![]() Stanton comes across as bluff, confident, and slightly overwhelmed, saying “This is what I wanted - after two decades in animation I was spontaneity-starved." Given the multiple plot issues still surrounding the film while the article was being reported, it would appear the director got all he desired – and more. ![]() The piece is overwhelmingly positive (and stranded behind a paywall, I’m sorry to report), but it was possible to see the stress surrounding the film. In October of this year, The New Yorker ran a long profile of Stanton that examined his struggles on John Carter. And “of Mars” was lopped off the title, ostensibly to placate women filmgoers who don’t truck with sci-fi. The release date was pushed back almost a year, from Jto March 9, 2012. Director Andrew Stanton was making his first live-action film after great success at Pixar with Finding Nemo and WALL-E. Sure, it would feature Friday Night Lights heartthrob Taylor Kitsch and be presented in 3D, but those were just the commercial concessions, right?Īs if the sprawling source material wasn’t challenge enough, the project has gone through some very public struggles. (The narrative of the movie is mostly taken from A Princess of Mars, although it was heavily adapted by a screenwriting team that included author Michael Chabon.) It seemed as though someone had finally devoted the sort of resources these books needed to make a jump to the screen. John Carter is Disney’s opening salvo in what could be a series of Barsoom films. The idea of making a film out of this material grows more daunting by the page.Įnter the Mouse. There are giant, ruined cities, flying armadas, and multiple aliens races engaged in full-scale battle – all in the first few chapters. The other characteristic of A Princess of Mars that leapt off the page was its overwhelmingly epic scope. In fact, Burroughs’ passion for dividing the inhabitants of Barsoom by color (Green, Red, White) recalls some of Tolkien’s squickier forays into eugenics. As one might expect from the era – the stories first appeared in print in 1912 – the books also feature rampant sexism and racism. Burroughs’ prose is still compulsively readable, which should come as no surprise given the series’ serialized origins. It had been years since I read any of the Barsoom books, so I revisited the first, A Princess of Mars. ![]() and Traci Lords, but none featured the big budget special effects necessary to bring Burroughs’ complex world to life. Numerous filmic adaptations have been attempted, including a memorable 2009 endeavor featuring Antonio Sabato Jr. The books feature many of the familiar trappings of the space opera: multi-limbed aliens, feisty princesses, mystical priesthoods, badass weapons, and loveable monsters. ![]() The Tarzan author wrote eleven books in over thirty years set on his war-torn, techno-magic version of Mars, blazing a trail for all who followed. Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series is rightly recognized as a seminal achievement in modern science fiction. ![]()
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