Note: This appeared slightly edited in the TV Guide of The Marshall Independent. (I don’t get to say “you moron!” in print.)
As a youthful fan of Edgar Rice Burroungs wonderful Mars books, I, like every other would-be pathan (soldier of fortune) of Barsoom (Mars) awaited the opening of “John Carter” with mixed feelings of anticipation and dread.
Well dread not. In spite of a lot of bad reviews, it’s not terrible.
On the other hand, it’s not terribly good either.
It’s not doing very well at the box office. “John Carter” cost around $350 million to make, and made a paltry $30 million its opening weekend.
We fans had to wait for the CGI technology to film the stories of Capt. John Carter of Virginia, formerly of the Confederate States Army cavalry. His
better-known literary sibling Tarzan, who also first appeared in 1912 (!!!) could be filmed on a studio tricked up to look like a jungle, with lots of African-American extras. (Or if there was even a hint of physical attraction between characters, Hispanic extras standing in for hitherto-unknown light-skinned African tribes.)
But Capt. Carter’s best friend is a nine-foot-tall four-armed green giant. He rides eight-legged thoats, and has a pet that’s kind of a cross between a dog and a frog, but is nonetheles adorable.
So now they’ve got the tech. And they had for a director Andrew Stanton, who previously directed “Finding Nemo,” and “Wall-E,” produced “Monsters Inc.” and “Up,” and wrote the “Toy Story” trilogy.
So what went wrong?
Walt Disney Studios Chairman Rich Ross said, “Moviemaking does not come without risk. It’s still an art, not a science, and there is no proven formula for success.”
Well there may not be a surefire formula for a hit, BUT YOU COULD TRY STICKING TO THE STORY YOU MORON!
Firstly, John Carter is immortal, ageless, and does not remember a childhood. He is nonetheless some kind of uncle to Edgar Rice Burroughs, and a Virginian.
He is also the (self-confessed) best swordsman of two worlds.
Native Virginians to this day have distinct accents, manners, and mannerisms. Believe me, my mother is a Virginian.
Taylor Kitsch is young, and it shows. He can’t do a Virginia accent, or couldn’t be bothered, and his fight scenes are CGI enhanced “wire-Fu” rather than fencing.
Lynn Collins however does look rather like what I imagined what Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium to be. They’ve made her a professor and given her skills with a sword to satisfy modern conventions of female heroism, but the Princess of Mars was always courageous and clever.
Still I confess I miss the old corny dialog, “Fly Sola! Dejah Thoris stays to die with the man she loves!”
In the original trilogy of what eventually became a series of 11 books, the Therns were one of the ancient races of Mars (which aside from the dominant red race included black, white, and yellow humanoids) who were running a very long religious con. For some reason Disney chose to recast them as shape-shifting aliens from somewhere outside the solar system, who are exploiting both Earth and Mars for their own nefarious designs.
To be said for the film, visually it’s Barsoom brought to life. The cities, fliers, the green men and strange animals do not disappoint. My son thought it was great, so perhaps this will be his gateway into Burroughs’ Barsoom.
Burroughs was, to paraphrase George Orwell about Rudyard Kipling, a writer of good bad literature. His incredible imagination and ability to paint vivid word pictures made you suspend disbelief in scientific absurdities like flying boats kept aloft by tanks filled with mysterious “rays.” You never stop to wonder why warriors who have pistols and rifles that can fire “radium bullets” to the horizon prefer to fight with swords. You aren’t even taken aback by earthmen who mate with beautiful women who look human but lay eggs. You just enjoy.
Starting in 1918 with “Tarzan of the Apes,” Burroughs’ adventures set in the jungles of Africa, on Mars, Venus, inside the hollow Earth, and in hidden lands in Antarctica have been filmed many times, but seldom if ever with scripts that stick to the stories.
Do you suppose that would be too much to ask?