Peter Weber: A Playwright’s Review of John Carter

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Introduction by Dotar Sojat:

When I saw John Carter the first time, it was a deeply emotional experience for me.  This was a movie that has been playing in my mind for 40 years; it was a movie I would have loved to direct; and it was a movie that  for me had to be successful.  I came out of that first viewing (which was well before any of the real reviews had started to come out) feeling thrilled, but slightly puzzled, as I had found the story a little hard to follow and this had affected my level of engagement, but I laid more of the blame on my self than I did on Andrew Stanton and Michael Chabon.  I was emotionally charged, distracted by my knowledge of the book,  and so I gave the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt, rating it 9/10.  On repeated viewings I have found much to love about the movie, but have also come to feel that in some of the areas where I gave the director a pass, I might have been a little bit too generous.   I say this with love and respect for what Andrew Stanton accomplished, and to be clear — I’m talking about a few points that might cause me to revise my review down from a ‘9’ to 8.5 or 8 — still an extraordinary achievement.  But I’ve been so caught up in the many levels of injustice being visited upon this film that I just haven’t felt like getting into a discussion of the true merits and few shortcomings of the film.

 So……..with that as background, when last week a very articulate commenter on this site left some notes which resonated, I asked that commenter — who turns out to be German lecturer, political scientist, and playwright Peter Weber — to re-work the comments into a review, which he has graciously done.  So for this one the roles are reversed– Peter is the author, and I will offer some comments after others have had a chance to react.  There is a great deal of high quality thought that is expressed in this review and I agree with a great deal of it.  

How to Relate to the Audience

or

Why Stanton failed to make “John Carter” really epic

 
by Peter Weber
After the disappointing performance of “John Carter” at box offices many fans of the movie have started pointing their fingers at Disney, blaming the company for not giving their product the support it deserved and needed to generate major interest. Director Andrew Stanton is generally saved by the fans, since he obviously did such a great labor of love on the subject. Indeed, Stanton’s merits can’t be ignored: he created Burroughs’ Barsoom out of his imagination in a really fantastic way, especially with the Tharks and all the other creatures. He also did an excellent job on correcting certain flaws of the original novel and modernizing the script, trying to sell it to a 21st century youth.
A closer look reveals however that Stanton bears even large part of responsibility, if the movie didn’t work as expected. In few words, his major mistakes were a messy narration and a poor development of the characters, which hampered a closer connection with the audience. This happened due to a line of errors that induced the film director to disregard almost every fundamental rule of the genre.
Now, which genre? The point is that the movie has so many interests (very few of them developed as they deserve), that the lack of focus makes it even hard to define the genre of the film. So better listen to Stanton himself, who informed us that he “approached it like a historical epic”. Take him on parole: John Carter was planned as a historical epos, maybe some kind of “Dances with Tharks” turning into “Braveheart the Conqueror”?! I admit that I would have loved to see that and I’m sure that it would have been huge! But unfortunately Stanton had to explain, first of all, how Carter arrived on Mars, and after he did that so well, he decided to keep it as the main plot, turning his movie into some kind of “John Carter meets Lara Croft”, and send them on a relic hunter mission.
A historic epic
The fact is, however, that such a movie can not be done like the usual James Bond episode, where the general frame is clear and the world won’t change. If you want to do a historical epic, you need to accept the rules of the genre, and these include the need of some deeper conflict on essential values and a major change as the final result (certainly more than just a desired marriage), otherwise all heroism remains meaningless and you better stick to “Aladdin”.
A historic epic needs to develop and divide around some serious conflict, and that means, especially in an unknown world like Barsoom, that you need to make clear who stands for what. To name some examples: the conflict may be on universal cleavages such as humanity/brutality, imperialism/independence, exploitation/environmentalism, scientific illumination/false religions etc.
Now the tragedy is that Stanton had it all at hands, because some of these themes are clearly present in Burroughs’ novels, especially the environmental question (since Barsoom is represented as a dying planet) and the conflict between false prophets and scientific progress (especially in the second novel Gods of Mars). We can’t negate that Stanton’s movie deals with these topics somehow, but we must also state that nothing is treated in a really convincing manner or developed to some result.
The dying planet
The environmental question gets a bit more attention, but ultimately it is only addressed in Matai Shang’s words “We feed off the planet”. Stanton used this well to modernize his plot, to make it “matter”, since Carter doesn’t have to save only Barsoom, but also Earth. But unfortunately he forgot to represent the environmental threat in the pictures. The moving city of Zodanga was probably an attempt to translate it into view, but even this excellent idea remained undeveloped, since it produced no consequences and no cultural cleavage between Heliumites and Zodangans.
Burroughs’ most important device to address the environmental problem, the atmosphere factory, was probably reserved for the second movie, alright. But in the meantime nothing helps us to understand how it may feel to live on a dying planet. If it wasn’t for the words of Matai Shang, nobody could tell why Barsoom is doomed. The Tharks’ nomad life doesn’t seem to present particular hardships (Costner’s Sioux appeared much more a dying nation than these roaming Martians). In the jumbled middle part, on the river Iss, we found even streams of water and nobody questioned why! If at least the flying machines were real ships, with water-turned-air-propellers, we could ask and learn how the planet lost its oceans! Or why Helium and Zodanga are fighting for the scarce water in the remaining canals! Besides, they should do it with incompatible environmental philosophies, but in the movie they even share the same ship design, which appears as an almost incredible waste, if we consider the lost chance for a vaster merchandising campaign.
Science vs. religion
Burroughs’ other important theme, the eternal conflict between scientific progress and religious beliefs, is treated poorly too. Again Stanton’s movie gives it a few lines, but sadly it remains anemic and without representatives. On one side because Matai Shang shows from the first second that he is a religious leader who has no religion at all. And among his opponents because poor Dejah Thoris is left to do all the science alone. She is president of the Helium Scientific Society, alright, but where are the scientists? Give her at least two or three researchers to support her cause. In his later novels Burroughs introduced the slightly mad scientist Ras Thavas who could have been turned into an excellent antagonist for Matai Shangs’s Therns.
One could argue that these are very specific issues and that the younger audience couldn’t care less, as long as they got their joyride with Carter bouncing from ship to ship. Unfortunately, however, all these shortcomings add to a picture that appears very static, where Barsoom remains substantially unchanged. This impression is also confirmed by the lack of development in the career of characters such as Kantos Kan and Tars Tarkas, who appear immediately in their highest rank (as general or jeddak), while the novel had them initially as padwar and vice-jed, with their progress triggered by Carter’s arrival.
Improbable friendship
That leads us to the main problem, the fact that Stanton’s movie missed even on the human core of Burroughs’ novel, which is “improbable friendship” beyond all racial, cultural, religious and other divides. This is a theme that usually works very well in movies, just look at “E.T.” or the recent French success “The Intouchables”. A movie that evidenced this better than any other was “Dances with Wolves”, telling almost the same story contained in the first half of Burroughs’ “Princess of Mars”. This is the reason why I keep repeating that Burroughs left Stanton an almost perfect invitation for making “Dancing with Tharks”, but Andrew missed the call.
If the human core of your story is “improbable friendship”, you need to develop it, otherwise it remains improbable. This regards Carter’s relation with both, Tars Tarkas and Dejah Thoris. Due to the fact that Tars Tarkas starts already as Jeddak of Thark, his revenge and rise to power, which is a central plot of the novel, has been omitted from the film, and as a result his befriending with Carter remains undeveloped and unmotivated. Stanton should have known better to trust Burroughs’ original story, using more time and breath to develop his hero’s relations with the Thark and the Princess.
But where “Dances with Wolves” took its time in a slowly developing tale, narrating Hollywood’s most compelling story in more than a decade, Stanton just rushes through. If he really wanted to do a historical epic, it’s a quite curious fact that time is not contemplated in his movie and everything seems to happen the same day. I don’t remember, if we saw a sunset on Mars, but if we did, it left me unimpressed. In any case, when Dejah Thoris explains Carter the solar system, she doesn’t even find the time to show him his homeworld in the nightsky! How can you miss such an occasion for good old romance? Besides that it would have been interesting to learn how Earth/Moon look from Mars.
Narration matters
Accelerating these parts of the movie is already a bad service, but even worse is the fact that Stanton interrupts his tale with scenes from Zodanga showing Sab Than and Matai Shang explaining their evil plans. If all that exposition were really needed, it should have been done by Dejah instructing Carter or the Thark council, and not by that bloated Wikipedia-style introduction on the city states of Barsoom. By these early und unnecessary anticipations Stanton spoils many of the forthcoming moments of magic and awe.
So if you want to know, if the core of our story could have been done better, try to forget for a moment all you have learned about Barsoom and imagine that Carter landed among those green monsters without knowing anything about the surrounding civilizations, with the prospects of spending the rest of his life between these savages, never seeing a friendly face again. I guess this would be much more frightening. But then one day a beautiful girl falls from a ship in the sky. Where is she coming from and how can he ever hope to get her, while he is still a prisoner? Can he even dare to talk to her? From this outlook, we may try to imagine how their first encounter could have been a much more intriguing affair, instructing, but also fun:
A sparkling encounter
TARS TARKAS (introducing): Your savior, Princess, our prisoner Dotar Sojat!
DEJAH THORIS: Kaor! I’m Dejah Thoris, Princess of Helium!
JOHN CARTER: Helium? You mean the gas … for balloons?
DEJAH THORIS: Helium is a CITY: Barsoom’s TOP NATION!!!
JOHN CARTER: Never heard of …
DEJAH THORIS: Holy ignorance! Where did you go to school? I mean, even if your teachers were from Zodanga …
JOHN CARTER: No, from Virginia, though I wish I’d had you, Miss … Mam … my Princess …
DEJAH THORIS (lips only): How dare …
JOHN CARTER: Oh, I’m sorry! … My most sincere apologies, … Mylady! … Actually, I wasn’t aware, … Your Highness? … (Instantly) Please, teach me all about your world, Dejah Thoris!
DEJAH THORIS (to Tars Tarkas): You said, Dotar Sojat? Your prisoner?
JOHN CARTER: No, my name is John Carter from Virginia, my Pr … Mylady!
DEJAH THORIS: So, FIRST you should LEARN, Dotar Sojat or John Carter from Virginia, that nobody has the right to call me “my Princess” … unless he has offered his sword and his life to fight for me.
JOHN CARTER: But, … I have fought …
DEJAH THORIS (to Tars Tarkas): I’m afraid, you gave me a hard labor of love, Jeddak, to teach this prisoner how to behave. But since he has saved the daughter of Tardos Mors and his line of thousand Jeddaks from Helium, I just have to give it my very best.
TARS TARKAS: It’s a dirty job, but somebody has to do it, Princess. Sola will help you for the worst of it.
Such an introduction would have given their relationship not only a bit more sex-appeal, but even a quite different dynamic: the sensation of a huge distance that needs to be bridged, and more precisely from an uncomfortable position of disadvantage, since she’s a proud princess from a powerful nation, while he’s only a strange and ignorant prisoner of a nomad tribe, who has yet a lot to learn.
Care for cleavages
Same as the viewers, by the way, and this is the reason why such a dialogue would have been a good start for a more comprehensible TRAILER. Slightly shortened it would have helped to relate the subject and the protagonists to different categories in the audience: schoolboys, American patriots, timid guys, girls suffering from mindless macho advances, people who didn’t perform too well in school and would have liked to change their teachers, people who never heard of Burroughs’ Barsoom and many more. Yes, since they knew that the movie would be a hard sell, Disney should have tried harder to teach a thing about Barsoom, but: make it fun with John Carter as a companion!
Unfortunately however that didn’t happen and as a result many movie-goers didn’t give a dime for our hero and his princess. To make them care more, it would have required to introduce the characters in a different way, make them more distinctive, and my little dialogue shows how it works. Indeed, when you read it, you should be able to perceive how the audience almost immediately starts to divide, in this case between republicans and monarchists: Republicans relate to John Carter and feel slightly nerved by Dejah’s aristocratic pride, while monarchists relate to Dejah, deploring Carter’s lack of etiquette. These little cleavages are what people really care about and what makes them relate to the figures of a book or a movie.
Now question yourself: did you notice any real cultural difference between John and Dejah? For how they were depicted, they might as well been growing up in the same street! As a result of this careless characterization their interplanetary love story resulted, well, nothing special. Being so similar in attitude, they apparently had no choice than falling in love, while this should have been most likely a process full of incidents and misunderstandings, in other words: a conquest from planet to planet, that can’t rely only on your earth-trained muscles.
A hero actually needs obstacles as a chance to grow, even in his human relations. So he needs to fight to convince his love and the public. In Stanton’s movie it felt instead, as if Carter had no need to convince anyone, because he was already awaited and beloved by almost any other protagonist (Col. Powell, Tars Tarkas, Dejah Thoris, Tardos Mors,Kantos Kan, maybe even Matai Shang?). Most of the time it was the other way round with people trying to convince him, and he had to do little more than “sak” and sometimes fight. An orphan of ten like Harry Potter may get away with something like that, but a hero of two worlds should face some bigger challenges, shouldn’t he?
Bully the hero
A well known trick of dramatic arts says that, if you want your hero to become really huge, you have to make him smaller in the beginning. To this purpose the enraged princess from above would have been just right, and the effect would have been even bigger, if enhanced by some smart camera-work, showing short glimpses of Dejah’s growing irritation during the pauses and having Carter subsequently dwarved by moving the camera up and away from his face while he utters “Mam … my Princess”.
Maybe we can conclude now that our hero’s first leaps on Barsoom were already a bit too huge? At least they should have been counterbalanced by some psychological humiliation. Do you remember Harry Potter in the cupboard under the stairs, a key scene for the entire series? Or do you know why Spiderman worked so well? Because they were quite ordinary people in sometimes pretty uncomfortable situations. Tolkien’s Hobbits in Lord of the Rings start as such humble and small “Halflings”, that they manage to grow bigger for the entire course of the trilogy.
It seems that Stanton actually tried to introduce something similar with the scenes in Arizona, and Carter had also some minor humiliation on Barsoom, while he was raised with the little Tharks, but never facing Dejah Thoris. These episodes were actually more fun than real suffering and as a result we never feared that he could take any harm or really lose his beloved to the villain.
Breath and humility
Winding up, we find a movie with excellent imaginative settings, but missing on essential themes of the main plot. Stanton & Co. tried hard to make it matter by following several tested trails of contemporary movies: the weary veteran (see: Avatar), the relic hunters (Lara Croft), the secret agent saving the world (James Bond). They achieved this modernization by anticipating the Therns from the second novel, which was a valid idea, but they slipped when they made them too central.
In the end the total amount of assorted schemes added up to a messy pile that could be solved only with the most obvious conclusion of mediocre sci-fi adventures: the bad guy brawling about his evil deeds. In this case it was Matai Shang, again, who stupidly tells all his plans to Carter before sending him back to Earth. Could our hero have been able to find out by himself? Sorry, no time, he didn’t even get a chance! Here is where a scientific sidekick like Ras Thavas would have been really helpful: By taking (at least partially) the task of unmasking the conspiracy, he would have left the princess and her champion more breath for getting engaged to each other and the audience, instead of using all their precious time and energy to chase after the secret device of the Therns.
In conclusion, if John Carter didn’t relate as expected, it is also because narration actually matters. With all the listed faults it is almost too easy to rip the movie to shreds, though that wouldn’t do it any justice, because after all it is still a very enjoyable experience. The merit for this little wonder goes to Stanton and his team, their imagination and CGI-skills, but he can’t be proud of it, because it was pride that induced his mistake to make it so big and encumbering.
Unfortunately the last point is also a strong argument against a sequel: Stanton’s John Carter is already so huge and complete, that it’s quite hard to imagine how he might grow in a follow-up. I hate to say this and I still hope they’ll give it a chance. I’m pretty sure, indeed, that, when they pass it in TV, people will start calling it a cult, deploring that they cancelled the sequel. But I’m also sure that John Carter needs a humble reboot from more modest origins, if he shall succeed in a second shot.
The author:
Peter Weber (born 1961) is a German lecturer, political scientist and playwright living in Italy. Among his publications figure a German language course (Peter Weber, Kultursprache Deutsch, 2012) and a dramatic trilogy on the Peloponnesian War including a political satire on Berlusconi’s rule in Italy (Petreius Hyphantes, Die Demagogen, 2011).
 

