"John Carter of Mars" Moving Ahead!

[Ptrope]

Over the years, we've seen plenty of illustrated Barsoom, from the aforementioned covers by Frazetta, Whelan and others, to the interior illustrations, to a Marvel comic. They all depicted a fairly uniform look to the material, and none of them needed to venture into nudity to be 'accurate' to the material - and I doubt it bothered anyone; even knowing how Burroughs described his characters, my personal vision of John Carter and Dejah Thoris is that of the art we bought with our books, and as long as the movie has a similar sensibility, in both character and set design, I'll be happy as a clam!

 

[Greg Cox]

There was also a DC Comic version, predating the Marvel version. And, yeah, those managed to be plenty of fun despite that fact that Dejah Thoris was wearing chain mail bikini or something.

 

[Ptrope]

Didn't know about that ... although it appears that Barsoom has been extremely popular over the years in both pulps and comics. Here's at least one DC attempt: Weird Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs. There are many other explorations on this site, as well.

I thought I thaw a thark on a thoat!
- Tho what?
( A cartoon I saw once, possibly in Starlog)

 

[Teek]

I'm excited to see how this turns out. Wonder if they'll actually make Dejah red. Would be nice to see them stick to that, which would hopefully help ensure we eventually get the Yellow, Black and White Martians as well.

The first three books could easily become a trilogy, with a nice cliffhanger in movie 2 leading into the third.

If the movie series proves popular enough, they could then introduce the kids and go that direction, or go to one of the later books where John Carter becomes one of the main characters again.

If anything comes out of the movies, I hope we get Thuvia, Maid of Mars and Chessmen of Mars. I always liked the Kaldanes and the bowman. I always thought the secondary leads outside of John Carter and that part of the world could also make a good potential syndicated series.

 

[Greg Cox]

I think the DC version originally ran as a back-up feature in their TARZAN comic.

 

[ToddPence]

A movie version of "The Chessmen of Mars" would be awesome. That's my favorite of all the Mars books. On the old ERB mailing list, my server name was Gahan. I always thought that that one "Prisoner" episode was inspired by this book . . .

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Lasseter already stated that Pixar won't be handling the VFX, since they have no intention of becoming a VFX house and there are other studios that do that better. I agree personally, VFX is pretty different from animation.

Besides, if they have the people to spare in Pixar, they should instead be putting them to work on getting these movies out a little faster than just one per year. And dagnabit, I still want to see The Incredibles 2!

I'm just thrilled that the Sky Captain guy is no longer involved with this project. That was a truly horrible movie and a well-deserved flop.

I give those folks credit for trying, though. It was a good effort that just fell a bit short, perhaps. Would like to see them try again.

I agree with you that the concept was great, and visually some portions of the movie were breathtaking. But virtually everything else failed, IMO - the story was terrible, the pacing was awful, the acting was bizarrely wooden and strange.

They also greatly miscalculated the public's interest in seeing this type of retro-sci-fi style film. They thought it was going to be a huge blockbuster when in fact it's only real audience were hardcore sci-fi fans with an appreciation for early pulp stories from the 1930s and '40s. Which is why I doubt we'll see this style of movie again any time soon (which is a shame, because I would love to see this type of approach on a Lensman movie series.)

It's worth noting that the Indiana Jones films are pretty retro and they've been very successful. But while the Indiana Jones movies have a very retro vibe, they were still made with some modern production sensibilities. The washed-out color of Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow makes it very difficult to look at. (IIRC, this was a last-minute production compromise. The filmmakers wanted to do a black & white film. The studio refused.) Beyond that, the story was dull & confusing and much of the acting was very bad. (I think the movie might have been more fun if Angelina Jolie had been given the lead role that went to Gweneth Paltrow.) And doing ALL of the sets as CGI, even mundane stuff like the offices, probably didn't do anyone any favors.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I think the DC version originally ran as a back-up feature in their TARZAN comic.

Yep, Then it moved to Weird Worlds. The Korak title had Carson of Venus and Pellucidar as back ups.

 

[Blue_Trek]

I remember reading these books and enjoying them as a teenager.

