Puhlease! Stop it with the "John Carter is ripping off Star Wars"

Edgar Rice Burroughs, John Carter News

Never has a movie release created such a need to stamp out stupid brushfires as John Carter — precisely because this is a situation where the source material for half the sci-fi fantasy of the last 50 years is finally making it to the screen, and those who don’t care to become the slightest bit informed can’t distinguish between the original and the imitator. It gets tiresome to keep swatting this down. Fortunately James Hoare in today’s edition of SciFiNow does it for me, so consider this a a lazy man’s swat down of the ill-advised individuals who are crying foul on behalf of Star Wars.

John Carter versus Star Wars

by James Hoare
6 examples of John Carter and A Princess Of Mars’ influence on George Lucas’ Star Wars saga

Clearly a fan of classic pulp sci-fi, George Lucas shamelessly plundered from all of his favourite sources for not only the three movies of the original Star Wars trilogy, but the three prequels as well, with nods to Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and Edgar Rice Burroughs …Of Mars series aplenty across the saga.
With 2012 promising not just an adaptation of the first Barsoom volume, 1917?s A Princess Of Mars as John Carter, but also the re-release of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace in glorious 3D, let’s examine the six most obvious examples of the former’s influence on the latter – from words George Lucas just liked the sound of, to whole scenes and concepts he plundered to construct his love-letter to the golden age of adventure.
Obviously this doesn’t diminish the greatness of the original Star Wars trilogy, but with the internet awash with people claiming John Carter is “ripping off Star Wars“, it’s worth reminding them that if anything, it’s the other way around…

Read the rest:

2 comments

  • Thanks, man. I know — driving me crazy too. Here’s a visual way of making the point (saw your cool art on your site and though you might like this). It’s a little video I made to make the point that JC has been around 100 years …duh….

  • Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for this.

    I’ve gotten a headache from banging my head against the wall at the utter nonsense of these claims. I’ve lost track of the times I’ve posted links to information from the John Carter novels just to counter bull like this (also, there’s the “Oh, this is an AVATAR rip-off!”.

    There is no excuse for this, especially when one can just use a search engine to find the information.

    Again, thank you for this. And I will make sure to check in on your site.

Leave a Reply