Richard Lupoff’s welcome mini-review of John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood

Michael Sellers Other Stuff

One of the early advance readers of John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood has been Richard Lupoff, who has been following the saga of John Carter closely since the beginning.  For those who aren’t familiar — Dick Lupoff was at the forefront of the “Burroughs revival” of the 1960’s when he worked as editor of the Canaveral Press editions and was pals with the likes of Donald A. Wollheim who was putting out the Ace editions, and Ian Ballantine who was behind the Ballantine ERB editions.  I wonder what it must have been like to be working right in the thick of it in Manhattan back in those “glory days” . . . . .   Lupoff wrote the definitive  Edgar Rice Burroughs, Master of Adventure in those years, and later wrote Barsoom: Edgar Rice Burroughs and the Martian Vision.   He has written over two dozen novel and 40 short stories …..and as I have learned, is a great guy — charming, insightful, and thoughtful.

Anyway, here is what he has written about JCGOH:

It took 100 years to bring Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars to the big screen. It took Disney Studios just ten days to declare the film a flop, withdraw it from distribution, and lock it away in the Disney vaults. How did this project, despite its quarter-billion dollar budget, the brilliance of director Andrew Stanton, and the creative talents of legendary Pixar Studios, become a calamity of historic proportions?

Michael Sellers, a filmmaker and Hollywood insider himself, saw the disaster approaching and fought to save the project – but without success. In John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood, Sellers details every blunder and betrayal that led to the doom of the motion picture – and that left countless Hollywood careers in the wreckage.

John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood is a must-read for every fan of John Carter and Edgar Rice Burroughs, and every film buff intrigued by the “inside baseball” aspects of modern Hollywood.

— Richard A. Lupoff

author of Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure

and Barsoom: Edgar Rice Burroughs and the Martian Vision

12 comments

  • Abandon all hope ye who enter here and Back to Barsoomians.

    Disney just bought Lucasfilms, Star Wars, Indy and ILM included.

    They plan on having Star Wars episode 7 in theaters by 2015.

    Disney is not going to make a John Carter movie and if they want to eliminate competition maybe they won’t release the property to some else to do it either.

  • Let’s see… the movie critics I read and listened to: one said it was predictable, some said it was racist in its portrayal of Martians, some picked on the names of the characters; some had problems with the mixture of elements… civil war (oh my goodness, JC was a confederate!), western, victorian period to light ships and sword fights in a science fiction movie; some had problems following it; and the never ending complaints of it “copying” Star Wars and Avatar. Some of the critics who got it and liked it are some of the most durable critics around. Many of the critics who didn’t like it wouldn’t have liked what ERB originally created.

  • Spaceman wrote:

    Sounds like Mr. Lupoff is another “Burroughs expert” who has become, for some inexplicable reason, a fan of this movie. I don’t suppose Mr. Lupoff might consider the fact that stanton’s convoluted and completely re-written Swiss cheese plot combined with his total ruining of the characters might have had something to do with this movies failure.

    Well, he’s a real deal Burroughs expert so no quotes are necessary. He may not be an expert movie critic.

    The thing is — one of the things I’m gradually realizing is that most of what the ERB fans complain about are things that the critics didn’t complain terribly about, perhaps because they didn’t have an alternative playing in their mind. But the critics didn’t bash it for JC’s character being flawed; for “moving Zodanga”; for shapeshifting Therms; and for the “pointless Mrs. Carter” . . . . none of that came in for major criticism. The major criticism was — confusing opening, poorly defined narrative thrust, characters not fully drawn . . . . . .

    Anyway, the book doesn’t give Stanton a pass . . . he comes in for his share of the blame (not enough to satisfy the Stanton haters, of course), and I’m working on getting a way to get some of the best opposing views in there as well. . . . . .

  • Sounds like Mr. Lupoff is another “Burroughs expert” who has become, for some inexplicable reason, a fan of this movie. I don’t suppose Mr. Lupoff might consider the fact that stanton’s convoluted and completely re-written Swiss cheese plot combined with his total ruining of the characters might have had something to do with this movies failure.

  • Most of what Mr. Lupoff wrote was insightful and spot on. However I have one disagreement: “the brilliance of director Andrew Stanton.”

    Yeah, sorry. That’s debatable how brilliant Stanton really was or is. Otherwise a good blurb.

  • Yes, I think he’s referring to the “Disney will lose 200m” announcement that came 10 days into the run.

  • Interesting read and decidely effective as a blurb. However, the prints of the film certainly weren’t “pulled from distribution” within 10 days–far from it . Actually, the glory of “John Carter” is that it managed to remain in theaters for four months despite its intial tepid reception. That’s longer than easily 75% of other films released in that same time period.

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