55 comments

  • Thuria and Clorus had set with two zodes left before dawn.
    Taking advantage of the darkness the transports disgorge the Tharks and there allies some 12 haads from the Zodangan lines that beseige Helium.

    Bal Sag a great chieftan of a lesser tribe (trying to think up a cool tribe name to insert here) was among the first to disembark from the transports. His men were easily distinguishable from the other tribes due to the tattoos, ritual scars and brands, multiple piercings and tropheys that were stitched and stapled to there bodies. Upon Bal Sag’s left breast was stapled a goey spine and head of a red man. Upon his right breast the paw of a banth. On his back was stitched a half dozen feet that belonged to green men that he had personally defeated in battle. About his neck a necklace of 40 mummified red man ears. Bal Sag was dressed to impress and as he and his fellow tribe members approached, Tars Tarkus grunted in approval. While Bal Sag was recieving his orders from Tars, a few of his men adorned themselves with trophies recently acquired during the sacking of Zodanga. Arrogant and proud they strutted their stuff before the other tribes, only 100 strong but acting like they could administer a beat down to Tar’s entire 100,000 strong army.

    Mounting up, they rode off and running at the side of each thoat was a calot.

    Suddenly the dawn breaks. From their places of concealment Bal Sag’s men observe the beleaguered city of Helium. A defensive network of trenches and breastworks surrounds Helium. Anticipating possible relief from Lesser Helium or Hastor, a ditch and breastworks also surrounds the Zodangan perimeter.

    High overhead Zodangan battleships drop bombs, mostly concentrated on the mighty docks that service Helium’s navy. A special ship not designed for fighting other ships but specifically designed for carrying a heavy payload drops it’s bombs on one of Helium’s most ancient docks. Weakened from repeated bombings and the fires raging within, the 1000 foot tall edifice collapses burying the ships and men that are harbored within. In a futile effort to protect what is left of Helium’s docks, hidden cannons fire up at the ships circling above. Revealed by their muzzle flashes the cannons become targets. Zodangan two man fliers dive at steep angles then release their bombs silencing the cannons. (Barsoomian stuka dive bombers).

    Booming explosions rise to a crescendo. Helium’s outer defences are smashed. A colassal explosion brings the gates crashing down.
    Zodanga’s troops mobilize for the impending assault.

    Thru a field glass Bal Sag observes the Heliumites darting thru the rubble and risking their lives to save those about them.
    Bal Sag (Clint Eastwood’s voice) “Boy, tell Tars …. Helium still has some fight left in it.”

    Scene switch to Helium’s only remaining large dock and current location of Tardos Mors and Mors Kajak.
    Peering out from a window the jeddak, his son and officers watch the dust settle from the collapses described above.
    Behind them in the shadows moviegoers get glimpses of the bow of a battleship.
    Heliumites work feverishly readying it for combat. One men hanging from his harness attaches herioglyphics to it’s side.
    Bombs explode on the roof. The dock does not collapse. The officers look relieved.
    The dust settling from the gate collapse reveals Helium’s lost fleet coming to the rescue.
    The men cheer, Tardos (Charlton Heston stature) announces that he will command the battleship and then orders Mors to ready the men hidden in the catacombs.

    Halfway thru the climatic battle Tars Tarkus marshalls his forces for a renewed charge that pushes back the staggering Zodangan ranks leaving behind a crushed carpet of dead and dying red men. Maddened and squealing, thoats leap across a ditch and onto the bulwarks beyond, many of them impaling themselves on sharpened stakes. With mighty oaths on there lips Zodangan pikeman rush the bulwarks in a desparate effort to push the green men back. Tars Tarkus leaps off the back of his dying mount to the top of the bulwark each sweep of his sword hewing 2 or 3 Zodangans in half. Inspired by there leader’s ferocity the green men heedless of death storm the bulwarks. Cannon shots start ripping thru the green men ranks. The shots are coming from cannons strapped on the backs of 25 foot tall Zodangan armor plated zitadars (barsoomian tanks). The green men start to waver but then a squadron of Heliumite one man fliers led by Kantos Kan attack the Zodangan zitadars. Kantos the designated comedy relief is whooping and hollering and practicing his newly acquired Jasoomian gesture. Flippin the finger.
    A great shadow covers that portion of the battlefield. Everyone Thark and Zodangan look upward. With sickening thuds Heliumite and Zodangan airmen (many on fire) fall like rain onto the battlefield. A dozen battleships grappled together, bouyancy tanks blown apart, plummet downward and exploding on contact with the ground, crush and burn a massive wad of combatants.

    The moviegoers gasp! Is Tars alive? Of course he is! He leaped clear but unfortunately the main mass of flaming wreckage landed mostly on his troops and now he is cut off, Zodangans on one side, flaming wreckage on the other.

    JC who was on the flaming wreckage as it plummeted leaps onto a passing by Zodangan one man flier.
    After tossing off the unlucky Zodangan JC notices two things.
    Sab Than’s personal flier with Dejah aboard, docking onto a mass of battleships grappled together floating above.
    Tars Tarkus knocked off his feet and about to die!

    (JC recognizes the peculiar wire mesh cover that surrounds the propeller of Sab Than’s personal flier. The cover is due to Sab Than’s bizarre phobia of whirling propellers.)

    The movie goers gasp! What will JC do?

    The bromance is strong! JC crashes and crushes a couple of Zodangans and then the bromance partners fight back to back. Awwww id’nt that bromantic? A Zodangan officer watching the corpse pile grow at the feet of the bromance partners orders his men back. In awe he asks the white man “Who are you?” JC flips the finger and says “John Carter”. Before the astonished gaze of the Zodangans and before they can react he grabs Tars Tarkus and leaps 500 feet in the air, clear over the flaming wreakage and into the green men ranks on the other side.

    The tharks dismayed at the loss of their vanguard and percieved loss of there jeddack were milling around in confusion.
    Some were exhorting vengence while others contemplated retreat.
    Upon the miraculous return of there jeddeck they gave forth an exultant cheer.
    Leaping onto the back of an abandoned thoat Tars brandishes his blood caked sword and yells “Leave a thark his head and one hand and he may yet conquer”. Brandishing there own weapons and galvanized the tharks give forth another cheer then rally around there jeddak.

    But then JC does the unthinkable. He leaps 500 feet in the air, clear over the flaming wreakage and back into the Zodangan ranks on the other side.
    JC spots, then fights his way to the one man flier he had crash landed while coming to Tar’s rescue.
    JC’s path to the flier is identifiable by the numerous corpses he leaves in his wake.
    The Zodangan officer trys to drag the flier down as JC takes off, but a vicious nose breaking blood spattering kick dislodges him.
    JC with a grim smile opens the throttle and points the nose of the flier towards were he had last seen Sab Than’s personal flier.

    Scene switch to Zodangans at Helium’s gates.

    Smoke spewing canisters launched from the shattered gates of Helium obscure the vision of the Zodangans.
    Sheltered behind their breastworks and trenches the Zodangans tighten their grips on their weapons.
    Muzzle flashes are seen dimly thru the smoke. Zodangans duck and cover as shells explode around them.
    A huge column of armor plated Heliumite zitadars emerge from the smoke pushing carts in front of them.
    Hinged to the front of each cart is a thick metal ramp in a upright position.
    The Zodangan riflemen fire a volley but it has little effect on the advancing Heliumites sheltered behind the ramps.
    Ramps drop, bridging the trenches and smashing the zodangan breastworks.

    When a ramp drops do the Zodangans underneath it manage to scramble out of the way?
    Of course not. Moviegoers enjoy watching bad guys getting smushed and pulped.

    A ramp drops smushing a dozen Zodangans.
    Behind it on top of a Zitadar is revealed Mors Kajak.

    A Heliumite battleship suddenly appears thru the smoke above.
    Gracefully she turns presenting her broadside to the startled Zodangans below her.
    Upon her prow named in honor of Helium’s lost princess, DEJAH THORIS.
    1 1/2 times longer then any other ship in Helium’s arsenal, she bristles with armaments from stem to stern.
    She boasts a complement of 10,000 men and launching from her decks and hangers are a swarm of one man and two man fliers.
    Barsoom’s most potent instrument of death and destruction trains her massive guns on the soon to be deceased zodangans below her.

    A zodangan mumbles a quick prayer to Issus and deficates his tunic.
    With a massive roar a salvo rains annihilation.

    A battleship escorted by two cruisers turns towards the Dejah Thoris.
    Thru his feild glass the battleship commander sizes up the Heliumite juggernaut and on its deck spots Tardos Mors.
    Excitedly he exclaims to his officers, “A worthy prize indeed”.
    He didn’t know what he was in for.

    Like a angry mass of hornets defending their nest, Dejah’s fliers swarm the doomed battleship.
    The one men fliers rake the battleship and her escorts with gun fire while two man fliers dive then drop bombs from above.
    Detonations and gore galore.
    Dejah administers the coup de grace. The largest shell ever fired from the deck of a battleship burrows it’s way into the heart of the stricken ship and detonates the magazine. The shock wave from the gargantuan incandecent explosion rocks the nearby cruiser escorts and covers them and a zodangan filled portion of the battlefield below with flaming debris.
    Afterwards the burning hulks of the cruisers are left in the Dejah’s wake.
    JC doing his thing on his one man flier quips, “That don’t look like a fair fight”.

    Scene switch

    Flags unfurl from the top of Helium’s loftiest tower. It’s a signal from the jeddack to Helium’s citizens. The battle still hangs in the balance and Helium’s citizens respond. From all quarters private aircraft lift into the air.

    Even Helium’s most famous dillettante (or perhaps infamous) answers the call. Stumbling out of a night club, Ren Aldo and his passengers board his personal pleasure boat. They lift off and fly straight into the maelstorm of death and destruction. Ren Aldo pilots his ship with pizazz and flair. Behind his ship Ren Aldo’s personal banner scintallates in the sun. For the pleasure of his guests he engages in aerial acrobatics (loop de loops and barrel rolls). Passing by Zodangan ships they shoot their pistols and hurl molotov cocktails. A explosion rocks the craft. Dom Iniche laments when he spills the party platter and stains his favorite harness. The other guests laugh then out of chorus sing Helium’s national anthem. They spot a zodangan destroyer beseiged. Pulling up along side they leap aboard with rapiers in hand. Half would lose thier lives.

    (more citazen annecdotes to fill this spot)

    Scene switch
    JC lands on the deck of Dejah Thoris.
    Tardos Mors asks, “Are you that crazy cracker”
    JC replies, “I know were the princess is”.

    Scene switch to mass of battleships grappled together and still afloat.

    The mass starts to buckle.
    The side that is mostly Zodangan ships (and men) remains stable.
    The side that is mostly Helium ships with more ruptured bouyancy tanks tilts with men sliding off.
    The Zodangans jeer and start cutting loose the mooring ropes that hold the two fleets together, knowing that will cause the Helium side to plummet to it’s doom.

    Juggernaut Dejah Thoris grapples to and lifts up the sagging Helium side.
    JC leads a fresh influx of troops onto the floating battlefield.

    Aside from a rep as a super douche, Sab Than had trained with Zodanga’s most notorious assassins and was regarded as a viciously cunning swordsman.
    Pointing his sword at JC, Sab Than bellows, “do not interfere men, that stunted white ape is mine”.
    Twisting Dejah’s arm, Sab Than with remnants of his last meal still stuck to his teeth plants a slobbery kiss on Dejah’s sumptuous lips.
    Wet, gross and even some tongue action.
    The Zodangans part and make way for the combatants.
    Outraged at this latest affront to Dejah’s dignity, JC leaps forward and nearly impales his self on Sab Than’s outreached sword.
    Fueled with murderous intensity JC lunges at Sab Than repeatedly, only his jasoomian strength and agility saving him from Sab Than’s lightning fast ripostes.
    The fight is awesome but Sab Than’ sword arm gives out from the strain of parrying the repeated power of JC’s blows.
    JC leaps up in the air and as he is coming down he yells “Yuuuurrrgh”.
    Sab Than with both hands lifts his blade in desperation.
    Both blades snap at the hilt!
    JC punches Sab Than in the face with his broken sword hilt.
    Sab Than falls hard, but only manages to spit blood and splintered teeth before JC is on him.
    Sab Than is pinned facedown to the ground with JC choking the life out of him.
    Sab Than’s face turns purple, his eyes bug out of his head, as JC wrenches backward his vertebrae pop from the intense pressure of JC’s knee in his back.
    The world kalediscopes inward around JC, his only awareness the savage need to kill.
    Only one thing could have impinged and it did, it was his beloved, his princess.
    Beating her small fists on JC’s back, Dejah cries out” You must not kill him, you must not!”
    Shocked, JC rises and faces the woman he had risked all for and would do a million times more.
    Unable to face his own secret fears, he croaks out “Why Dejah, Why?”

    “Know JC that I am the proud daughter of a thousand jeddaks”.
    “I am betrothed to Sab Than and due to tradition can not marry the man who kills my intended husband”.

    Sab Than rises off the ground.
    The men of Zodanga look towards their jeddack Sab Than. Whooped.
    They look towards Helium’s jeddack Tardos Mors (Charlton Heston Stature). Not whooped.
    They look past Tardos Mors at the bristling cannons and guns of the Dejah Thoris.
    The men of Zodanga throw down their swords.

    Tardos Mors steps forward and proclaims “Sab Than, looks like you just got knocked the F out.”
    The men of Helium cheer.

    Sab Than looks around in desperation. He looks across the battlefield and every where he turns he sees Zodanga vanquished.
    Looking at the remnants of his navy he observes a sad tradition.
    Zodangan commanders with flags in hand, leaping off the bridges of surrendered ships.
    Emboldened by their sacrifices, plucking his self up and with one last bloody spit, Sab Than picks up the Zodangan jeddak flag and leaps off the deck.
    He yells “Zodanga number one beyatches, Helium blows sorak nads”.
    He thought he would fall several thousand feet during which time he would reflect on his life and make peace with Issus.
    But he leaped before he looked. He lets out one bleet of terror then lands on a whirling battleship propeller.
    His body explodes into a million pieces.

    The hastily erected medic tent was overfilled with the dead, dying and wounded. Cries and groans filled the air.
    A youth using his rifle as a crutch enters the tent.
    With each beat of his heart arterial blood spurts from a bone exposing cut on his leg.
    Sola rushes to his side and with the utmost compassion and thru her herioc efforts saves his life.
    Sola senses that despite his suffering the youth is determined to put on a brave face.
    His complexion had not yet darkened to the olive green of adulthood, but he was strong and tall.
    His tusks were thick and there gleaming whiteness was a indicator of perfect health and fitness.
    She starts to compliment him for being such a brave patient but then the compliment dies on her lips when she notices his tribal tatoo.

