Taylor Kitsch Puts ‘John Carter’ Flop Behind Him

Taylor Kitsch’s movie career didn’t exactly get off to the best start. Kitsch starred in John Carter, a film that was a pretty colossal flop–a very expensive flop, too–for Walt Disney and everyone involved.

Taylor has a second chance at stardom with Battleship, which is out in theaters right now. Reviews of the film are leaning heavily towards it being, well, awful, but the film is actually starting to make its money back, unlike John Carter.

With John Carter being such a failure, you couldn’t blame Kitsch for not being overly optimistic about his future as an actor. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, however, it sounds like Kitsch is taking it like a champ.

“This guy came up to me and goes, ‘Next one. Don’t worry about it, you’ll be fine,’” Kitsch recalled in the interview. “I’m like, ‘I’m not worried about it, man. I didn’t market the movie. I didn’t finance it. I gave everything I had to the film.’ It sucks to feel like you have to be defensive. But if someone’s gonna take the fall, it’s gonna be me.”

Peter Berg, the director of Battleship and the man responsible for casting Kitsch as Tim Riggins in the popular TV series Friday Night Lights, said “there’s a difference between [Kitsch] living up to the hype and a movie he’s in not performing well.”

“”No one I’ve ever heard of has had the year he’s had,” Berg said. “So it’s hard for people not to say, ‘Who the hell is this guy?” Berg said, adding, “Yeah, ‘John Carter’ hurt him. But it wasn’t like he was inconsolable, walking around with a rope looking for a branch.”

Do you think Taylor Kitsch isn’t getting enough credit as an actor?