10 Great Blockbusters Held Back By A Terrible Lead Performance
3. Taylor Kitsch - John Carter
John Carter is nowhere near as bad of a movie as the dismal box office performance and subsequent reputation as one of the biggest financial disasters of all-time would suggest, but Andrew Stanton's sci-fi epic failed miserably on two very important counts.
One was the marketing, with the promo footage making it come across as yet another in a long line of familiar space operas, despite the fact that Edgar Rice Burroughs' source material was one of the most influential works in the genre that had inspired everything from Star Wars to Avatar.
The other was the leading man, with 2012 going down in the history books as the year Hollywood tried and failed to turn Taylor Kitsch into a movie star. With all of the world-building, extensive mythology, intergalactic warfare and green-screen shenanigans filling virtually every frame of the movie, John Carter required a leading man able to hold his own against all of the technological wizardry on show, not one that would fade into the background.
He tried his best, but a niche story like A Princess of Mars needs a hero that both fans and more casual viewers can identify with and relate to, and Kitsch's monotone and relentlessly stoic performance ended up going down like a lead balloon.