    The youth notices that something is odd about the female thark’s behavior. Incomprehensible. There eyes meet. He starts to speak but then his tribal members burst into the medical tent.

    Bal Sag places his four hands on the youth’s shoulders then with uncharacteristic enthusiasm exclaims “Today you entered this battle nameless, but now you are a man, I name you Tak Pakur!

    A smile erupts on the face of the now named Tak Pakur. He grabs his rifle/crutch and shrugging off aid rises to his feet.
    He pumps his fists then chest bumps his tribe members. Hobbling outside he has cause for further excitement.
    The two traitors he had killed had been dragged then dumped in front of the tent. Beside them were the ceremonial cleaver, an urn filled with mummification liquid and the ceremonial staple gun.

    A tribe member high fives then hands the exstatic Tak Pakur the ceremonial cleaver.
    Thwock! A foot separates from a corpse. Thwock! Another.
    Bal Sag himself dips the severed feet into the mummification liquid. An honor indeed.
    (Upon entering manhood they always staple the feet thou they may later swap them out)
    Tak Pakur holds a severed foot to his chest, he presses the staple gun against the foot, his finger poises on the trigger.
    Ever since he can remember he had dreamed about this moment.
    He sees the strange thark female framed in the tent doorway.
    Their eyes meet.
    He hesitates ….

  • To Crustbucket

    Good read. You like battle scenes, but I think you are sometimes too explicite in violence AND motivations.
    The propeller scene could be problematic for PG-rating. Same applies to Sab Than’s disgusting kiss. But that’s just details.
    More important is the motivations side. Who wants to know why Dejah stops Carter, if it brings the action to a complete halt? Nobody needs that explanation.

    Here is my take on Sab Than’s end:

    28. – Air-Battle –
    When he sees Sab Than’s ship taking off, John Carter calls Tars Tarkas to protect the Princess and Tardos Mors. Tars Tarkas mows the Zodangans in the hall and reaches the Princess. Carter jumps to the roof of the building and from there with another leap he reaches Sab Than’s two-man flier. He clings to the stern rail. The passengers feel the impact, but don’t see him.
    SAB THAN: What was that?
    When they approach the Zodangan hangar tower, Matai Shang finally spots Carter’s hand on the rail.
    MATAI SHANG: Blind passenger!
    Sab Than draws his sword to cut Carter’s hand, but swinging from the rail Carter jumps and reaches the roof of the hangar. While he disenables three guards, Sab Thans lands his flier. He is approached by Carter. They fight.
    SAB THAN: Guards! To me!
    MATAI SHANG (behind him): Remember: The weapon!
    A dozen guards arrive and Sab Than disengages. They get on board of the waiting flagship and Sab Than gives orders for take off. Then he puts on his weapon and aims at Carter still engaged with the guards.
    SAB THAN (to Matai Shang): Who is that guy?
    With one of his leaps Carter has disengaged the guards. He sees Sab Than aiming at him and with another jump he gets out of the line of fire.
    SAB THAN: Where is he coming from?
    MATAI SHANG: I’m afraid …
    SAB THAN: Don’t tell me you know him!
    The Zodangan ships are taking off one by one, and Carter catapults himself on the deck of the last in line.
    MATAI SHANG: Actually …
    Sab Than aims at Carter and shoots the weapon. The Zodangan ship goes down in flames, but Carter has already reached the next in line.
    SAB THAN: Who is that freak?
    MATAI SHANG: Experiment gone wild!
    Carter keeps on jumping from ship to ship until he reaches the first in line. Sab Than is unable to aim without hitting his own ships.
    SAB THAN (to Matai Shang): Experiment, eh?
    Carter has reached the first of the Zodangan ships.
    SAB THAN (to Matai Shang): Mighty wild!
    When Carter has reached the head of the Zodangan battle line, the ships from Helium engage them. Kantos Kan’s ship is the first in line and with a big jump Carter transports himself at his side.
    KANTOS KAN: John Carter! You don’t need no ship to fly, don’t you?
    JOHN CARTER: Attention! They’re using the weapon!
    KANTOS KAN: Not as dangerous as you, man! (to Ras Thavas) Now is the moment, Ras Thavas! (to his communication officer) Give orders to advance and engage the enemy! Ram and board! (to his helmsman) Drop 50, quick!
    The ship falls some 90 ft. When it restabilizes, Lorquas Ptomel is gasping.
    KANTOS KAN (to the helmsman, pointing at the Zodangan hangar tower): There, full turn!
    While the Heliumite ships are engaging the enemy, their flagship has disengaged and after passing under the enemy line it performs a full turn around the Zodangan hangar tower. Luckily the Zodangan artillery has lost their aim or is occupied with other duties, but they are taking some rifle fire from the mariners above and even more from the tower guard.
    KANTOS KAN: Don’t respond! Keep going, … silent!
    Sab Than’s flagship is the last in the Zodangan line. He aims the weapon and shoots at the first of the Heliumite ships. The ship is destroyed and goes down in flames, but thanks to Ras Thavas’ counter-measures the rays don’t propagate to the next in line. By throwing aluminium foils the Heliumite manage to dissipate the ray, weakening its devastating effects.
    SAB THAN: So be it one by one, even more the pleasure!
    He aims at the next ship in line, but with his risky maneuver Kantos Kan has come up behind the Zodangan flagship. With a surprise shot he destroys the starboard suspension engines, causing the ship to capsize. Another shot cuts off part of the bridge. Sab Than and Matai Shang, who were clinging to the rail, are catapulted to the ground, but luckily they land on a breaking glass roof dampening their fall.
    When he sees the enemy leaders fall, John Carter jumps off to the roof of the hangar and then from roof to roof until he reaches the ground.
    KANTOS KAN (saluting): See you, spider-man! (pointing at the next Zodangan ship) Now engage!
    His ship steers between two enemy ships firing broadsides on both sides.
    KANTOS KAN: Broadsides! … Grappling irons! … Ready to board! … Now, melee!
    As soon as the melee starts, Lorquas Ptomel has forgotten all his fears and is the first in line to mow the Zodangan mariners.

    29. – Sab Than’s end –
    John Carter reaches the ground amid a group of resisting Zodangan guards commanded by general Zat Arras. Carter sees Tars Tarkas not far away and calls his help.
    JOHN CARTER: Gimme a hand, Tars Tarkas, at least one, you got four of them!
    Then with one of his leaps he leaves the dangerous spot and reaches the Thark and the Heliumite royals.
    TARS TARKAS: I said, you can jump, John Carter, didn’t know you can actually fly!
    Tardos Mors, Dejah Thoris, the banner-wearer and several decorated Heliumite generals and admirals (including Hor Vastus) are fighting side by side with the Tharks.
    TARDOS MORS: There!
    The Jeddak points at the spot where the bridge of the Zodangan flagship came down. Carter is the first to reach the place. He finds the Zodangan Jeddak lying wounded on the ground.
    SAB THAN: You! Where did you come from?
    JOHN CARTER: Virginia!
    SAB THAN: Never heard of …
    JOHN CARTER: That’s too long a story …
    Carter raises his sword to kill him, but he is stopped by Dejah’s call, urging him not to do it.
    DEJAH THORIS: No, not, my Prince!
    When he turns his back, addressing Dejah with a puzzled “my Princess?”, Sab Than raises his arm to use the ninth ray.
    SAB THAN: You were not invited!
    However Tars Tarkas has reached him and cuts off his arm.
    SAB THAN (with tears, gazing at the stump): Not on the list, Dejah …
    Tars Tarkas raises all four swords to cut his body into slices. Sab Than stares and awaits his death, but before the swords arrive the weapon on his cut arm unleashes an energy bolt enveloping his body. Tars Tarkas quickly jumps back and waits until the body is completely burned. Only the arm with the weapon is left. Cautiously Tars Tarkas picks it up with the point of his sword and then carelessly throws it away.
    TARS TARKAS: Two or four of them, when they’re cut they’re useless!

    30. – Matai Shang’s Threat –
    When he sees his ally die, Matai Shang grabs the secret weapon from Sab Than’s lifeless arm and turns to flee. John Carter jumps to stop him, but a Zodangan lifeguard gets in his way and before he can kill him, Matai Shang has again used his cloaking device. Before disappearing he shouts out to Carter:
    MATAI SHANG: Your planet is next!

  • Scene switch to mass of battleships grappled together and still afloat.

    The mass starts to buckle.
    The side that is mostly Zodangan ships (and men) remains stable.
    The side that is mostly Helium ships with more ruptured bouyancy tanks tilts with men sliding off.
    The Zodangans jeer and start cutting loose the mooring ropes that hold the two fleets together, knowing that will cause the Helium side to plummet to it’s doom.

    JC takes control of the biggest battleship seen on the movie screen yet.
    JC’s monster battleship grapples to and lifts up the sagging Helium side.
    JC leads a fresh influx of troops onto the floating battlefield.

    Aside from a rep as a super douche, Sab Than had trained with Zodanga’s most notorious assassins and was regarded as a viciously cunning swordsman.
    Pointing his sword at JC, Sab Than bellows, “do not interfere men, that stunted white ape is mine”.
    Twisting Dejah’s arm, Sab Than with remnants of his last meal still stuck to his teeth plants a slobbery kiss on Dejah’s sumptuous lips.
    Wet, gross and even some tongue action.
    The Zodangans part and make way for the combatants.
    Outraged at this latest affront to Dejah’s dignity, JC leaps forward and nearly impales his self on Sab Than’s outreached sword.
    Fueled with murderous intensity JC lunges at Sab Than repeatedly, only his jasoomian strength and agility saving him from Sab Than’s lightning fast ripostes.
    The fight is awesome but Sab Than’ sword arm gives out from the strain of parrying the repeated power of JC’s blows.
    JC leaps up in the air and as he is coming down he yells “Yuuuurrrgh”.
    Sab Than with both hands lifts his blade in desperation.
    Both blades snap at the hilt!
    JC smashes Sab Than’s jaw with his pommel.
    Sab Than falls hard, but only manages to spit blood and splintered teeth before JC is on him.
    Sab Than is pinned to the ground with JC choking the life out of him.
    Sab Than’s face turns purple, his eyes bug out of his head, as JC wrenches backward his vertebrae pop from the intense pressure of JC’s knee in his back.
    The world kalediscopes inward around JC, his only awareness the savage need to kill.
    Only one thing could have impinged and it did, it was his beloved, his princess.
    Beating her small fists on JC’s back, Dejah cries out” You must not kill him, you must not!”
    Shocked, JC rises and faces the woman he had risked all for and would do a million times more.
    Unable to face his own secret fears, he croaks out “Why Dejah, Why?”

    “Know JC that I am the proud daughter of a thousand jeddaks”.
    “I am betrothed to Sab Than and due to tradition can not marry the man who kills my intended husband”.

    Sab Than whipped and defeated rises off the ground.
    The men of Zodanga throw down their swords.

    Tardos Mors steps forward and proclaims “Sab Than, looks like you just got knocked the F out.”
    The men of Helium cheer.

    Sab Than looks around in desperation. He looks across the battlefield and every where he turns he sees Zodanga vanquished.
    Looking at the remanats of his navy he observes a sad tradition.
    Zodangan commanders with flags in hand, leaping off the bridges of surrendered ships.
    Emboldened by their sacrifices, plucking his self up and with one last bloody spit, Sab Than picks up the Zodangan jeddak flag and leaps off the deck.
    Sab Than yells “Zodanga rocks beyatches”, but he leaped before he looked, so unfortunatly before he could yell “Helium blows sorak nads” he lands on
    a whirling battleship propeller.
    His body explodes into a million pieces.

  • Excellent breakdown of the movie and responces.
    Peter’s analysis is being buried by the new posts and most new people will not see it.
    Perhaps it could be moved to the forums section.

  • Very well said Peter Weber, a must read for any fan of the moivie or novels, for sure. I like the stance you take which is that from a positive/fan outlook on the movie but you go into details in a respectfull and elaborate manner about it’s faults aswell.

    I myself have never slowed down enough to be a reader in my short, 20 years, life thus far. I’ve only read several books that haven’t been required of me in school and college. I’ve bought the Princess of Mars and am eagerly awaiting the end of my semester when I’ll have time to divulge myself into the origins of what has become, my favorite film.

    I cannot totaly grasp the majority of fan’s points made on the film relating to the source material, the novel/novels, without having read the novel myself yet. Though I’ve been extremly impressed by the detail you, and other fans, have gone into with “What could have been” and “How it could of been better”.

    I have become a fan of ERB and yet have never read his works, thanks for your ineresting analysis and opinions on the film. Also I agree a sequel, though I’d love to see one made especially with such an ending to the first, needs to be re-thought and maybe include an outside perspective besides just Stanton.

  • The movie was a good adaptation. Peter is saying (and I agree) that it could have been great with some more of the characterizations from the book.
    The essence of the books is the interaction between the characters, especially the main three (Carter, Thoric, Tarkus). It is the respect, companionship, loyalty and love that makes the book great, and not really the action and fighting, though they add much to it. I agree that this is where Stanton missed. I agree with the way Peter thought it should be.
    John Carter didn’t want to save Barsoom because some evil priest was making some other evil prince conquer Helium. He wanted to kick the pants off anyone who got in his way of winning the hand of the princess that he loved. His friends and ‘dog’ were loyal to him because he treated them with respect and honor. None of that was apparent in the movie.

    I thought that the Therns should only be implied in this movie. I would have had Carter find the amulet in the cave and place it in the slot in the rock and off he went. Then in the middle he stumbles upon the Atmosphere Factory and notices the design of the amulet etched in the wall by the door. He meets the keeper who is white and tells him that he is from Jarsoom, thinking that the keeper too is from earth. The keeper of the factory could tell him that he is a Thern and that they have discovered a secert way to transport to Jarsoom. He tries to trap Carter and Carter escapes. Later, after the wedding, when Carter is looking out over the city, the news comes of the failing atmosphere plant, and that they lost contact with the keeper and can’t get in. Carter remembers the imprint of the amulet in the wall and goes searching for his amulet. He races to the Factory with a team of scientists. He places the amulet in the wall and as he hears the door open, a flash of light carries him back to the Arazona cave.
    He spends years looking in caves for another amulet. He has hopes of finding signs of a Thern on Earth. He somehow lures one to his estate and the ending is similar to the movie. Something like that.

  • To Crustbucket,

    impressive battle scenes! They are a bit over the top, certainly for a Disney production, but I agree that something more could and should have been done even under this aspect.

    I didn’t like those 500 ft-jumps, though. Since gravity on Mars is about 1/3 that on Earth, John Carter should be able to jump maybe 6 m high and 20 m in distance. This is how ERB describes it. A little exaggeration is granted, but not too much, otherwise he is flying.

    You probably understand that your battle scenes would be very expensive. On the other hand LOTR managed to do it without exorbitant costs. In any case, things would have been easier and less expensive, if Stanton had chosen simpler ships, without those useless dragonfly wings.

    I know that most fans felt quite pleasant with the ship design, but I didn’t for a number of reasons: 1. They are very different from Burroughs’ description as air-floating ironclads. 2. They have apparently no rational functionality. 3. As a result they will have a hard time sailing the waters of Korus and Omean. 4. They have no appeal for merchandising, because the dragonfly wings are hard to reproduce: they will easily break or catch dust. 5. They are not distinctive. It would have been better if Helium and Zodanga had different ship designs.

