Today I sat down to re-watch John Carter. It is based on the Martian Tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs. The basic idea is that a war veteran from Earth, in the late 1800’s, is mysteriously transported to the planet Mars, or Barsoom, as the natives call it. There he finds that the Red Planet is not dead, has an atmosphere and is populated with various races and beasts. Among these races are the Tharks, primitive, large, four-armed, green-skinned warriors, as well as the red men, human-like city-dwellers who use technology. It was the start of what’s become known as the Sword & Planet genre, where an Earth person goes to another world and gets involved in fighting in their political struggles, while carrying on a romance with (usually) someone in the royal caste.
Burrough’s tales influenced many other franchises that came after it – Flash Gordon, John Norman’s Gor, Star Wars, Avatar, and other’s. it was a seminal work in the science fantasy field and has had die-hard fans for nearly it’s entire 100+ year history. They may not be as widely known as any of the stories they influenced, but they are an important part of literary history. Are they great literature? No. Are they a heck of a lot of fun to read? Yes.
The film had a large budget, and was directed by Andrew Stanton, who also directed the animated films Finding Nemo and Wall-E, both box office successes. it didn’t have any big name stars but it did have a solid-cast of B-listers who turned in good performances.
If nothing else, the film got the look and feel of Barsoom right. The Tharks looked how I imagined them when reading the tales. So did the environmental elements of the planet. Even the white apes and Woola (a Martian ‘dog’) were pretty much the way they were described in Burrough’s works.
Taylor Kitsch plays John Carter, the fighting man who winds up in another world and is just trying to get home. Lynn Collins plays Dejah Thoris, the Princess who wants her people and Barsoom to remain free, Wilem Dafoe provides the voice of Tars Tarkis, the leader of the Thark warriors, Bryan Cranston plays Powell, an Army Colonel trying to get Carter to fight against the Apaches on Earth, and Mark Strong plays Matai Shang, the lead villainous Thern, mystical servants of the Martian Goddess Issus and manipulator of things behind the scenes. The entire cast does a solid job portraying their characters much like Burroughs wrote them.
The movie is considered one of the all-time greatest flops to come out of Hollywood. There were many reports before it was ever released that it was way over budget (false), that it had too many production problems (false), and that the studios didn’t believe in it enough to do any type of promotion for it (true.) In addition, Disney changed the tile from John Carter of Mars, which all of Burroughs fans would have been instantly drawn to, to just John Carter, which doesn’t really tell you anything about the movie.
Did the movie have problems? Yes. They didn’t go exactly with canon or the plot of A Princess of Mars (the first of ERB’s Martian Tales) but they kept enough elements of Barsoom in it to make it feel like it belonged. They mostly glossed over the whole romance between John Carter and Deja Thoris, that drove the first book. It was the basis of his deep love for Deja Thoris that kept Carter going back to Barsoom through eleven books worth of stories. John Carter is also a little more superhero than he was in the books, having much greater strength and agility, due to the lower gravity of Mars, of course. And they brought in the Therns who don’t show up much in the original tales and make them a more important part of the story.
This could have easily been a series of movies, but movie executives killed any idea of doing a sequel before the movie was released. They did very little promotion for the film beyond putting up posters and billboards. They could have released the trailer at Comic Con and gotten a large opening day audience. They could have planned merchandising – toys, lunch boxes, t-shirts, etc. – and probably done well. instead, they lost faith in the movie and deliberately tanked any chances it had before it was ever released.
I enjoyed the film and would have liked to seen more tales set in Barsoom. Burroughs had a large, vibrant canvas to play with and populated his world with good characters and imaginative flora and fauna. It’s been twelve years since it came out, probably not long enough yet for Hollywood to forget the bad taste of this version of the tales. But give it another few years and they’ll come back around to Barsoom and John Carter. I may yet get more movies.
Have you seen it, my Hordeling? What’d you think? Leave a comment and let me know.
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