John Carter (2012)

Fri Oct 07, 2011 10:16 pm

I'm with you, vison. Unnecessary and distracting.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Fri Oct 07, 2011 11:15 pm

I wouldn't miss it a bit.

Post by **Maria** » Mon Oct 10, 2011 7:33 pm

I don't think I could appreciate Dwayne Johnson as John Carter .... I can't seem to get the last role I saw him in out of my head: The Tooth Fairy

Fri Dec 09, 2011 11:04 pm

Here is the second trailer.

I think I'm going to skip this movie. It might be a good movie, I don't know. But I don't think it is going to be remotely like my vision of A Princess of Mars.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Fri Dec 09, 2011 11:16 pm

Too many big army scenes. Not enough face-to-face drama.

OTOH, this is a trailer, aimed at the Blowin Stuff Up Real Good demographic. Given the director's other films, maybe there's more to this one than we've been shown.

Fri Dec 09, 2011 11:26 pm

Maybe. But the dialog that is included in the trailers is so far off from what I would hope for and expect that my expectations for the film has plummetted to zero. If the purpose of a trailer is to try to encourage people to check out the films, these trailers have had exactly the opposite effect on me. I've gone from being strongly interested in seeing the film, to not very interested.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Sat Dec 10, 2011 12:15 am

Oh, I'm not arguing for the quality of the films, and I do tend to think that if there were any of the elements you were looking for in this film, you'd have seen some sign of them by now. As I would for mine. There is no sign, for example, that Barsoom is going to look or feel any different from some fictional barbarian kingdom on Earth.

Post by **axordil** » Sat Dec 10, 2011 12:27 am

I'm taking the opposite approach and continuing to skip the books.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Sat Dec 10, 2011 12:39 am

We can't all have the same taste in cheese, I suppose.

But the books are some of the finest, IMO. A nice rich flavor, and well aged.

Post by **Alatar** » Sat Dec 10, 2011 1:23 am

Alatar wrote:Well, having never read the books, that looks like it could be stonking good fun, which I imagine is the style they're going for. Looks like "The Mummy" or "Prince of Persia". Good old fashioned B-Movie sensibilites updated for the modern audience.

No need to change my mind yet!

Post by **vison** » Sat Dec 10, 2011 1:30 am

Hm.

Well, I still think Dwayne Johnson would have been the perfect John Carter - considering that they are indeed camping it up pretty good.

I'll probably see it and cuss all the way through.

Just like I did with LOTR . . . . .

Post by **yovargas** » Sat Dec 10, 2011 1:31 am

The look reminds me a whole heckuva lot of the Star Wars prequels.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Sat Dec 10, 2011 1:45 am

Me, too. Which doesn't help.

Post by **vison** » Sat Dec 10, 2011 1:49 am

These books were not intellectually challenging, of course. They were straight-ahead adventure stories with a pretty nearly invincible hero and a staggeringly beautifuly heroine. The plots were so full of unbelievable coincidences and far-fetched events that they made your eyebrows go up when you read them. Burroughs never used a short word when a long word was available.

But. But somehow, I have always loved them. The very first science fiction story I ever read was A Princess of Mars. It was, indeed, the fact that it was set on MARS that caught my imagination. Heaven knows Tarzan was about the same character - and, yes, I loved Tarzan, too.

Burroughs had an amazing imagination. He made up whole races of men and beasts that were really quite original. He was funny about some details - going to great lengths to explain how the Martian clock correlated to the Earth clock. Then skipping over other much more important information and just thundering along with the story.

Although he was prone to making blatantly racist remarks, some of his heroic characters were Black Martians. He was insanely sexist (probably not unusual for his era) and yet one of his most endearing characters was a brave and bold girl who wound up with the hero when all the other girls were fainting and whining and worrying about their hairdos.

I would have loved to think the stories would be made into swell movies, but the reality is, it won't happen. They might be good fun, but the "spirit" won't be there.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Sat Dec 10, 2011 2:14 am

I think to enjoy the books a reader has to be able to suspend not just her disbelief, but also her modernity. A hero is a hero because he does heroic things, and he has no "heroic flaw" (other than a certain sterling lunkheadedness that I don't think ERB intended). A heroine is the same, flawed only by her inability to admit her feelings for the hero until they are about to plunge to their doom in the Pits of Death or something. (This is not because she's playing hard to get; it's because the hero is nobly unwilling to admit his own feelings for a woman who is under his sole protection and has nowhere else to turn if she shrinks from him. And until he speaks, she can't admit her own feelings without being unmaidenly.)

(Or sometimes she's betrothed to someone else and can't speak.)

Anyway. It's all very premodern, which is precisely what I like about it. Given the times, the racism is pretty muted. For a long time John Carter is the only white man on Barsoom, at least until another lost race is discovered—who, though white-skinned, are entirely craven and evil.

And the female characters, even the "traditional" ones, kick butt when they must.

But it's all outside any kind of modern social problems; it doesn't address them. It's on another planet, in another age. It's just an adventure. There is cool stuff around every corner. The language is florid but pulls the susceptible reader right along to Barsoom.

Which is why a "modern" treatment of the story, full of hidden cultural references and in-jokes, would let the magic out of the story by letting our world in. It's like having Frodo and company drop by the 7-11 in Bree to load up on Doritos for their trip into the Wilderness.

Post by **vison** » Sat Dec 10, 2011 4:40 am

Doritos?

Heck, no.

Kettle chips. The really hard kind, with sea salt and pepper.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Sat Dec 10, 2011 7:26 am

So that's what was in Sam's wooden box in the movie!

Ooops, sorry.

Post by **Maria** » Mon Dec 12, 2011 5:30 pm

Prim wrote:The language is florid but pulls the susceptible reader right along to Barsoom.

I started reading ERB books when I was about 8 or 9. The language seems completely normal to me.

And the modern concept of a flawed hero is one I've never bought into. I like my heroes to be awesome.

Post by **Alatar** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 1:22 pm

Here's a glimpse of what might have been!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTAlgZlqwnQ

John Carter almost become a movie way back in 1931, in animated form and with the help of Looney Tunes main man Bob Clampett. Check out what remains of that early test, which was completed a full six years before Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

The following contradicts that timeline, but I'm sure the truth is out there somewhere!

Back in the 1940's, animation director Bob Clampett (director of Bugs Bunny and creator of Beany and Cecil) proposed a series of animated theatrical shorts adapting the John Carter of Mars books by Edgar Rice Burroughs (creator of Tarzan). This footage was the test reel for the studios. Apparently one major hollywood studio was interested in producing these shorts, but changed their mind when they thought the concept might be to weird for some people.

It's to bad they never got made. Who knows what direction animation might have taken if they had.

Post by **Alatar** » Mon Feb 06, 2012 11:40 am

The Superbowl spot

http://youtu.be/7krwq5hZPY0