    There should have been more sizes of smaller and bigger ships, but all of a solid compact type, giving children the possibility to collect them and mimic air-battles without breaking them. I’m sure this would have more than doubled the possibilities for merchandising.

    In conclusion, I think it would have been much better to take models of WWI battleships like the USS Missouri and work them round. Watching such a fleet of outlandish ironclads floating in the sky over the battlefield of Zodanga, as you imagine it, would have been something really majestic and memorable.

  • Therns and superpowers totally deflated this movie.
    Sab Than couldn’t even take a dump without Matai Shang showing up and demanding a courtesy flush.
    San Than should have been the main villian.
    A couple of scenes showing him as a viciously cunning swordsman and also a super douche could have had the audience feening for his demise when JC rescues the princess.

    The amulet was okay but not liking the therns and the fact that thern superpowers will turn Gods of Mars into a abortion I would have handled it differently.
    The amulets were leftovers from a extinct race that somehow ended up in thern possession.
    They know how to use it, but lack the technology to craft it.

    This movie could have used some LOTR style ramping up of the tension before the final climatic battle.

    The battle at the end of JC looked like a made for Sci-fy channel not so special special.
    Perhaps Stanton wanted to save a “jawdroppin two massive air fleets engaged in a titantic mega-epic battle” for a possible Gods of Mars.
    I think that was a big mistake.
    JC is a hard sell, should have went all out with a massive air battle in this movie (not wait till next movie) that would have left people astonished and buzzing.

    Below is two climatic endings. I plan on working elements from my first ending into my second ending which is a work in progress.

    ENDING NUMBER 1

    Wedding scene and sacking of Zodanga.

    JC crashes the wedding party.
    JC fights and Kills Sab Than’s dad while Sab Than escapes with the Princess.

    Climatic battle for Helium.

    Moviegoers gape at the size of Helium’s navy – 800 airships the size of battleships with an additional 2000 one man fliers.
    Helium and zodangan battleships pour broadsides into each other while below them green men disgorging from transports charge into the million men zodangan army that surrounds Helium.
    Not a million men milling around mindlessly waving swords.
    The Zodangans form up into Spanish tercios, utilize breast works and ditches, counterattack with pike pushes and thoat charges and gunners line up three deep and fire volleys.
    Tars Tarkus realizing that Helium’s navy is in trouble orders the transports into the sky.
    The captians of the emptied transports in a noble sacrifice ram the zodangan battleships causing big fireballs for the edification of the moviegoers.
    The remaining transports full of greenmen suddenly appear above the remaining Zodangan battleships and cause mass disruption with organized rifle targeting.
    Helium sallies forth and Zodanga is caught in a vice.
    Admidst the Mayhem JC is jumping from flier to flier, exploding battleship to exploding battleship until finally he rips Dejah away from Sab Than’s lecherous clutch then after a duel dispatches him in a unexpected dramatic spectacular fashion.
    Afterwards Dejahs father a hero of Charlton Heston proportions (not Stanton’s weak desparate old fat man with a comical toupee who cowers behind pillars) finally meets JC on the field of carnage.
    Verklempt!

    ENDING NUMBER 2

    Halfway thru the climatic battle Tars Tarkus marshalls his forces for a renewed charge that pushes back the staggering Zodangan ranks leaving behind a crushed carpet of dead and dying red men. Maddened and squealing, thoats leap across a ditch and onto the bulwarks beyond, many of them impaling themselves on sharpened stakes. With mighty oaths on there lips Zodangan pikeman rush the bulwarks in a desparate effort to push the green men back. Tars Tarkus leaps off the back of his dying mount to the top of the bulwark each sweep of his sword hewing 2 or 3 Zodangans in half. Inspired by there leader’s ferocity the green men heedless of death storm the bulwarks. Cannon shots start ripping thru the green men ranks. The shots are coming from cannons strapped on the backs of 25 foot tall Zodangan armor plated zitadars (barsoomian tanks). The green men start to waver but then a squadron of Heliumite one man fliers led by Kantos Kan attack the Zodangan zitadars. Kantos the designated comedy relief is whooping and hollering and practicing his newly acquired Jasoomian gesture. Flippin the finger.
    A great shadow covers that portion of the battlefield. Everyone Thark and Zodangan look upward. With sickening thuds Heliumite and Zodangan airmen (many on fire) fall like rain onto the battlefield. A dozen battleships grappled together, bouyancy tanks blown apart, plummet downward and exploding on contact with the ground, crush and burn a massive wad of combatants.

    The moviegoers gasp! Is Tars alive? Of course he is! He leaped clear but unfortunately the main mass of flaming wreckage landed mostly on his troops and now he is cut off, Zodangans on one side, flaming wreckage on the other.

    JC who was on the flaming wreckage as it plummeted leaps onto a passing by Zodangan one man flier.
    After tossing off the unlucky Zodangan JC notices two things.
    Sab Than’s personal flier with Dejah aboard, docking onto a mass of battleships grappled together floating above.
    Tars Tarkus knocked off his feet and about to die!

    The movie goers gasp! What will JC do?

    The bromance is strong! JC crashes and crushes a couple of Zodangans and then the bromance partners fight back to back. Awwww id’nt that bromantic? A Zodangan officer watching the corpse pile grow at the feet of the bromance partners orders his men back. In awe he asks the white man “Who are you?” JC flips the finger and says “John Carter”. Before the astonished gaze of the Zodangans and before they can react he grabs Tars Tarkus and leaps 500 feet in the air, clear over the flaming wreakage and into the green men ranks on the other side.

    The tharks dismayed at the loss of there vanguard and percieved loss of there jeddack were static.
    Some were exhorting vengence while others contemplated retreat.
    Upon the miraculous return of there jeddeck they gave forth an exultant cheer.
    Leaping onto the back of an abandoned thoat Tars brandishes his blood caked sword and yells “Leave a thark his head and one hand and he may yet conquer”. Brandishing there own weapons and galvanized the tharks give forth another cheer then rally around there jeddak.

    But then JC does the unthinkable. He leaps 500 feet in the air, clear over the flaming wreakage and back into the Zodangan ranks on the other side.

    Scene switch to mass of battleships grappled together and still afloat.

    The mass starts to buckle.
    The side that is mostly Zodangan ships (and men) remains stable.
    The side that is mostly Helium ships with more ruptured bouyancy tanks tilts with men sliding off.
    The Zodangans jeer and start cutting loose the mooring ropes that hold the two fleets together, knowing that will cause the Helium side to plummet to it’s doom.

    JC takes control of the biggest battleship seen on the movie screen yet.
    JC’s monster battleship grapples to and lifts up the sagging Helium side.
    JC leads a fresh influx of troops onto the floating battlefield then engages Sab Than.
    There personal duel is so awesome everyone else stops fighting so they can watch.
    Sab Than gets tossed into a whirling battleship propeller.
    His body explodes into a million pieces.

    I dedicate the tongue in cheek to henreid.

  • I’ve been playing mental games along these lines myself. I for one will dig into this and provide some thoughts — thank you, very stimulating.

  • This is an EXPERIMENT. After proposing so many critics of Stanton’s script, I wanted to know if it was possible to make the movie more respectful of the source material without losing the better of Stanton’s new ideas. Some said that readers are wedded to the novel and that they don’t understand a thing about adapting such a story to cinema. The first is probably true, while the second remains to be proved.

    If you try it, you’ll see indeed that things are not as easy as they seem, because “Princess of Mars” is a quite dispersive novel that has Carter roaming from dungeon to dungeon all over the planet. So it was clear that there had to be severe cuts to strip the novel to its very core. That means, there is no space for the dungeons of Warhoon, the atmosphere plant or Carter’s and Kantos Kan’s service in Zodanga. Then, each time you cut such an important part, it’s decisive to make ends meet, and this was the most challenging part of it all, since I had to keep it linear and short enough to allow every element to be developed as it deserved. Neither was there any time for additional scenes like the temple on the river Iss.

    I therefore resolved to three acts on Barsoom with the prologue and epilogue on Earth substantially unaltered. As I asked in my review, exposition is mostly done by Dejah Thoris, Sola and Kantos Kan narrating with visual flashbacks.

    Before displaying the result of my efforts, I want to put forward that it’s only a draft that needs to be filled with dialogue and may be expanded or cut in different directions. The most elaborate parts are those where I tried to make ends meet and where relations between the protagonists are developed, especially when they repeatedly save each other’s life. Keeping in mind that it’s interaction which grows characters.

    One premise for the Therns: they are not so central in this plot, at least in the beginning. They are not almighty and not shape-shifting, but like in the movie they have a cloaking device. It is not clear how it works, maybe it transports them to another place or dimension, maybe it only makes them invisible. All in all I’m giving away less secrets about them and that makes them more open for further development. I think they actually gain from this treatment, especially Matai Shang who is much more of a mystery and only reveals a bit more on the balcony with a really perfid “Thank you”. Thus people should come out of cinema asking: Well, what did you get, who these cloaking guys are and their plans? This would have been an excellent starting point for a sequel supposed to be opening in the Valley of Dor facing exactly the capital of the Holy Therns.

    Exposition on the whole comes much more gradually and especially the villains are introduced later. One step after the other: First we have to get introduced to the hero and his friends. Once the villains arrive, they are hunted down from small to bigger, with the biggest puppeteer Matai Shang remaining for the sequel. So everything is more gradual, allowing the characters to grow.

    While working out some of the dialogue, the love story between Carter and Dejah has grown in the direction of a much more classic take. I didn’t plan it that romantic, but condensing some disparate input from the novel, it came out like that. I guess some will like it, others not.

    Dejah’s figure as a fighter is a bit weaker compared to the movie, but I’d keep her fencing skills and her role can still be expanded. In any case she delivers a great speech before the Tharks. Mystery surrounds even some of her reactions, at least for people who didn’t read the book. So it is never explicitly explained why she reacted to severely when Carter called her “my Princess”, neither is clear why she didn’t want him to kill Sab Than. Readers of the book know, but other viewers may remain in doubt, and this is how it should be.

    There are three more characters: Thark jed Lorquas Ptomel, Heliumite scientist Ras Thavas and Zodangan general Zat Arras (well he was already in the movie, though unnamed). Having more positive characters, I tried to treat every figure with the respect he (or she) deserves. For example, it would have been possible to simply drop Lorquas Ptomel after he had served his purpose, but I didn’t and carried his character to a decent conclusion.

    One visual problem would be to distinguish Tars Tarkas and Lorquas Ptomel. In the movie this was resolved by Tars Tarks wearing the white apt coat distinguishing him as jeddak and Tal Hajus having a broken tusk. Since Tars Tarkas in my version starts only as vice-jed, he needs some clearly distinct scar or metal now. Loquas Ptomel may be the Thark with the broken tusk, while Tal Hajus should be really fat and dissimilar to any other Green warrior.

    Now here is my script:
    (I made the intro a bit more articulate, so I include it again.)
    (I tried to imagine the duration, but maybe it’s still too long)
    (Some parts may contain spoilers for the sequel, but they would be purely casual)

    PROLOGUE (15 min)
    1. Intro with Carter in his studio observing Mars:
    The movie starts with a long and slightly frustrating telescope view on Mars. After a few seconds a cloud blurs the view and the camera shows Carter in his private observatory, sadly turning to a table full of astronomical instruments, journals and books. Carter scrutinizes a big map of Mars, draws two little circles near one of the canals and writes the word “Helium”.
    His butler Thompson enters.
    THOMPSON: Here is your morning tea, Sir. … So you spent another night without sleep?
    CARTER: Mars in opposition and good viewing conditions, James!
    THOMPSON: Maybe not for long, Sir.
    CARTER: You’re right. The morning fog seems to bring clouds and maybe even rain. So, please get my carriage ready, James. I have to go and send a telegram to my nephew. And later I think I’ll pass a moment at the Astronomical Society.
    THOMPSON: Alright, Sir.
    Thompson leaves and Carter turns to his table again. He takes an announcement reading:

    Astronomical discussion with Maria Mitchell and Percival Lowell:
    Is there life on other planets?
    Prof. Giovanni Schiapparelli from Milan, Italy
    presents
    his sensational scientific discovery:
    ‘The Canals of Mars’
    at the Astronomical Library, Draper Park Observatory,
    Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, 5.00 P.M., October 30th 1881

    CARTER (laughing out to himself): Canals of Mars? Ha, what a discovery! I’ve been there and I’ve seen them reaching out, stretching from the twin towers of Helium to the dry grounds of Thark and the roaming city of Zodanga.
    He throws a longing view to the fading stars in the dawn and turns back to his map of Mars. He takes his pen, crosses out the word “Mars” and writes in big capital letters “BARSOOM”.
    2. The next scene shows Carter in New York, eluding his follower. The scenes in New York and Arizona remain as they are.

