Taylor Kitsch looked really, really handsome at the UK premiere of John Carter last night in London, didn’t he? I like how rosy his cheeks are.

More importantly though, especially as it relates to TK’s career...

The first reviews for John Carter have been released and they’re not bad. I mean, not everyone liked it, but the ones who didn’t like it didn’t despite it, and the ones who did like it have a lot of good things to say. Drew McWeeny from HitFix is actually calling it a “gem”. And McWeeny also posits that John Carter may indeed be a victim of an appalling poor marketing strategy. A deliberately poor marketing strategy? Click here to revisit the article from a few weeks ago about the power struggle happening at Disney and how John Carter may have been sacrificed in service of some executive scheming to oust the current studio head.

Now chill your ass before you start sputtering...

I’m not saying John Carter is a GOOD movie. I have no idea, I haven’t seen it. But they were calling this a bomb. Like a total unmitigated disaster. At this point, that sounds like a gross exaggeration. If anything, John Carter is probably a mediocre movie and, well, big budget action fantasy films usually are. And most of them don’t get the sh-t pounding that John Carter has been taking for months. So...

Was there really a conspiracy afoot?

Keep an eye on the reviews for this one. Not because you actually care how the movie is but because it’s an interesting case study on how Hollywood players can f-ck around with hundreds of millions of dollars just to win a popularity contest. While actors like TK are caught in the balance.