John Carter

Just in time for Friday Night Lights Day—already commemorated by the show’s surprisingly strong showing at the Emmys and a valedictory round of “y’alls” from Connie Britton—comes the trailer for John Carter, the film that hopes to make Taylor Kitsch (FNL’s well-intentioned bad boy Tim Riggins) into a bona fide leading man. The adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter Of Mars book series stars Kitsch as a Civil War soldier inexplicably transported to the Red Planet—which here looks a lot like the Utah desert—where he becomes embroiled in an ongoing alien war and boasts nipples that follow you around the room like the Mona Lisa’s eyes. There’s not much of a linear plot yet in this brief teaser, and it even confounds things further by attempting to bookend a real-life story involving Burroughs himself. Ironically for a film set on Mars, however, there is plenty of atmosphere—though most of it comes courtesy of Peter Gabriel’s cover of the Arcade Fire’s “My Body Is A Cage.” Anyway, seeing as this is the live-action debut of Pixar guru Andrew Stanton, there are definitely some heavy expectations for the film’s visual effects, which may also remain something of a question, particularly after that brief glimpse of a gun-toting CGI alien. Still, what little is there is intriguing enough—and hey, it’s Tim Riggins in space. Mars forever, Street. Mars forever.