    ACT ONE: DANCES WITH THARKS (35 min)
    3. Carter arrives on Mars. He is captured by vice-jed Tars Tarkas. After the arrival in Korad he learns the language from Sola. (The following parts have to be more elaborate to make them quite epic.) Carter makes a bit of progress in the Thark society. He tames Woola and his thoats and becomes a friend of Tars Tarkas.
    4. Two ships from Helium arrive with three Zodangan cruisers in hot pursuit. Sab Than and Matai Shang are shown. Sab Than uses the ninth ray against the second Heliumite ship which is utterly destroyed.
    JOHN CARTER: That don’t seem a fair fight!
    Matai Shang indicates the other ship and orders to repeat the attack:
    MATAI SHANG (to Sab Than): Do it again!
    Sab Than starts aiming, but then he sees Dejah’s face on the bridge and stops.
    MATAI SHANG: Do it!
    Sab Than refuses and orders his artillery crew to shoot at the propulsion engines.
    SAB THAN: Shoot at the engines, even the rudder!
    The ship is hit and comes down in flames, exploding when touching ground. Not seen by the Zodangans, John Carter has used his jumping ability to save Dejah Thoris. The Tharks attack the Zodangan ships with their long rifles. Hidden in the ground, they are hardly to be recognized from above.
    MATAI SHANG: She’s dead! No use to start a war with these loathsome marauders. I’d rather try to have them as allies. Now let’s get back to Zodanga!
    The Zodangan ships retreat and the rejoicing Tharks start plundering the wreckages.
    5. Tars Tarkas takes Dejah Thoris away from Carter. Being carried away, she gives him a sign, but he doesn’t understand it. Then she speaks to Tars Tarkas, and Carter observes the scene from a distance. Understandably she expresses her wish to know him and Tars Tarkas comes to present them. (View dialogue in my review) After their first encounter she takes the task to instruct him.
    6. Then Dejah Thoris is brought before the Thark council, where she informs Lorquas Ptomel, Tars Tarkas and the other nobles about the new ecological and political threat from Zodanga controlling the ninth ray.
    7. During her speech: flashbacks showing air battles, then captain Kantos Kan returning to Helium with a surviving ship to inform Tardos Mors and Ras Thavas, who start discussing the new threat and possible options, one of which is giving Dejah in marriage to Sab Than.
    KANTOS KAN: Jeddak, our entire fleet was destroyed with a single ray from their devastating weapon. My ship, being the smallest, formed the rear guard and was able to avoid the impact, but I’m afraid, nobody else survived. Our speed and agility helped us escape.
    RAS THAVAS: What a disaster, my Jeddak! They must have discovered the force of the ninth ray!
    TARDOS MORS: What can we do against it, Ras Thavas?
    RAS THAVAS: My laboratory has been researching for years. We still don’t know how to control it, but maybe we can come up with some counter-measures.
    TARDOS MORS: You better hurry, my friend, and when you’re ready have it installed on all ships! Sab Than gives us 20 days to decide whether we want to surrender or let him marry my daughter to become allies.
    KANTOS KAN (exclaims): By Issus, I’d rather accept a pact with the Green savages than yield to a similar villainous blackmail! May all Barsoom go down in flames, before I witness such a cowardice! (Some counselors raise their eyebrows in disapproval)
    TARDOS MORS: Maybe it will, Kantos Kan, our valiant Captain, maybe it will!
    8. DEJAH THORIS (concluding her speech to the Thark): Today you have seen that dangerous weapon in action and now you know what it can do. Zodanga will use it to crush all its enemies, stealing even more water than they already do! Alone, nobody will be able to resist them. So I ask you, noble warriors of Thark: Wouldn’t it be better that all the free nations of Barsoom unite their forces to fight this lethal threat together as allies?
    The Tharks seem to be impressed, but Lorquas Ptomel answers like a real politician.
    LORQUAS PTOMEL: You have spoken well, Princess of Helium, and I agree, yes, without Zodanga drying up the canals, we would be able to breed more eggs. But I have to inform you that the decision about an alliance must be taken by the High Council of Thark presided by our Jeddak Tal Hajus. Tomorrow we will get in march to Thark City and then we’ll see.
    TARS TARKAS (ironically murmuring): … knowing our magnificent Jeddak Tal Hajus …
    A young warrior springs to his feat, rudely grabbing Dejah Thoris by the arm.
    YOUNG WARRIOR: Well spoken, Lorquas Ptomel. And the insolent daughter of Helium should know that her foolish talk about secret weapons doesn’t impress us at all, since today we have sent the mighty warships of Zodanga back to where they belong.
    As he starts shaking the Princess, it takes John Carter one leap to reach and struck him with his fist. The Thark nobles are impressed and Tars Tarkas confers him the dead warrior’s metal.
    TARS TARKAS: I told you he can jump!
    9. Later that night Dejah starts instructing Carter, trying to explain where he came from.
    DEJAH THORIS: Where are you from John Carter? Virginia is no place on Barsoom! You really don’t know? Well, if science can’t help us, sometimes the Gods can! Is there a temple in Korad?
    JOHN CARTER: Yes, there is one, Ma’am.
    DEJAH THORIS: Take me there!
    They elude the guards and reach the temple, silently accompanied by Woola (already tamed). Carter seems still impressed by Dejah’s speech and a bit jealous of her description of Kantos Kan:
    JOHN CARTER: You admire that bold captain, don’t you?
    DEJAH THORIS: Kantos Kan? He is a real patriot and has distinguished himself many times. My nation knows how to recognize valor and gives people from the lower classes the same chances as the nobles. So my father promoted him to the rank of Commodore.
    In the meantime Dejah has examined the walls of the temple. She admires the wonderful frescos.
    DEJAH THORIS: Beautiful! These are our ancestors, when their ships still sailed the seas. And this is a Holy Thern! By Issus! They already worshipped them 500.000 years ago!
    She points on a figure holding a small device that sends rays in all directions. Carter is suddenly interested.
    JOHN CARTER: What is that thing he’s holding?
    DEJAH THORIS: I’d like to know it!
    Then she finally finds what she was looking for: a relief of the solar system.
    DEJAH THORIS: Here we got it: look, John Carter: the Sun, Rasoom, Cosoom, Jasoom, Barsoom! Repeat with me!
    She repeats and he starts translating into English.
    JOHN CARTER: No, not Barsoom. Jasoom! Earth!
    She finally understands.
    DEJAH THORIS: You’re from Jasoom, John Carter, but now you’re on Barsoom! How did you get here?
    JOHN CARTER: I’m on Mars? Impossible!
    Dejah Thoris drags him outside pointing at the two moons.
    DEJAH THORIS: See: Thuria and Cluros!
    JOHN CARTER: Two moons!
    She points at a bright star in the sky (actually a planet accompanied by a smaller moon):
    DEJAH THORIS: And there is your homeworld: Jasoom!
    JOHN CARTER: Earth!
    DEJAH THORIS: And its permanent companion Nosoom!
    JOHN CARTER: The Moon!
    Puzzled they fall into silence, watching the stars, while Thuria is quickly moving east. After a while he speaks.
    JOHN CARTER: Is he … your lover?
    DEJAH THORIS: Who? Oh, John Carter, you’re a child! I shouldn’t even talk to you about these things, … but, I see, you really don’t understand, man from another planet!
    He sees her shiver and puts his coat around her shoulder for protection. She lets him, but in this very moment they are discovered and taken back to the camp.
    10. The next morning Lorquas Ptomel has Sola punished for allowing their escape in the night. He decides that she will be offered to Tal Hajus before dying in the arena. Then the caravan of the Tharks leaves Korad on the way to Thark City. This is an important epic scene to highlight the nomad culture of the Tharks.

    ACT TWO: TARS TARKAS’ REVENGE (35 min)
    11. During the march Sola, in chains, tells Carter the story of her mother. Carter informs Tars Tarkas that she is his daughter and that Sarkoja tortured his wife on behalf of Tal Hajus. (This is the same story handed over twice, so it can be shortened by jump cuts or having the second passage only in video with Carter gesturing to Tars Tarkas.)
    12. Tars Tarkas replies, telling Carter that Jeddak Tal Hajus will claim not only Sola, but also Dejah Thoris for himself, before torturing them to death for his personal pleasure. He urges him to flee, taking Sola as a guide. He hopes that Lorquas Ptomel will send him on pursuit and promises that he will do his possible to deviate the research and take the dishonor for the failure, even if it will cost him his metal.
    13. Carter, Dejah and Sola flee. After a day and a night they reach a half-dried canal. Just when Dejah Thoris starts explaining the importance of these infrastructures for civilization on Barsoom (and Zodanga’s role in cutting supplies), they are spotted by a raiding horde of Warhoons preparing to cross the shallow water.
    14. They flee northeast towards a nearby mound. As soon as they are hidden from sight behind the hill, Carter orders Sola to turn west in direction of Helium with Dejah on the back of her thoat. He himself with Woola and the other thoats will continue in the previous direction, trying to drag the Warhoons into Thark territory. Dejah refuses to leave him and tries to slip from her thoat, but Sola obeys and uses three arms to raise her back in the saddle.
    15. In a first moment the trick seems to work and Carter turns east, but soon it appears clear that the number of Warhoons has diminished and that they have divided their forces to follow both tracks. (These should be quite epic scenes in the Martian desert, think of Lawrence of Arabia.)
    16. After sending Woola in search of Tars Tarkas, a desperate Carter turns against his hunters. After a hot fight he is almost buried under his enemies, but he is saved by the arrival of Tars Tarkas’ pursuing force led by Woola. The Tharks easily disperse the surviving Warhoons.
    17. Tars Tarkas pulls out Carter who tells him to search for the Princess and Sola. They reach a place with evident traces showing that the fugitives and the Warhoon hunters met with a ship. As they look around, they find Sola descending from a nearby mountain. One of her arms is broken.
    18. Sola informs them (with partial flashbacks) that they found a ship without colors in the sand, but when they approached, their hopes for salvation were dashed and they were taken prisoners by Zodangans. When the Warhoons arrived soon after, the Zodangan leader paid them for the lost prey and offered more money if they entered an alliance. A Zodangan general (Zat Arras) was showing some irritation at the deal, but Sab Than turned his objections down. Then they parted and the Zodangans flew off with their prisoners. After a few miles Sab Than threw Sola overboard, but she was saved by the fact that they were flying low over a mountain.
    19. Carter is demoralized for losing Dejah and tells Tars Tarkas to do his duty. Maybe they can do something useful in Thark City? Being observed by his comrades, the vice-jed has no choice and carries Carter and Sola to Thark City. Here they face a fat, flaccid and almost delirious Tal Hajus and are imprisoned in the arena.
    20. Carter’s cell-mate is Kantos Kan who was send with a small ship to search for the Princess and/or negotiate an alliance with the Tharks. Instead of listening to his proposals, Tal Hajus had him imprisoned and sentenced to fight at the big games of Thark. Kantos Kan tells Carter more about the conflict between Helium and Zodanga and Sab Than’s plans to marry Dejah.
    21. Then Carter, Kantos Kan and Sola enter the arena. Carter kills the white apes and incites the crowd, challenging Tal Hajus in the name of Tars Tarkas. Lorquas Ptomel urges the cowardly jeddak to defend his metal. Tal Hajus is forced to accept the challenge.
    22. Tars Tarkas wins the fight and is the new Jeddak of Thark. He decides to grace his daughter and banish Sarkoja. (Sarkoja may still have a role in the sequel)

    ACT THREE: THE BATTLE OF ZODANGA (30 min)
    23. On invitation of Kantos Kan, Tars Tarkas orders the Thark army to move against Zodanga. Kantos Kan has his little ship repaired and flies off to Helium to mobilize their fleet.
    24. Carter and the Tharks march on Zodanga. When they arrive they find Kantos Kan, accompanied by Ras Thavas, to inform them that a marriage has been negotiated and the ceremony is under way in the palace. Tardos Mors is present at the ceremony leading his daughter to her new spouse. Tars Tarkas orders Lorquas Ptomel to accompany Kantos Kan on the Heliumite flagship to coordinate the battle from above. The jed objects:
    LORQUAS PTOMEL: But Tharks don’t fly! You know that!
    TARS TARKAS: Then you shall be the first to learn it, Lorquas Ptomel!
    The jed obeys visibly terrified, putting his foot cautiously on the planks.
    25. With Carter’s help the Tharks take the city defences and reach the palace.
    26. When he sees the Green Hordes under the colors of Helium, Sab Than turns against Tardos Mors and tries to take him hostage, but Dejah recognizes and calls Carter, who arrives with a big jump, pulling the princess and her father out of danger.
    27. While defending the Jeddak of Helium, Carter faces Matai Shang who uses his cloaking device to escape. When Tars Tarkas is facing Sab Than, the Jeddak of Zodanga flees to a little ship in the palace garden. Matai Shang decloaks by his side ordering him to mobilize the fleet and call the Warhoons.
    MATAI SHANG: Why did I give you the ninth ray? Where is the weapon?
    SAB THAN: On my flagship!
    MATAI SHANG: By Issus! How can you be so incautious?
    SAB THAN: I supposed this was to be my wedding day!
    MATAI SHANG: Up to your fleet! This is the moment to use it. And give order to call the Warhoons!
    28. Sab Than and Matai Shang reach the Zodangan flagship and use the ninth ray against a group of Heliumite ships. But Kantos Kan has learned how the weapon works and Ras Thavas has come up with some countermeasures. The Heliumite flagship has been hiding behind a high tower and with a surprise shot they cut the bridge of the Zodangan flagship, causing Sab Than and Matai Shang to fall to the ground.
    29. Lying wounded, the Zodangan leader is found by John Carter. Our hero raises his sword to kill him, but he is stopped by Dejah’s call urging him not to do it. When he turns his back, addressing Dejah with a puzzled “my Princess?”, Sab Than raises his arm to use the ninth ray, but Tars Tarkas knows no mercy and uses four swords to first cut his arm and then his body into slices.
    30. When he sees his ally die, Matai Shang grabs the secret weapon from Sab Than’s lifeless arm and turns to flee. John Carter jumps to stop him, but a Zodangan lifeguard gets in his way and before he can kill him, Matai Shang has again used his cloaking device. Before disappearing he shouts to Carter: “Your planet is next!”
    31. On the Heliumite flagship Lorquas Ptomel forgets all his fears as soon as the fighting starts. With Ras Thavas’ improvements the Heliumite ships led by Kantos Kan are victorious and the Zodangans flee. When Warhoon warriors arrive they are quickly surrounded by the victorious Heliumites, and general Zat Arras, disgusted by these new allies, surrenders the last Zodangan guard regiment to Tardos Mors.
    ZAT ARRAS: Dry ocean ground! Better an honorable defeat than dishonorable allies! We surrender!
    32. The battle is over and Kantos Kan lands near the palace. Lorquas Ptomel jumps off board, shouting “Flying is great!”
    33. Ras Thavas looks after the Zodangan lifeguard killed by Carter and by using some thoat oil he discovers that his skin was actually white. He calls his Jeddak and the other nobles to inform them on what he found out about the Therns and their plans to subjugate Barsoom. A counselor of Tardos Mors murmurs that these accusations are heresy, and another one shouts out saying that the great scientist must be mad to turn against Barsoom’s respected religion.
    COUNSELOR ONE: This is heresy!
    COUNSELOR TWO: By Issus, you must be mad, Ras Thavas, to direct such accusations against the pious servants of our Goddess, the holy benefactors of every Barsoomian nation! Beware your tongue, or we will have no choice than sending you on the last pilgrimage down the river Iss to have you verify with your own personal life if there is any truth in what you relate.
    There is a moment of perplexity, as everybody considers the gravity of the accusations.
    34. Then Tardos Mors breaks the ice and invites Dejah to present their new allies. She starts with Tars Tarkas, calling him “the greatest warrior Barsoom has ever seen” and then presents Carter as the man who has earned the right to call her “my Princess”.
    35. The next scene shows the arrival in Helium, where Kantos Kan is raised to the rank of admiral and Zat Arras is nominated the new governor of Zodanga. Then the marriage is celebrated. Carter’s testimonies are Tars Tarkas and Sola, Lorquas Ptomel drives his ceremonial barque. Dejah Thoris is led by her father and accompanied by Kantos Kan and Ras Thavas.

    EPILOGUE (10 min)
    36. Matai Shang appears next to Carter on the balcony.
    CARTER: That’s you! What did you mean: Your planet is next?
    Matai Shang starts brawling about his evil plans, explaining a bit more.
    MATAI SHANG: Not so hard to understand, after all: We’ve been feeding off this planet for many lifetimes now, but we don’t destroy it. Barsoom is dying even without us. And when this happens, it’s time to move on. So, we’ve been observing your planet for a long time and we know that Earth is even richer than Barsoom. Now that you’re getting industrialized, the moment has come to exploit your resources on larger scale. Everything’s ready, you stand no chance, believe me, but we need a new code to adapt to your higher gravity. That’s why you were so useful, John Carter. Thank you very much indeed, Sir!
    He reaches out to pull some of Carter’s hair and then sends him back to Earth.
    37. End on Earth as is in the movie.

    Now everybody should be able to tell if he preferred Stanton’s high-energy adaption or if he’d been pleased by a closer take on the novel.

    Sadly there seems to be no place for my favorite line from the movie (“Take me hostage!”).
    But, if anybody has found another favorite line in here, let me know. Then I’ll tell you mine.

  • Excellent analysis, Henreid, especially on the way Burroughs treated the races of Barsoom and why he was so much ahead of certain 21st century hypocrites.

    You’re right, ERB told his story well, otherwise it wouldn’t have stood the test of time. For us readers this is the baseline. That doesn’t mean that we’re not ready to accept changes in order to adapt to the different medium or a new sensibility in our times. But they should be an improvement, if possible, and not uncessesarily damage the backbone of the original.

