance to the edge. The Therns—those manipulative immortals Carter once thought destroyed—have returned, no longer hiding their hand. They seek to awaken a buried power deep beneath the sands: the God of Memory, a being that feeds on forgotten faith and fuels extinction with apathy.
Carter 2: Gods of Mars begins in shadow. John Carter, now older, disillusioned, and searching for meaning in postbellum America, receives a message from beyond the stars. A Thern has defected, begging Carter to return before Barsoom loses the last of its soul. But Carter's return isn't triumphant—it’s painful, fragmented. The Mars he left is a ghost of itself.
Helium is fractured. Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins), now ruling without a council, is pulled between diplomacy and war. She remains fierce, loyal—but Carter’s absence has etched caution deep into her bones. Her scenes pulse with tension—love tested by silence, command challenged by ambition.
Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe), proud leader of the Tharks, finds himself caught in rebellion. The younger generation sees Carter as myth, not man. Sola (Samantha Morton), ever the quiet voice of reason, holds the remnants of unity together, but even she fears what lies beneath the crust of their world.
Taylor Kitsch returns with a gravity not present in the first film. His Carter has matured. He doesn’t leap toward war—he considers, reflects, and when he finally acts, it carries the weight of a world that once crowned him a savior.
The film’s visual style blends classical pulp with meditative awe. Gone are the clean chrome ships of standard sci-fi. Here, everything bleeds rust and legend. Vast deserts hold echoes of gods. Monoliths whisper. Temples float, tethered only by belief. There’s a remarkable stillness between action sequences—a haunting calm that mirrors Carter’s own inner war.
Director Andrew Stanton returns with deeper storytelling ambition. This is not just spectacle. It’s allegory. The battles are vast, yes—airships and bone beasts and collapsing sky cities—but they’re never louder than the themes: identity, legacy, faith. The enemy this time isn’t just the Therns—it’s forgetting why we fight at all.
The climax is intimate and immense. Carter must confront the Memory God within a hallucinated version of Earth. He relives moments he’d locked away—loss, guilt, fear. In order to save Barsoom, he must give up the one thing he still clings to: himself.
In the final scene, Carter and Dejah walk hand in hand through the ruins of an ancient Martian palace. No crown. No victory. Just resolve.
Gods of Mars is not just a sequel—it’s a meditation on time, belief, and what it means to belong to a dying world.
Rating: 9.2/10