These are some of pictures from the series

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/149/424905217_7f7cecb7e6.jpg

or this one

SWEET JESUS DON'T DO REMOTE LINKS TO THAT SITE BECAUSE IT WAS GODDAMN TUBGIRL HOLY SHIT

or this one

http://www.thuvia.org/images/thuvia.jpg

 

[Teek]

Apparently your second link prevents off site linking. It's digusting. You should remove it.

 

[Ptrope]

^^

Seconded! That ... image ... also comes up when one is on the site and hits the linked thumbnail; they either have a sick sense of humor, or someone hacked their site.

Here's another version of the intended image:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_8R_JOdSPKak/Se4vWxYnf1I/AAAAAAAAACg/4gkTA4XMu3o/s320/juskoerb.jpg

 

[Timby]

^^

Seconded! That ... image ... also comes up when one is on the site and hits the linked thumbnail; they either have a sick sense of humor, or someone hacked their site.

I doubt it's a hack; I'm sure they simply want to discourage remote linking to their Web space. Although there are more subtle ways of doing it than Tubgirl.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Well, I'm glad I came too late to experience that.

Michael Whelan, however, rocks.

 

[Blue_Trek]

I double checked that site and it worked fine, I wonder what happened.
Sorry if I offended anybody that was not my intent, it was an accident.

There, no linking this time

 

[Forbin]

A memory just came flooding back from the pic. A girl I went to art school with in the 70s liked to paint things on vans and cars. She had an old blue Cutlass with a beautiful 6-legged Barsoomian lion painted on the hood.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

I think there's an interview @ movieweb.com where Thomas Hayden Church mentions that John Carter of Mars is one of his upcoming projects.

I have this book called The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made. In the afterword written by Harry Knowles, he mentions a movie that wasn't offically covered in the book-- a 1930s cell animated adaptation of John Carter of Mars. Had it been made, it would have predated Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs as the first ever animated feature film. The animation tests are said to have looked like a living oil painting. Unfortunately, the financial backers got nervous and dropped out.

 

[Mysterion]

I have this book called The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made. In the afterword written by Harry Knowles, he mentions a movie that wasn't offically covered in the book-- a 1930s cell animated adaptation of John Carter of Mars. Had it been made, it would have predated Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs as the first ever animated feature film. The animation tests are said to have looked like a living oil painting. Unfortunately, the financial backers got nervous and dropped out.

A bit of zombie thread ressurection, but:

Here's a clip of some stuff Bob Clampett (Beaney & Cecil) did for a John Carter project in the 1930's:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTAlgZlqwnQ

Some pretty cool stuff, IMO.

Also: just read that Willem Dafoe will be portraying Tars Tarkas in the upcoming film.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Wow, I wish that project had been completed. That would have been incredible.

 

[S. Gomez]

I love corporate marketing. So successful at painting false images.

The Walt Disney Company owns Touchstone Pictures and Miramax Films, studios responsible for such fun-filled children's classics as Splash, Pretty Woman, Dead Poets Society, and a slew of Jerry Bruckheimer films. And yet people are afraid this movie will be "kiddified" (as if it somehow can't be, as has already been argued). The Walt Disney Company has proven itself quite capable of making films for mature audiences.

 

[Kegg]

I had no idea the project was this far along, or was anything more than a would-be contender. Fascinating, and oddly encouraging - the guy who directed Wall-E, a script polish by Chabon, Willem Dafoe, these guys are hitting the right notes... frighteningly so. I'm certainly looking forward to this, then, if not another modern classic it promises to at least try to be one, I hope.

The Walt Disney Company owns Touchstone Pictures and Miramax Films, studios responsible for such fun-filled children's classics as Splash, Pretty Woman, Dead Poets Society, and a slew of Jerry Bruckheimer films. And yet people are afraid this movie will be "kiddified" (as if it somehow can't be, as has already been argued). The Walt Disney Company has proven itself quite capable of making films for mature audiences.

Yeah, but the question is how they'll approach the property. If they're using the Disney label on it, for example, one can assume it's been kiddified - and a good old rollicking Edgar Rice Burroughs adventure is certainly the sort of story that could easily be portrayed as a child-friendly narrative, for the rather unremarkable reason that - as observed - it sort of is that anyway.

That it's live-action suggests to me they want a teen Star Wars type audience in addition to children, which is good, but that's just an uneducated guess on my part.