    I agree that “Gods of Mars” is the real sledgehammer of the trilogy and I’m as desolate as you about the point where Stanton led us with John Carter, because I just can’t figure out how a second movie might do that masterpiece any justice.

    Today Khanada Taylor recalled “the jeweled mountains near the Thern sanctuary, which I hope we might get some glimpse of in Gods”. I read that description a few weeks ago and I’m keen to see them, too. But the middle part of JC left me completely disoriented about what I saw. They said they’d travel the river Iss, so I guess they did, and the white structure in the river was the temple of the Therns then? All here? And the cavernous Mountains of Otz?

    I think the middle part didn’t do as much damage as the introduction, but possibly it was even more useless and disorienting.

  • Thanks, Peter.
    And you’re right, it’s the humor that puts me off as I take the writing very seriously. To me, his prose really works, and with streamlining and minor tweaks, could produce a lovely screenplay composed almost entirely of his verbage. I think Burroughs was a far better writer than most people, even most die-hard fans, give him credit for.

    But regardless of opinions about that… his writing has stood the test of time. That earns it an objective level of respect that I feel Stanton/Andrews/Chabon betrayed when they changed everything that didn’t conform to their 21st century sensibilities and, in their arrogance, imagined themselves his peers.

    If they wanted to make a film about an industrial AT-AT city that gets a powerful sparkle-weapon from a shapeshifting sith lord who is manipulating events on multiple planets, and it is up to a deceptive warrior princess and a broken, grumpy hero (who just wants to get his gold) to stop them by taking over as chief of an alien tribe with a weak but friendly leader… well, they should have made up new names for the characters and called it something even farther from ‘A Princess of Mars’ than ‘Disney John Carter’. Call me in a hundred years if anyone is still interested in their original tale.

    His characters have lasted longer and had greater underground influence than most others in our current pop culture, and they deserved better.

    Ahh, the Races of Barsoom.

    It’s true that Burroughs didn’t really force his racial equality theme hard until the sledgehammer that is the second book. But it’s still there in ‘Princess’. John Carter’s greatest achievement (as spoken by Dejah Thoris) is the alliance he forges between Helium and Thark, and much is made of the first entrance by Green Men into that fair city being in friendship and celebration. The film pays a little lip service to this, but it’s certainly downplayed.

    There has long been some controversy over Burroughs’ use of various races in these novels, but I am firmly of the opinion that those who criticize it are much like those who banned Mark Twain’s Huck Finn — they get hung up on antiquated language and fail to see the humanist point being made by the intent of the work.

    I’m not saying what the right or wrong way to handle race in a John Carter film is (although I do have my own ideas)… what I’m saying is that it’s such an integral part of the novels that you can’t just gloss over it. The film takes the safest possible route, dodging the whole issue by hiring the entire cast from one narrow slice of the human race to portray the diversity of Barsoom – White, Red, and Green are all played by white actors.

    Oh, we call them Red because they have red lines drawn on them. Oh, it was too hard to paint the actors red. It’s like they never even considered actors of another skin color. They’ve got all these Brits soaked in bad spray tans and the result is a homogenized Barsoom devoid of the ethnic diversity so much of the vitality of the novels depends on.

    If ‘Disney John Carter’ is any indication, one could suspect the First-Born in ‘Disney John Carter: The Gods of Mars’ to be more caucasian actors with black rub-on tattoos, and ‘Disney John Carter: The Warlord of Mars’ filled with more white guys in yellow ones.

    Is it as simple as casting native americans as red, africans as black, asians as ‘yellow’? I don’t think so. That would be equally unimaginative, and probably read much more offensively to some. That said, it would certainly be more interesting than all-white-everyone.

    I agree there was already too much of ‘Gods’ in ‘DJC’, but what there is doesn’t speak well for where this franchise might (have) go(ne).

    I’m fully aware of how incendiary Gods of Mars could come across nowadays, and it’s a matter to handle thoughtfully – with extreme care. But that’s part of why it’s so amazing. It’s radical, it’s savage, exotic, vital, challenging even today. Especially today, even.
    I shudder to think of what a Disney produced, Stanton-directed sequel would do to THAT original work.

    The white race of Barsoom have enslaved and tricked the people of the outer world, yet they suffer the irony of the same ignorance while they are preyed upon by the First Born. They are not gods, just twisted, racist cannibal rapists convinced of their own divinity. No teleporting or jedi powers or nanotech or space travel. The idea that the finest and most beautiful fighting men on Barsoom, who hold the most power, are black, was certainly an even wilder notion when written than it is now. Even though they are mostly vile antagonists, Xodar becomes a great ally when he awakens from his trance of ignorance. Even Phaidor comes around by the end of ‘Warlord’. Burroughs takes care not to condemn any race, just the religions and poisonous thoughts that have twisted their society.

    Making the Therns so powerful makes it nearly impossible to put the First-Born above them, which again (likely) puts the white man on top. The whole topsy-turvy strata of race and class Burroughs used to surprise his readers and highlight the falsehood of racial superiority as a critique of his own society is undermined at every turn.

    I think the filmmakers were earnestly trying so hard to be PC and avoid any controversy that they went too far in the other direction. The result is a film that borders on offensive for it’s lack of diversity, and worse – presents an alien world that is too familiar and blandly populated.

    The white-washing of Barsoom is just as lame as the ‘racebending’ charge rightfully levelled at ‘The Last Airbender’, but being an older property with a smaller fanbase (who was so excited to get a Barsoom movie AT ALL) no one called them out on it.

    Like I said, the Martian race issue is much larger than I could get into within a paragraph, and I’ve only crudely begun to articulate it here.

  • Henreid

    The average critic and moviegoer has enough to digest in the first movie.

    I would have waited till the second movie before addressing equality among diverse warring races.

    Gods of Mars could and should make some strong (controversial) statements regarding racism and religion but disney will lack the backbone.

    Your black men will be more caucasians with black tatoos.

    Furthermore ….

    Kanto Kan displaying his blue cape turned what should have felt like a epic historic first meeting between Tars Tarkus and Tardos Mors into sad cheese.

    Did the Tharks attack Zodanga because JC is a white Messiah?

    No.

    Revenge for Zodangan despoilment of hatcheries.
    Blood and treasure.
    Access to Helium’s water canals.

    Moviegoers understanding the real reasons would deflate the white messiah tag and give the movie more gravitas.

  • Dear Henreid,

    there is a lot of serious critics in your answer to Jeff. I agree on much of it, but there seem to be also a few misunderstandings, maybe due to the fact that you take ERB’s work so very serious and don’t want to see it bastardized. In fact, it deserves respect, because it was very progressive for it’s time and by many reasons still is.

    Two points to pin this: the false religion/scientific progress plot (already discussed) and the fact that the puppeteers of Barsoom, the Therns, are ultimately puppeted by a black race. Thus, on Barsoom the red guys are the noble scientist, the white guys are evil fanatics and the black guys are on top of it all! Enough to get in serious trouble with the Ku Klux Klan, I guess!

    But since this is revealed only in the second novel, it couldn’t go all in the first movie. I actually think, they revealed already too much of Gods of Mars. The second movie will certainly feature other than Caucasian races, but after they changed so much in the first one, I’m not very confident that the Black Pirates will come out on top.

    What you write about the relationship between John Carter and Dejah Thoris is very accurate and confirms what I wrote. I guess you didn’t realize the exact purpose of my dialog, probably because you were disturbed by the more humorous lines and so you thought that I didn’t take it seriously enough. That was done to make it entertaining, but the main purpose was to get the pointless bickering out of the way: distance them in the first place to make the force of attraction even more violently evident when they finally fall in love.

    Finally, what you write on Tars Tarkas is absolutely right and very precise. I came to the same conclusion, but couldn’t have said it better. This is what I wrote in a previous comment: “As regards the Tars Tarkas revenge plot, it simply doesn’t happen, because he is already Jeddak right from the start. As a result his befriending with Carter remains undeveloped and unmotivated. Willem Dafoe is doing a solid concentrated job, for what he is allowed, but the script treats his figure pretty bad. In the end it remains absolutely unconvincing how this beaten-up “weakling” and “traitor” gets back to his throne.”

  • PS:: Peter,
    My apologies for having been so antagonistic in a prior comment. While I don’t care for your comedic modernized take on the dialogue, I was glad to read your well-reasoned insights on the film (most of which I agree with).

  • Dear Jeff,

    There are almost too many answers to your question to list here, but I’ll venture a few of the main ones.

    I find it dishonorable to slink away from ERBs themes of equality among diverse warring races by using an entirely caucasian cast, and then never really addressing the issue. The film retreats in the face of the issues Burroughs raised. In this, (and in the wrongly derided writing of his Dejah Thoris), the novel ERB wrote is more socially progressive than the film adaptation of 100 years later, and that is a very sad thing to me. [This is a much larger and more complex issue than I’m articulating in the brief above paragraph.]

    I think it was dishonorable to turn an interracial, international, interplanetary soul-mate Romance between two noble beings into a series of bickering negotiations between a liar and a selfish jerk who seem to be of the same basic race and society. The conflicts between ERBs John and Dejah were cultural misunderstandings and breaches of differing social tradition – here the conflicts come from two self-serving characters trying to use each other.

    No matter what the reason, or whether he was ‘serious’ or not, having Captain John Carter kick the proud daughter of a thousand jeddaks off of her thoat (and smile about it!) is an absolute dishonor to everything the narrator of the novel stands for.

    Now let’s take Tars Tarkas. I ask you: what does the greatest statesman and warrior on all Barsoom really do in this movie? In the novel he is steadily rising through the ranks of Thark, killing his way to the top so that he can take revenge and finally afford to be the reasonable soul he secretly is already. In the film, he’s already in charge, and yet has to hide his compassion… why?
    Stanton’s Tars Tarkas just amounts to a poor leader. He’s visibly embarrassed in front of his buddies when DJC won’t ‘sak’, he cannot keep his lieutenants in line, and gets his a$$ kicked (offscreen) the first opportunity. When he does finally get a chance to fight onscreen, he passes out and lets Carter handle the apes (who then outranks him as Jeddak of Thark). The second time, after the ludicrous business of having the Tharks pilot the Zodangan fleet (another dishonor to the intelligence of Burroughs writing), his biggest moments are not-killing Kantos Kan and not-killing John Carter.

    Oh yes, then he cries at a wedding.

    Stanton/Andrews/Chabon clearly loved certain things about the novel, but they sure weren’t the characters or the themes. The hubris of their adaptation pays homage to the tone of the novel, and admittedly contains something of it’s essence, but it betrays every meaningful action taken by the iconic, time-tested characters ERB wrote. That they were the only people in that whole century to be trusted with such characters onscreen and chose to change them all is, to me, a dishonor to that legacy.

  • Sorry, the double negation had me confused. I wanted to say: She couldn’t agree more!

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  • Again, I want to thank everybody for commenting. My special thanks goes to pascalahead, you made my day, as well as Chris and woodythewino. But I also enjoyed the negative critics of Paladin, Nick and, again, woodythewino, while my girlfriend almost laughed her a.. off. Since it was exactly what she had prophesized (“pseudo-intellectual”), she couldn’t agree less with your comments.

    With a group of fans who have just seen their favorite block buster full of stunning pictures made by one of Hollywood’s most successful directors, while the words of this unknown writer are yet to figure out in imagination, I knew that the final count could only be negative. Having gained the appreciation of at least one or two is for me a great encouragement to go on with my writing. And maybe I’ll even send Andrew a letter with some of my ideas.

  • Woody … you say Andrew Stanton was the right choice to direct….and that reminds me that we should keep in mind that it wasn’t like Disney had already decided to do John Carter of Mars and was looking for a director. Paramount let the option lapse and Stanton was tracking it, and he called Dick Cook who was then head of Disney Studios and said …..if you guys get the rights and are willing to take a chance on me, I would love to direct it. So the point is, the impetus actually came from Stanton and without him making that call, it would not have happened. So that REALLY I guess makes him the right one because if not for him it simply wouldn’t have happened.

    I think there are so many positives about his performance as director …….but I tend to agree with Peter that he needed more time, using the “PIxar Process”, to decode the DNA of the movie (Stanton uses that term, DNA, a lot)……and the schedule didn’t quite allow it.

    All in all, I think we got a better John Carter than we would have with any of the other directors who were attached over the years. I’ve read most of the other scripts and this one, in spite of not being perfect, is a lot better than any of them.

    But there is a sense it could have been more.

  • That would have been a mighty nice intro, Peter. I admit it would have flowed better your way, but I still don’t find fault with Stanton’s version. As for the flashbacks during the Warhoon slaughter, I think many feel this was the highlight of the movie. The fury released by Carter got me teary eyed e end on the third viewing (I thought I was going to console the woman in front of me), which proves Andrew was the right choice for this flick.

  • Hello Dotar,

    to answer your question, I think I remember that I’ve read a news, maybe last September, that connected the need for re-shoots to the fact that they added an introduction on Barsoom that previously wasn’t there. Lindsey Collins seems to put it a bit different, in the way that some kind of heavy introduction was always there, but they changed it substantially. If you watch her interview you find that half of it is focused on all the things of the movie that didn’t work, especially in the first 15 minutes crammed with divergent information, and how they tried to fix it.

    If you analyze the final result, you find indeed that there are three narrators in 15 minutes (the off-voice, Burroughs and Carter) and that you jump from one prospective to the other, from one planet to the other and back again, from one time (2012) to another (1881) and yet another (1868). In the intro you have even diverging timelines between audio and video, since the comment is clearly from a 2012 point of view, while the battle should be from 1868.

    Btw: it’s funny that I did a quite similar three-part-introduction for my trilogy on the Peloponnesian War and I’ve always had the perception that it was probably the weakest part of the entire book.

    Yesterday a friend of mine passed me a pirate copy of the movie (I didn’t ask for it, but in Italy they’re pretty fast with these things). The quality is really bad, not recommendable at all, but I viewed the first ten minutes again to check the introduction and it still confirmed my first impression: it hurt my aesthetic senses. So I’ve tried to imagine a new introduction that would eliminate a few jumps, keeping a more linear timeline, but giving at least a portion of information where the movie is headed. Here is the result:

    The movie starts with a telescope view on Mars. After a few seconds a cloud blurs the view and the camera shows Carter in his private observatory, sadly turning to a table full of astronomy books by Giovanni Schiapparelli, Percival Lowell and others (Lowell is an anachronism, because he wrote two decades later, but Schiapparelli made his observations in 1877). Carter turns to a map of Mars, draws a little circle near one of the canals and writes the word “Helium”. His butler comes in (I don’t remember his name, so I called him James).
    JAMES: Here is your coffee/tea, sir. … So you spend another night without sleep?
    CARTER: Mars in opposition and good viewing conditions, James!
    JAMES: Maybe not for long, sir.
    CARTER: You’re right. The morning fog seems to bring clouds and maybe even rain. So, please get my covered car ready, James. I have to go to the post office to send this letter to my nephew. And later I think I’ll pass a moment at the Astronomic Society.
    JAMES: Alright, sir.
    James leaves and Carter turns to his table again. He takes an announcement reading:
    “Is there life on other planets?
    Giovanni Schiapparelli
    presents
    his sensational scientific discovery:
    ‘The Canals of Mars’
    at the Astronomic Society
    New York, October 30th 1881, 5.00 P.M.”
    CARTER (laughing out to himself): Canals of Mars? Ha, what a discovery! I’ve been there and I’ve seen them reaching out, stretching from the twin towers of Helium to the dry grounds of Thark and the roaming city of Zodanga.
    He throws a longing view to the stars in the sky and turns back to his map of Mars. He takes his pen, crosses out the word “Mars” and writes in big capital letters the word “BARSOOM”.
    Next scene as is: Carter in New York, eluding his follower.

    I guess this start would have changed somehow Carter’s character, since his longing for Mars would have made clear that he didn’t only lose his wife and child during the Secession War, but also something else and maybe more important out there beyond the void. I don’t think, though, that it would have spoiled Stanton’s idea of making him John Carter of Mars by the end of the movie. On the contrary, such an introduction would have given us a little anticipation on what was to become the human core of the story, thus orienting our heart and opening our mind, instead of filling it.

    P.S.
    I found very interesting what you write about the knight errand and his transformation into a modern broken hero. I share that view, but I also recognize that Burroughs’ John Carter is a somehow flat character. So I believe that Burroughs’ hero actually needed some more development and I think that Stanton did the back story really decent. The following is what I wrote on the subject two weeks ago: “When I first read about Carter’s traumatic reminiscences intercut with the battle scenes, I was afraid that this would result irritating. I thought: Here we go again with the next traumatized war veteran from Iraq? I want Han Solo instead! But now I have to admit that Stanton got these parts in a very subtle way and not disturbing at all.”

  • But isn’t Carter’s passive role a by-product of our times? It’s not politically correct nowadays to portray a man that is a warrior first and foremost, or a woman as a passive captive in wait of a chilvalric protector.

    That’s what basically destroyed to me Pierce Brosnan’s reign as James Bond. The last “woman in distress” in this series was featured in Goldeneye, but even in that one, you had the prototype of the Bond girls to follow (in the guise of the evil Xenia Onatopp): independent, equally-strong women that don’t need a white knight to help her (of course that’s highly hypocritical, because at one point, they need his help nonetheless). Unsurprisingly, the Daniel Craig’s Bond mostly revels in violence, more than in his white knight garb (can you imagine any other Bond saying “The bitch is dead”?).

    Perhaps that’s why John Carter feels to me like a reboot of a movie that was never filmed, and one we’ll probably never see. Again, not a bad movie, but certainly not the one I dreamed of while reading the book.

  • I know that many viewers were quite comfortable with the Barsoom-intro, because it helped them understand the plot. We suspect however, and Lindsey Collins confirms, that this was a repair operation, added after early screenings to selected audiences evidenced that something was not working as it should.

    Peter I’ve been looking for the story as to how that scene got there? Was it in a Lindsey Collins interview? Do you have a link? Very interested in that.

  • And the really strange thing is how, with the love story so central and essential …. and with ever piece of cover art in history showing both John and Dejah and implying the relationship — not one Disney poster ever included Dejah Thoris. (Well, there’s one where she’s on a thoat so far in the background that you can’t tell who she is.) Strange.

  • Mr. Weller’s analysis is a very insightful essay. I find it a huge compliment to JC that such deep assessment of the film’s achievements and shortfalls are summarized by someone of such obvious talent in the construction of effective storytelling. He catches the flavor of the way I felt after my first viewing. Not precisely, or maybe I’m just not able to articulate it that way.
    I’m still working on my “official” viewpoint, but like you Dotar, I was a bit disoriented and let down – but only about one point. Of all the genres “A Princess of Mars” jumps through, I’ve always believed that the love story is most pivotal. Call it love at first sight, soul mate, whatever – that part of the story drives the drama home.
    Though the film storyline finally got there, it took wwaaaaayyyyyy too long.
    As Dotar mentioned, by the time John listens to Dejah’s impassioned plea to Lorquas Ptomel and Tars Tarkas, and – shortly thereafter – when John intervenes and prevents Dejah’s injury from the Thark he kills – there is a spark that neither can deny.
    The film eventually works it out, but what pissed me off most was how near everything else worked to perfection (fro me), they decided to alter the single most important part of the story.
    That being said, I’m still incredulous that Stanton’s film, drawn from a property held so fondly, has such a positive and visceral effect.

  • I want to thank everybody for the interesting comments. I’m glad that I can discuss this with you. Like many others who read Burroughs in the 60s or 70s, I’ve been waiting almost 40 years for this movie, and I’ve been following all the news ever since I heard that Stanton would do it. After they casted Taylor Kitsch I thought that it would be really great.

    When I finally saw the movie I enjoyed most of it, but I also had some dire moments. So I think “uneven” is the best word for it to describe. By the way, “Ben Hur” earned the same adjective on Rotten Tomatoes.

    I’m not a film director and I couldn’t have done it half as good as Stanton. But I can see where things are going the wrong way and why. So I started to write it down and that’s basically what you read.

    The first rule is, every tale – book, play or movie – needs a direction, otherwise it remains stale. So you go from small to big or from distant to close, from ignorance to knowledge, from isolation to love or vice versa. The more you distinguish your characters in the beginning, the closer they can eventually get in the end. This is why I ask for a more distinctive characterization. Take for example a movie like “The Name of the Rose” with a much more complicated plot than John Carter: Yet we have no difficulty to follow it through for the simple fact that every monk is unique, with a totally distinctive face or stature, character or nationality. By the way, I’m quite curious how “The Hobbit” will overcome this problem, since it has 12 dwarves alone, more characters than Stanton’s entire planet.

    A good sci-fi-fantasy should show us some really different society, but our intimate interest starts only when we realize that the individuals in those strange worlds are as distinct as the humans we all know. Watching John Carter I had some difficulty with this, in particular with the Zodangans. I think one of Sab Than’s finer moments, that made him look more like a jeddak, was when he finally got some opposition from one of his generals. I immediately named him Zat Arras, because I was desperately looking for someone recognizable in those faceless Zodangan masses.

    A good story lives also from a wider range of secondary characters: minor antagonists and sympathetic sidekicks surrounding the leaders. In Stanton’s movie, however, everything has been cut to minimum: Helium is made of no more than three persons, Thark is two male and two female, Thern is one leader plus his anonymous agents and Zodanga appears almost as a one-person nation. I understand why Stanton reduced it like that (I guess, because he thought the story was already complicated enough), but I don’t agree. Several protagonists lacked a counterpart (antagonist or friend/sidekick for confidence) and that made dialogues dire and narration erratic. If you have to narrate some off-screen events, it is always better to have one of your protagonists bring the news, because it will add to his character and interaction with the others.

    I know that many viewers were quite comfortable with the Barsoom-intro, because it helped them understand the plot. We suspect however, and Lindsey Collins confirms, that this was a repair operation, added after early screenings to selected audiences evidenced that something was not working as it should.

    I can’t be sure that another way to tell the story, introducing all the information by and by after Dejah is captured by the Tharks, would have worked better. But I keep thinking that there too much exposition in the beginning and that some gimmicks (the “ninth ray”) and some locations (the river Iss) were just too much of eye-catching techno-stuff, killing the human heart of the story.

    As regards the love story, I see indeed that some of you are even more critical than me. I think it’s quite interesting, though, that Dotar Sojat says he has found some important passages at second view. This confirms me in my opinion that the movie has much more to communicate than it shows at first sight. It’s just too often, because it’s so rich, that something encumbering stands in the way.

    Sorry, I see that you wrote a lot more, but I can’t address it now, because in Europe it’s definitely time for bed.

  • Dotar-

    Okay, we’re d’accord on the critics, the promotion, and the claim that this material is ‘derivative’ (oh, brother!).

    But I keep reading variations on the theme of how the audience was not enough engaged, or could have been more engaged if the film had just done some particular thing differently. Well, now, changes that you personally would like to see, Dorat, so that you could be more engaged, thats your perogative to suit your taste. But a 70% audience rating of material that has already been repeatedly raided over and over again and again for decades — I’m not sure its possible that anyone could realistically hope for more success than 70%. In this case, maybe 70 is awesome.

    Otherwise, though, these are some pretty fine grained distinctions youre drawing here. Okay, JC is not ERB’s knight errant — Stanton gave us more of a postmodern type hero — but they end up at the same place. Stanton shows us that JC is ‘in his heart’ a knight errant, but one who has just suffered the American Civil War(hence the postmodern conflicted hero). The way Stanton reveals the knight errant is when JC says ‘damn the Apaches’ but then goes and speaks their language, and also he says he doesnt care but still goes to rescue the calvary officer. He is still the knight errant, but just trying to deny it.

    And at the end of the movie, the arc leads JC back to being your knight errant again, anyway, so then you’ll love it in movie 2 and 3. Just give it a chance.

    I know the other thing thats been bugging you is the fact that JC can escape Barsoom. Youre absolutely right in that it changes all of the premises and motivations. But I liked it. Yes, its another part of the arc, part of the modern hero, but it gives JC free will, choice, and depth of character evolution.

    I do understand your problem with it because its a very fundamental change, but I think over a 3 movie series, it could become a really engaging part of the story. Some things youve got to trade off to keep it engaging, right? Maybe youve set yourself up for a fall by reading the book while the movie is coming out.

  • [A word of warning — this is a long comment, and although I address it to you, Paladin, it’s really me just trying to work out some things that I’ve been thinking about, but not writing about yet. I thought Peter’s review would stimulate some opportunities to work through some of these things, and that’s what I’m doing. So — please don’t think I’m piling on to you. Just trying to figure out where I really stand on some of these things, because I feel a lot of loyalty to Stanton and his vision, but the underlying reality is that I’m an admirer of what I consider to be the true genius of ERB – a genius that he’s never been fully credited with. So …..bear with me.]

    Paladin, boy do agree about the piling on by critics …. I think our only difference is that I don’t include Peter Weber in that group because I find his comments thoughtful and more perceptive than 90% of all the critics. And also — he didn’t even write a review until I asked him to…he just made a few comments, like the rest of us are doing. So he’s not playing that role of “I’m the critic and I will tell you what to like.” He’s just sharing his thoughts, and doing so at my invitation.

    As for those “other” critics: let’s think about it — you could sum up 90% of the critical objections as “it was confusing and not engaging or enthralling”, plus it was “nothing new”.

    The “it was nothing new” is always going to be a problem if this particular film is done respectfully because the story’s content has been strip mined by all those who were inspired by it. The solution to that aspect is not in the film-making — it is in the promotion. Disney, had they cared to actually try and figure out a credible strategy, would have stressed the heritage and prepared audiences for the fact that yes, this film will have qualities that feel familiar — as well it should, since this is the Rosetta Stone. That would not have inoculated them completely against this criticism, but it would have helped.

    As for the “it was not engaging or enthralling” — I have really pondered that. I felt less engaged during the first viewing than I expected to be, and I didn’t quite have that “ERB vibe” that only he could produce. I was puzzled …. I blamed it on myself more than I did Stanton — I was overhyped, over-sensitized, something like that. I saw it a second time and it worked better — I saw beats that I had missed. But it still wasn’t quite working for me the way the reading of an ERB book (even now) does. So I went back and re-read A Princess of Mars with Stanton’s movie (two viewings of it) fresh in my mind. It was a very instructive read. I could see most if not all of the places where Stanton made choices that deviated from the book and I had no major problem with most of them. I was particularly pleased and impressed with just the degree to which he faithfully recreated the described vision of ERB — the Tharks, the baby tharks the airships, Helium, Zodanga (well, Zodanga was different). He monkeyed around with the plot a bit — but not the world, and I so appreciated that.

    But……

    I just had this nagging feeling that some of the choices damaged the audience’s ability to engage with the characters and story. I think he may have done this in the service of the larger trilogy he has in mind … in other words, he’s made the first two hours of a 7 hour movie and he’s just getting up a head of steam. But we are viewing it as a standalone movie……

    I also fault the critics for creating an environment where Stanton felt he HAD to make changes that would give John Carter a flawed starting point, and thus an arc.

    The classic hero is a willful protagonist who knows what he wants and attempts to get it. John Carter of the books was that — upon his arrival on Mars, with no ability to even think about returning to Earth (a crucial difference), he had no choice but to try and make it in the world into which fate had thrust him …. and so he set about first of all doing what a knight/warrior would do: win respect, build alliances and friendships. I was struck how, as a reader, I was pulled in by that aspect of his character and how it made me root for him even when the level of action or intensity was not all that high. He then wins the respect of Sola, then Woola, then all the Tharks. And it’s just about at that point that Dejah Thoris is introduced. He is drawn to her – -she is, after all, the only human in the equation – and (as someone pointed out here), can’t help but fall for her when he hears her defiant and eloquent speech to Lorquas Ptomel. His “win respect” continues, but is heightened when he realizes that as a “Cosmic Knight Errant”, he has found his lady and will defend her to his dying breath, and commit himself to be of service to her and her people. Stanton’s concern: This is a great, classic character development, but 21st century critics will find it lacking. They will want a flaw. They will want more of an arc.

    The way to make that arc happen is to create a character who is flawed at the beginning, who doesn’t’ know what he wants, who thinks he wants one thing (usually to be left alone), but who unconscious wants or needs something else and the self-realization that he was wrong all along is the completion of the required “arc”. This is the “modern hero”, as opposed to “cosmic knight errant” that Burroughs put forward. And dammit, I liked that cosmic knight errant. I liked his poet-warrior quality (or in JC’s case, more of an engineer/warrior, who had an amazing quality of observation and an ability to articulate with startling precision the strange things he was seeing). I liked his need to earn respect, and his ability to do so. I liked his sense of cosmic connection to the planet of the God of War, and I liked his recognition that in Dejah Thoris he had found his One and Only True Love (also a quaint idea).

    In the movie, I think I didn’t really have a problem with the dead wife and child ……it did affect the trajectory of the relationship with Dejah Thoris, but not in a really bad way. What I had a real problem with was the fact that the story as constructed gave him a technology that could get him back to Earth, and he never doubted that if he could just figure out how to use it, he could go back to his “cave of gold”, and THAT became his objective. He did not want or need to win respect; he did not want or need to build relationships. It made him seem smaller than the John Carter I love for the first 2/3 of the movie.

    But … by the end of the movie he was “that guy”, and that was clearly Stanton’s intention — let him arrive at being the John Carter of the books by the end, just force him to grow to get there.

    My solution would have been a little different…maybe I’ll write about that at some point but this is long enough! Thanks for your good thoughts and comments.

  • Dotar-

    All good points — and thanks for your perspective.

    I can often relate very well to your point of view, and it happens here again with this subject. On my second viewing, I, too, like you, discovered many more of the “beats in the relationship” leading up to the kiss, and it really made me feel good because it was more full and well-rounded than my first impression. In the interaction between John and Dejah, there are many sweet, little, subtle “beats” given to us by the director, and the actors.

    But beyond that, you lose me. Youre basing your critiques on a vastly superior knowledge of these books than what I have. I read these books a few times, but long ago as an 11 yr old kid, so my memories are well faded.

    But this is also maybe why I have so few complaints about the movie, because for me Stanton gives us the essence, the heart, of the books. I dont remember anymore too many details from the books, mostly just my sense of wonder and excitement, my joy, a suspension of disbelief, the thrill of exotic adventure, a great heroic swash-buckling interplanetary love story. And that, I thought, is what Stanton captured so well in this film.

    So sure, Stanton could have developed the romance differently, and perhaps better, if done more like the books. I trust and defer to your judgement — youre much more informed than I.

    But what really gets my blood hot is being bombarded with a continuous stream of negativity and nitpicking complaints from self-important folks like Weber and other so-called expert movie critics. If all their gripes were addressed in this movie, it would become a ponderously long, dense, muddled, sluggish slog. Why do we always feel the need to pluck the petals off a flower, to parse every phrase, to micro-analyze beauty until we destroy it? Because it makes some people feel puffed up, good about themselves, smart.

    And there was just so much piling-on done when people reviewed this movie — like hyenaes fighting for scraps. If it werent so over-whelmingly one-sided, I wouldnt get so defensive. Instead of nitpicking it to death, though, cant we at least at this time celebrate our beloved John Carter story finally getting made into a movie — a pretty damn good movie — which if it misses only misses by very little?

  • Thanks for the links H.R.H. The Rider! (well, the first one didn’t work on my computer but the audio interview did)

    That’s very revealing of the troubles they had in making the relationship between John and Dejah work.

    And, seriously, an R-rated Galaxy Quest cut??? Best news of the day!! 🙂

  • That, and I would add that there was a palatable sexual tension between the leads, but sexual tension is not necessarily love. And we’re not talking only love here, we’re talking from meeting to marriage in what seems to be just a few hours!

    There’s indeed chemistry between the leads, but I didn’t buy the love story as shown. I don’t know what attracts these two people together. In the book that was clear to me: they were kin of spirit, with this fierce, never-say-die attitude in front of adversity, whatever the odds. Beyond the chivalry of Carter, I think he fell in love with Dejah when she made that impassionate speech before the Tharks, even if she knew it was probably in vain.

    I didn’t feel that defining moment in the movie, that moment where I could say “OK, I see, these two will be in love for life from this point on”. There is indeed a love story, but just not satisfying for me. Do they even tell each other “I love you” in any way before the wedding?

  • Regarding deleted scenes (and the difficult task of adapting a sprawling book into a digestible movie), two things worth checking out:

    Article from a recent Wired, detailing the timeline of filming, alternate scenes, and reactions to an early cut of the film:

    http://www.wired.com/magazine/2012/02/ff_johncarter/all/1

    Also a video interview with producer Lindsey Collins, giving more details on deleted scenes, braintrust reaction, reordering sequences to aid the flow, etc.:

    http://collider.com/lindsey-collins-john-carter-r-rated-galaxy-quest-interview/146719/

  • Paladin….you won’t get many disagreeing with you here about the lame marketing being the main cause for the failure.

    While I thought the chemistry between John Carter and Dejah Thoris was excellent, and the love story worked pretty well, I did feel, especially the first time I saw the movie, that it was missing a couple of beats that were needed. I think some of this had to do with the structure that Stanton chose. He made Carter a broken widower so he was resistant to connecting with Dejah Thoris, whereas the JC of the books had basically died on earth, had no one there, and was stuck alone among the Tharks for a long time before Dejah Thoris arrived. Not only was she beautiful, intelligent, and vulnerable — she was a human, the first he had seen, and so there was an open-nes to them to bond and that in turn set the relationship on a trajectory that was just try, very different than the one in the movie. There was more time in the book because Dejah became his teacher of things Barsoomian (other than Thark culture)…..The other aspect of the book’s romance was the whole thread of chivalric service…John Carter was truly a cosmic knight errant and his relationship with Dejah Thoris fit within that context. Here’s a passage:

    She looked at me long and earnestly and I thought that she was softening toward me.

    “I understand your words, Dotar Sojat,” she replied, “but you I do not understand. You are a queer mixture of child and man, of brute and noble. I only wish that I might read your heart.”

    “Look down at your feet, Dejah Thoris; it lies there now where it has lain since that other night at Korad, and where it will ever lie beating alone for you until death stills it forever.”

    She took a little step toward me, her beautiful hands outstretched in a strange, groping gesture.

    “What do you mean, John Carter?” she whispered. “What are you saying to me?”

    “I am saying what I had promised myself that I would not say to you, at least until you were no longer a captive among the green men; what from your attitude toward me for the past twenty days I had thought never to say to you; I am saying, Dejah Thoris, that I am yours, body and soul, to serve you, to fight for you, and to die for you. Only one thing I ask of you in return, and that is that you make no sign, either of condemnation or of approbation of my words until you are safe among your own people, and that whatever sentiments you harbor toward me they be not influenced or colored by gratitude; whatever I may do to serve you will be prompted solely from selfish motives, since it gives me more pleasure to serve you than not.”

    “I will respect your wishes, John Carter, because I understand the motives which prompt them, and I accept your service no more willingly than I bow to your authority; your word shall be my law. I have twice wronged you in my thoughts and again I ask your forgiveness.”

    Now, it’s easy to see on the one hand how it would be problematic to just go with that kind of dialogue and characterization for a modern audience, but my question is — was it necessary to abandon the entire thrust of what ERB had set up? Could it not have been possible to preserve more of the original and still make it feel acceptably modern? I can think of lots of aways to do it – but there are always so many choices available to a writer or director, and there not just one path, there are many. But I felt something to be lacking.

    When I saw the film a second time, I was more appreciative of what I’m sure Stanton considered to be the beats in the relationship prior to the kiss. I had missed a moment when Dejah Thoris was splashing water on herself; and at least one or two other moments where, on a second viewing, I could see the heat building better than I had the first time around. And the first kiss … well, in the audience the first time I saw it the you could feel a kind of cringing and even a few murmured “what?” or “no!”….but then of course, he breaks off the kiss and we see the wife and it follows that maybe Stanton’s point was that it was in fact too early for him.

    The other thing that hasn’t been discussed is that the Stanton changes put Dejah Thoris in the position of being a little bit of a vixen and manipulating John Carter toward her ends — getting him to throw in with Helium against his expressed desire to remain neutral. She seemed very wiley and strategic in the things she says leading up to the kiss, and I’m not sure I was all for that. Not that it’s bad ….but Burroughs had his finger on the pulse of archetype. Stanton seemed concerned that 100 years later, archetype becomes stereotype–and that may indeed be a legitimate concern — so he substituted what has become the Hollywood template — broken warrior, resisting engagement, coaxed into commitment. It works okay, but I’m not sure at all that it’s an improvement.

  • Wrath of the Titans currently has a Rotten Tomato score that’s less than half of John Carter’s 51%. It’s also a sequel to 2010’s Clash of the Titan’s, a movie that is routinely held up as an example of the vapid, cgi-fests that Hollywood loves to churn out. (And that everyone claims to hate, despite the fact that they continue to go see them.)

    Despite those negatives working against it, the film just opened with more money than John Carter at the box office.

    So, regardless of how many sound points the author makes- and there are many- I’m not sure the movie’s box office failure can be blamed on Stanton. If anything, the film he made already seems to have struck a chord among moviegoers who actually went to see it.

    I agree it could’ve had a better script and been a more epic experience, but…did it really need to be? What is this lofty standard that John Carter should have exceeded- especially when the average blockbuster today is so woefully underwhelming?

    Ironically, the fact that John Carter did fail to attract modern audiences might be the clearest signal that it did something right! LOL

  • I’m indeed very curious about what was excised from the movie, and what it was like when showed to the “Pixar braintrust”. I wonder if there’s an even better, longer, director’s cut.

    And I wouldn’t mind seeing a shorter cut with all things put in “for the sequels” removed. I think it hurted the movie more than anything else.

  • Confession time: I didn’t like “Back to the Future.” Guy with a dweeb father goes back in time to discover — his future father is a dweeb. Oh well. You know what opinions are like.

    That said, I think everyone here has valid points. Sure, I would have liked “John Carter” to be a half hour longer. More time with the Tharks, more time on the romance. But the romance occurs in the 2nd act, meaning the notorious 2nd act sag would have completely weighed down the movie. Likewise, more time spent on hanging around the Thark encampment would have made the audience antsy.

    Ultimately, what stayed and what was tossed was dependent on the film’s pacing. While a cliche, I wonder why Stanton didn’t include Carter’s narration throughout the film to drop in needed info that otherwise couldn’t be shoehorned in. After all, we are supposed to be “reading” his journal, so it wouldn’t seem out of place.

    There certainly is a chronology problem with the film. Events seem to occur within a week, yet the state of Carter’s (and Powell’s!) body on return to the cave suggests many years have passed. (Three, if the opening passage of Carter’s journal is to be believed.)

    There were 10 scenes excised from the film — perhaps viewing those allay some of our complaints.

  • But the film IS a love story. I thought the chemistry between Taylor and Lynn was fantastic. It’s all about John and Dejah — he’s damaged goods, bearing the death of his wife and daughter; she’s a daughter stuck in an arranged marriage to a jerk. It’s a classic tale, and unfortunately still all too commom for many young women today.

    How much more could they drive this home? It’s the heart of the movie — he’s scetching Dejah in his journal at the end, obviously dreaming of only her.

    But I’ve noticed something else: all you critics use as justification for your criticism that if they would have just done it your way, then it would have gotten bigger audiences. Did it ever occur to you critics that its not the film’s failures that made it a flop? I dont think theres anything fundamentally wrong with the movie — it was super, and a lot of people love it — but it was marketed horribly, and its that simple. And this isnt just my opinion — guys that know the film industry a whole lot more than me are saying the same thing.

  • John Carter would have gained tremendously from staying closer to the novel.

    The Prize is NOT Barsoom, the prize is the Princess!

    By focusing on its personal, emotional core, the love story, I’m convinced the movie would have gained more accessibility for a larger audience.

  • 1. Stanton gave JC depth. When Taylor utters the best line in the film (“Everybody thinks their cause is just”) it speaks volumes as he clearly has more regrets than losing his family. ERB only hints at this by having his Rebel hero fight for his interracial friendships and marriage.

    2. The motivation for the alliances is clear: everyone wants JC as their weapon. I thought it was far fetched (even for JC) that Tars, in POM, only finds friendship when John saves him in battle. Pack animals develop bonds for survival and Tharks had to aid each other in their constant wars.

    3. Although most didn’t, I loved the old school Mars intro. Still, if JC had traveled back in time while teleporting, it might explain Mars’ current state and give the story a tragic twist as he fights for another lost, but noble cause.

    4. The Therns were a great vehicle for getting JC to Mras and back. I did regret that they weren’t cannibals (I lnow…it’s Disney) or pawns of the First Born. Heavy stuff for 1912 to have whites enslaved by blacks and “gods” justify eating humans like we do with fellow mammals.

    5. With all the exposition out of the way, the sequels can race like the novels. There is plenty to elpore on the environmental and religious aspects of the books, so a reboot is unnecessary. It may take as long as Carter’s purgatory, but well worth the wait!

  • A lot of issues astutely broken down in this analysis, illustrating the many, many storytelling shortcomings (and dishonors to ERB) of Andrew Stanton’s Disney John Carter.

    I was actually with him until he vomited his own passage of dialogue that makes the hacked writing in the film not seem so bad after all.

    The variation of opinion here is fascinating, worthy of scientific analysis.

  • Very good commentary which mostly relates to plot sequencing and lack of character development. Perhaps there was too much concentration on CGI and action scenes at the expense of these issues. Perhaps the film tried to pack too much into such a small timeframe and the audience got somewhat confused in the process. Despite all this it is a thoroughly enjoyable film and deserves sequels where there issues can be resolved

  • It’s probably one of the most interesting, if not the most interesting review I’ve read so far. I’m particularly impressed by the short and humorous dialog he wrote about Carter and Dejah, it’s spot-on, a mix between what Burroughs wrote and the more relatable side of things that could have appealed to newcomers. Perfect.

    I don’t know if M. Weber can direct, but he certainly knows how to write. Hire him for the reboot.

    I agree that by focusing on the “big picture”, Stanton lost some of the interactions that could have been between the characters. But to his credit, there is still enough for the movie to be compelling. He’s a good storyteller, but the balance to achieve was perhaps too much. And the comment about the destruction of the planet being spoken of, but not established on screen is absolutely right.

    Amazing analysis.

  • Dotar Sojat-

    Please tell me that you can not seriously be fooled by this long-winded psuedo-intellectual claptrap. This guy is completely off-base. I would have to take notes to refute all his misjudgements, because they really run all the way through his review.

    First off, this guy is a playwrite who is totally wrapped up in the ERB books, so he’s looking at the story from that perspective. A book is the written word. A play is more like a book than a movie — it is based on the written word, too. Yes, there are plays with lots of action, but most plays are reliant on the written word, which then get spoken as dialoge and narration.

    So his main criticisms all hinge around the same common thread — that things werent developed enough. Dont get distracted by the different dramatic devices he discusses, because they all have at their core the same thing — that none of these themes were developed enough.

    Well, sure, in a play where you are allowed to have 2 hours straight of nothing but dialoge, you can develope things like that. Hello — this is not a play! In a movie you also need some action. Sure, you can criticize Stanton for not developing each of Weber’s pet themes to their fullest extent, but you would need to have a 6 hour movie!

    This guy is so full of bullshit! Just think about it — all the things Weber wants to see are already in there — the hero who starts small and grows large (he’s a broken man from the civil war, treated like a baby by the Tharks, even his small first jumps were allegorical clownish stumbles), Dejah putting him down when they first meet (‘youre a fool or a lier’), the large population / planetary / environmental issues (shot on location in my part of the country where water IS life), the dualism between science and religion (some people thought the Therns were holy), the building of friendship and trust across strange cultures and races (it was touching the reunion of Tars and JC in the arena). Its all in there — that is exactly WHY I loved this movie. It works on so many levels. And all Weber can say is that they werent developed to the proper extent. Oh sure, maybe in a book or a play or a six hour movie!

    He thinks it seems like it happens all in one day because he cant remember a sunset. What an idiot. Remember when Carter meets Woola? Night time. Remember when Dejah explains the solar system to Carter? A different night. Remember the battle scene at the end? Another night time. How many night times does Weber need before he can rememeber one? I dont care what Weber’s pedigree is: on this subject he’s full of shit. (and another thing: Weber’s sample dialoge is so totally laughably lame!)

    Sure, it would be nice to further develope all the themes Weber wants, but guess what — it would simply need another movie or two in order to do that. I’m fine with that. And maybe this is what Stanton was thinking, too.

    All of what he’s criticizing are strenghs of this movie. Like the water — me having been raised in Arizona, I loved the way Stanton dealt with the water on Mars. I have a background in astronomy, so I know that the whole present day space program on Mars is centered on the search for water. The search for life on Mars IS the search for water. In August we are landing a Mars rover/explorer whose mission is exactly this.

    When they go to the little canyon of water, and Carter scoops his hands to finally drink — after all that dusty chasing through the Arizona desert to the dry baking sands of Mars — finally, and he scoops his hands in and the water looks so good, and then he cant even get his one first drink because Sola is taking off in a boat — its beautifully planned by Stanton.

    Its a wonderful movie is so many ways. Weber is too enthralled with hearing his own hot air.

  • Interesting points, but reading this makes think only 1 thing: I’m glad Peter Weber didn’t direct John Carter.

    Stanton’s ‘Carter made me FEEL things….all sorts of emotions. Stanton’s strength, to me, is getting audiences to care about characters and he succeeded. I’m not a reader of all of Burrough’s writings. I’m just a movie fan. “John Carter”, to me, is filled with wonder and imagination and, again, FEELING.

    Peter Weber’s high-browed thrashing of it bothers me. It’s almost as if he’s delighting in informing fans of the movie why they’re morons for liking it. Maybe Peter Weber can write another detailed explanation why “Back To the Future” isn’t a good film.

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