Jonh Carter

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I love Edgar Rice Burroughs and John Carter is probably my favorite character of his (sorry Tarzan).

I'm really looking forward to this.

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=WR6HUkzxjR0[/youtube]

I just saw it and liked it a lot. I can't understand why it tanked at the box office. Granted, the story is a bit complicated, but it's fun, visually stunning, and has a healthy dose of self-irony.



Tars Tarkas is one of the most engaging alien characters I've seen. And the 3D looks great, even though it was added in post-production.

Last edited by Icheb on 21 Mar 2012, 12:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I saw it in IMAX 3D opening weekend and this movie was awesome.

Here's a link to some reasons why it flopped so badly:
http://theweek.com/article/index/225458 ... 6-theories

I just saw the movie myself and I'm a bit torn....

I give the movie an A visually and a C for story. It was a hoot to see Barsoom live and breathe.


One of my obsessions is pulp sci-fi and fantasy. I absolutely love Edgar Rice Burroughs (John Carter, Tarzan...) and Robert E. Howard (Conan the Barbarian).

Those guys are so great (neither has ever been out of print) because they built compelling, intricate worlds and then told simple, powerful, ass-kicking adventure stories in them!

The story in A Princess of Mars, the first book in the Barsoom series, is basically:

Mysterious soldier of forturne, John Carter is somehow transported to Mars where he has supernormal strength and agility thanks to low Martian gravity. He is captured by the barbarous Thark Horde, but soon wins acceptance as a warrior/chief among them.

After a raid on airships from the city of Helium, the Thark capture Deja Thoris. Carter is immediately smitten, but Deja Thoris despises him for helping the green hordes.

In the end, Carter unites the Thark and the city of Helium and conquers an entire planet to win Deja.

It's a simple, powerful, action packed story and it would have been very easy to translate into a movie.

Why they changed the story and made it so needlessly complicated, I'll never understand. It's like they took "cool bits" from about 3-4 books and mashed them into a mess.

John Carter is primal, hero with a thousand faces type stuff... I really don't understand how professional writers could screw it up so badly.

Just how did John Carter get to Barsoom (Mars)?

ruveyn

It's not really explained in the book. He notices a swirling gas and starts to feel tired and he collapses, and when he wakes up, he's on Mars. In the movie, there's some kind of amulet, a little metal charm that beams a Thern to Earth, which Carter uses to beam to Mars.

I think that's where things started going wrong....

When the writers started "doctoring" the story they became obsessed with explaining how Carter gets to Mars and things snowballed from there.


ERB didn't give a damn how Carter got to Mars because it did not matter--it wasn't relevant. He just left it as some sort of vague astral projection type thing and got on with the story.

ERB did sort of hint that Carter wasn't simply an ordinary man. Carter didn't have any memory of his childhood and he didn't age either.... Personally, I always thought he was really some kind of Martian exile.

Actually, that sounds cheesier to me than the movie's explanation. We don't need another Highlander/Wolverine.

Two points...
1.) It would not have been "another" it would have been the first...

B.-- ERB stayed away from the whole issue because he knew he didn't have a good explanation.

Burroughs was not an artist, but he was a great natural storyteller and he'd never let a silly thing like a plot point get in the way of a good yarn.



PS

The bottom line is the Therns should not have been in this movie. All they did is confuse things and get in the way of a good story.


....that's my take anyway.

Saw it today, good movie, though the 3D didn't really add anything to it, other then being neat.

I'll wait until DVD. I'm not going to pay expensive ticket prices to be forced to watch in a format I cannot stand, namely 3D.

The only reason I saw it was because I was head over heals in love with Taylor Kitsch, if it were any other actor I wouldn't have even bothered seeing it, because the civil war on Mars just doesn't interest me

The only reason I saw it was because I was head over heals in love with Taylor Kitsch, if it were any other actor I wouldn't have even bothered seeing it, because the civil war on Mars just doesn't interest me

I waited to see John Carter on DVD, though I had wanted to see it in the theaters. My interest in the series stems from the fact that my Dad had been a big Burroughs fan, who had regaled me as a kid by recounting the stories about Carter and Tars Tarkus he had read. He was himself such an incredible story teller that he was able to paint vivid pictures of Barsoom in my pre-adolescent head. I just wish he had lived to see the movie.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer