Andrew Stanton’s Changes to Edgar Rice Burroughs, and why they were needed — by Jack LesCamela
The following originated as a comment on a different post, but I think it’s significant enough to warrant its own post and discussion thread. The following was written by our friend Jack Lescanela who was responding to a comment I made, to the effect that to the ERB purists–even those who, like me, generally like the movie–Andrew Stanton seemed a little “tone deaf” to some of what we perceive the strengths and charms of ERB’s work. Jack’s response is provided below in full:
Michael, you came to the movie with decades of being an ERB fan and expectations of what a movie of ‘A Princess of Mars’ would be like. I’m sure you and many other Burroughs fans have read it so many times it’s in your DNA by now.
I read the book for the first time a year and a half ago. So I come to the story with not even a trace of nostalgia.
Like most, I was blown away by Burroughs’ imagination (that he wrote this in 1912 is astonishing). He was a born campfire storyteller, spinning one amazing idea after another. For all the wonderment though, he misses a lot of opportunities to make the most of what he’s come up with. He tells the story instead of letting it play out between the characters.
One of the things I found deeply frustrating with the novel was that Burroughs never misses a chance to make things easy on himself as a writer –and how this also extends to Carter as a character.
Within the first few chapters we’re told upfront that Carter is immortal, then he finds a goldmine which is great, then none of that matters because -whoosh- he’s on Mars! He knows immediately that he’s on Mars and totally belongs there, and soon after falls in love at first sight with the princess –a feeling he’s never had because in all the thousands of years he’s been alive, he’s never been in love before.
Show me a man who’s never been in love, and I’ll show you a man who’s never lost anything or been hurt. How much could he have possibly been risking up till then?
It’s all very convenient and too easy for Carter. He doesn’t really have to work for anything. He might have to fight a bit, but that’s not going to be a big problem for him, right? Burroughs felt such a failure in his own life at the time that he gives his hero every advantage, and in so doing robs the story of much of the dramatic impact it could have.
I love that John Carter, the hero who unites the warring factions of Mars, started out as a Confederate Cavalry officer of some distinction. It’s an interesting bit of character detail. It indicates a sadder but wiser man. Someone who’s been around a bit, and learned from his mistakes. You know, because he fought on the wrong side.
In the book it’s just one more interesting detail. Burroughs is in such a hurry to escape the reality of his own life, that he never slows down enough to figure out what the reality of Carter’s life situation might be. To be fair, he could get away with that in 1912. 2012 not so much.
The Civil War means something different to us than it did to people a hundred years ago. We have far more knowledge about it than they did. Unlike them, we have access to Ken Burns’ documentary, all the letters the soldiers wrote home, the various books on the subject written, etc. We’re more honest with ourselves about it.
So yes, Carter is a broken veteran of a terrible war. He doesn’t view battle through ERB’s rose colored glasses (opinions that he changed when he covered WWII), but as we know actual Civil War veterans did. This grounds him in a recognizable reality with which to contrast the fantasy coming later.
Giving him a wife and child on Earth is also important. It shows what he was fighting in the war for. The Carter of the novels presumably fought because he thought owning human beings was a valid business practice. I think the book even says “the slaves loved him.” That’s not a valid heroic reason to fight for the South. Not for most people at any rate.
The distinction between the book and the movie for me comes down to between LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT versus A LOVE STORY.
Have you ever experienced love at first sight? I have, and the experience was very powerful –internally. Externally, nothing much happened. And while I could tell people about how intense my feelings of love were (and I did, often, and unceasingly) –nothing much played out dramatically in real life. No matter how strong the emotions I felt were though, it didn’t make for a compelling story to share with others.
I’ve also fallen in love. It wasn’t immediate. There were ups and downs, give and take, reversals, missed connections, troubles, doubts and self denials on the way. Eventually there’s a realization and surrender to one’s feelings. That’s a story.
The novel is a case of love at first sight, with how hopelessly internal it all is. It’s like a dream (which is also of course, internal). The movie is a tale of a man falling in love, with Dejah Thoris and the planet she represents.
The novel is about a man who has a destiny on another world. The movie is about a man who finds his destiny on another world. The outcome is the same –a man with a destiny on another world– but one is a journey and the other is a journey of discovery. The hero in the latter has to work harder for every victory.
I’ve said before I thought Carter being immortal was a really dumb idea. Burroughs never explains it, and to me if feels like one thing too many. It turns what I find interesting (a human having superhuman adventures) into what I find dull (a superhuman having superhuman adventures).
I was wrong though. Like much of Burroughs’ ideas it’s fantastic. What isn’t ideal was his placement of it. He frontloads it into the beginning of the narrative.
Upon watching the movie again over the weekend, I realized that of all the planned adaptations of ‘A Princess of Mars’ Stanton’s is the only one that uses Edgar Rice Burroughs as a character. Isn’t that odd? At the time I thought that element was meant as just a nod to the writer (as well as coming directly from the novel). But that’s not it at all.
At the end of the movie, this exchange occurs:
NED: I was just… bait?
CARTER: No, you’re far more than that. I really do need a protector. That is, if you’re willing.
They hug. Carter steps into the crypt and turns back.
CARTER: Goodbye, Ned. Oh, and Ned: Take up a cause. Fall in love. Write a book. It’s time I went home.
A couple things. At the end, Carter knows that Mars is his true home. He never plans to return to Earth. Better though, that knowledge was hard earned. It wasn’t just given to him.
The conversation with Ned also hints at what’s to come. In the commentary on the Blu-Ray Stanton definitely indicates “Edgar” (he says Edgar not Ned) would be back in a sequel. In my naivete I assumed that meant Darryl Sabara would return in the role.
I don’t think that’s the case though. It seems more likely the next time we see Edgar he’ll have aged to about forty, making him outwardly older than Carter –whose body has been kept in perfect suspended animation in the crypt.
Neither of the characters are expecting this turn of events, so it’s a shock. But now it’s a surprise solidly grounded in story logic, humanity and emotion. Burroughs’ creativity is given a chance to play out dramatically instead of just being offered up at the beginning with no explanation forthcoming. That makes the payoff far more emotionally poignant.
See, I don’t think Stanton was a little tone deaf. I think he’s a definite Burroughs fan who understands the appeal entirely. However, on top of being fans he (and Mark Andrews and Michael Chabon) also understand the story on another level. As dramatists.
They know having a lot of brilliant ideas and a loose narrative isn’t enough. You have to have a structure that will hold up. You have to take those ideas and then weave them seamlessly into a story where they show up and seem natural, surprising and yet inevitable.
I offered the following as a preliminary “holding” response:
Jack, thanks for the detailed explanation of what you see as the deficiencies of Burroughs that were remedied by Stanton. It will take a while to digest and others may jump in before I do. I’m officially asking that when others jump in, we try to keep this civil and dont heap scorn upon each others’ ideas. My hope is that we can break this down a little bit and go through it in a way so that those on both sides might gain some insights that aren’t there to begin with — rather the just jumping on people and having it become a foodfight.
Maybe I’m wrong — maybe it would never go that way. But judging from my own emotional reaction to some of the assertions in your piece, I’m pretty sure that some other ERBists who aren’t as restrained as I am might see red at it — and I’m just asking for a civil tone, as you (Jack) have maintained in yours.
Also, just so you (Jack) understand — I think that you, like Stanton, don’t “get” fully a lot of what was good in Burroughs. You’ve done Stanton a service in articulating it as well as you have. But now you’ll start hearing some response from the other side, who see other things in the ERB than what you are seeing.
And now I’m going to open it up for comments. I think this could be an interesting discussion but am concerned that it not become, as I said above, a foodfight. I may be overestimating the tendency in that reaction but I have to confess that a number of things Jack said — which I think are not that different from what Andrew Stanton might say if he were willing to talk about it — kind of got the fires burning, and if that happens to me. . . . . and I’m a peacemaker . . . . well, you get the point.
The questions I ask myself before replying are:
Are these deficiencies legitimately deficiencies?
If so, was there a solution to them that could have kept more of the spirit of the original? If so, what?
The other thing I will say by way of framing any discussion, is that what Stanton did, and what Jack espouses, are both examples of what I see as a very standard “Hollywood school solution” to modern story structure and character build. I don’t mean that to be disparaging — I mean that the principles Jack cites are principles that would be discussed in any story meeting trying to chart a course for a modern adaptation of APOM for the kind of massive global audience that a $250M hast to attract.
And finally, rather than not show my hand at all — my belief is that what Jack has outlined represents a certain kind of resistance to the story as it exists, and an eagerness to leap to familiar school solutions rather than dig deeper into the Burroughs story and try to mine that first, before resorting to modern school solutions.
This is a tendency that I’ve observed many times when dealing with adaptations — whether watching the big budget ones, or working on smaller budget ones. The writer and/or director are quick to discard the original when it seems problematic, and quick to impose a school solution — rather than take the more difficult, but ultimately more rewarding (particularly in the case of a book as successful over a 100 year period as APOM) path of mining everything that can be mined from the original before resorting to wholesale changes.
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Arrgh! Formatting! Here’s the same post with paragraph breaks.
I’ve only read the first fifty posts in this thread (45 more to go, whew!), so I will likely write more responses after this one, but I wanted to respond to some of the commentary I’ve read so far.
Jack wrote: “Michael, it’s not so much the structure of the story as the audience that it was written for. To pull a reverse and steal from Lucas a bit, It’s a more civilized story, from a more elegant age. Without some of the changes to the story for a more modern age, I don’t think the movie would have ever been made.”
And yet that is exactly how it should be made, as though for a more civilized and elegant age, though not necessarily for an age in our past. Let the film invite people to somewhere new and astonishing, and don’t let it be held back by demands that it remain superficially familiar to tastes that are bound to change. That quality of “a more civilized story, from a more elegant age” is the heart of what should be respected in a Barsoom reboot in order for it to wildly succeed. This doesn’t mean keeping the stereotypical maiden in distress, but that wasn’t how ERB portrayed Dejah Thoris in the first place. Generally speaking, there are cues and hints and glimpses of more substantial strengths among the classic (some might say “old-fashioned”) storytelling techniques of Burroughs’ works. Bringing those substantial strengths to the fore and making them the touchstones of the adaptation, rather than fealty to nostalgic “pulp”, would create that “updated” story and still leave it all feeling very close to ERB. The answer isn’t to “go modern”, but rather to scrounge Barsoom for everything that can be used to “go timeless”.
This raises the question of “what is Barsoom in its substance?” versus “what was Barsoom in its original delivery and literary genre?” Teasing that out can yield the keys to an adaptation that would feel entirely Barsoomian and yet be cutting-edge cinema. The goal should be to recreate for today’s film audiences the feeling that Barsoom evoked for the reading “audiences” of 1912, and which it continues to evoke for new readers. That can’t be achieved by slavishly aiming for anything particular to 1912, nor anything particular to 2013, nor any point in between. Making a pulpy Barsoom film will not deliver a comparable ground-breaking impression, and neither will a conversion to a cynical anti-hero (or overly reluctant hero).
Burroughs was taking imaginative adventure and science-fantasy storytelling forward for his day (with a wonderful dose of mythic resonance and romanticism in the chivalric tradition), in terms of the mixture of elements and the uniquely captivating style with which he delivered his world. A would-be Barsoom reboot should aim to do the same for the cinematic landscape of the current day. Avatar got perhaps the closest to achieving that goal, of taking the “ERB genre” of storytelling forward, than anything we’ve seen recently, but for all of the wonder and beauty and entertainment of Cameron’s film, even it only ran on perhaps half of the cylinders of the Barsoomian engine.
There is the potential on Barsoom to get into some devastating, heart-wrenching characters (Tars Tarkas and Sola, for example), and a rich historical tapestry that gives a gripping, mythic resonance to a deep and varied world. The experience of this prospective full-throttle rendition of Barsoom in the theater would feel familiar, but in a way that wouldn’t be about how old or how modern it is. Some of it might elicit tears of compassion and joy. Ideally, it would feel like a leap forward for cinematic storytelling – largely due to the unexpected, synergistic effect of the strengths of so many genres working in tandem. How many other prospective films have the potential to simultaneously tap into the essence of Lawrence of Arabia, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Last of the Mohicans, Dances With Wolves, Braveheart, Lord of the Rings and Avatar? (Among many others.) In a scenario that somewhat mirrors the “Avenger effect”, audiences have been prepared by aspects of great films over several decades to be utterly overwhelmed and transported by a robust Barsoom film. That preparation, which consists of appreciating a variety of elements on their own before seeing them brought into synthesis, has in this case happened coincidentally and without the conscious recognition of audience members, which should strengthen the surprise and impact of one day seeing those many qualities woven together in one film.
Burroughs’ world is a complex, rich and sturdy enough framework to support whatever towering constructions and deep resonance, organic to the Barsoomian landscape, that a filmmaker is willing to develop. Though Barsoom is strong on the page, it could very well be made even stronger, especially for the distinct purposes of cinema – and that in perhaps a greater variety and integration than anything we’ve seen yet on screen.
For all the talk of changes and development for the screen, I, for one, take great comfort as an ERB fan in knowing that it could all be done and still retain that feeling of Barsoom from the novels, a feeling that can be difficult to describe but impossible to forget. Some Burroughs fans might be surprised at how a developed adaptation can be made to feel personal and familiar and captivating, in a way second only to how it feels to read the book for the first time. Evoking that feeling of a personal experience, coupled with a cinematic rekindling and furtherance of the pioneer quality of the original stories, (moving things forward for today in a way that mirrors how things were moved forward for 1912), should be the goal of the adaptation; to the extent that cinema can deliver it.
And here is the where a film can become bigger than itself. The capabilities of cinema as a whole are expanded by each new, ambitious, excellent achievement. There are adaptations yet to be made that will redefine our beliefs on how movies can evoke source material while taking cinematic accomplishment forward. It isn’t every day that a prospective project comes along that is positioned to hit a grand slam. This one just needs the right, committed team.
I’ve only read the first fifty posts in this thread (45 more to go, whew!), so I will likely write more responses after this one, but I wanted to respond to some of the commentary I’ve read so far.
Jack wrote: “Michael, it’s not so much the structure of the story as the audience that it was written for. To pull a reverse and steal from Lucas a bit, It’s a more civilized story, from a more elegant age. Without some of the changes to the story for a more modern age, I don’t think the movie would have ever been made.”
And yet that is exactly how it should be made, as though for a more civilized and elegant age, though not necessarily for an age in our past. Let the film invite people to somewhere new and astonishing, and don’t let it be held back by demands that it remain superficially familiar to tastes that are bound to change. That quality of “a more civilized story, from a more elegant age” is the heart of what should be respected in a Barsoom reboot in order for it to wildly succeed. This doesn’t mean keeping the stereotypical maiden in distress, but that wasn’t how ERB portrayed Dejah Thoris in the first place. Generally speaking, there are cues and hints and glimpses of more substantial strengths among the classic (some might say “old-fashioned”) storytelling techniques of Burroughs’ works. Bringing those substantial strengths to the fore and making them the touchstones of the adaptation, rather than fealty to nostalgic “pulp”, would create that “updated” story and still leave it all feeling very close to ERB. The answer isn’t to “go modern”, but rather to scrounge Barsoom for everything that can be used to “go timeless”.
This raises the question of “what is Barsoom in its substance?” versus “what was Barsoom in its original delivery and literary genre?” Teasing that out can yield the keys to an adaptation that would feel entirely Barsoomian and yet be cutting-edge cinema. The goal should be to recreate for today’s film audiences the feeling that Barsoom evoked for the reading “audiences” of 1912, and which it continues to evoke for new readers. That can’t be achieved by slavishly aiming for anything particular to 1912, nor anything particular to 2013, nor any point in between. Making a pulpy Barsoom film will not deliver a comparable ground-breaking impression, and neither will a conversion to a cynical anti-hero (or overly reluctant hero).
Burroughs was taking imaginative adventure and science-fantasy storytelling forward for his day (with a wonderful dose of mythic resonance and romanticism in the chivalric tradition), in terms of the mixture of elements and the uniquely captivating style with which he delivered his world. A would-be Barsoom reboot should aim to do the same for the cinematic landscape of the current day. Avatar got perhaps the closest to achieving that goal, of taking the “ERB genre” of storytelling forward, than anything we’ve seen recently, but for all of the wonder and beauty and entertainment of Cameron’s film, even it only ran on perhaps half of the cylinders of the Barsoomian engine.
There is the potential on Barsoom to get into some devastating, heart-wrenching characters (Tars Tarkas and Sola, for example), and a rich historical tapestry that gives a gripping, mythic resonance to a deep and varied world. The experience of this prospective full-throttle rendition of Barsoom in the theater would feel familiar, but in a way that wouldn’t be about how old or how modern it is. Some of it might elicit tears of compassion and joy. Ideally, it would feel like a leap forward for cinematic storytelling – largely due to the unexpected, synergistic effect of the strengths of so many genres working in tandem. How many other prospective films have the potential to simultaneously tap into the essence of Lawrence of Arabia, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Last of the Mohicans, Dances With Wolves, Braveheart, Lord of the Rings and Avatar? (Among many others.) In a scenario that somewhat mirrors the “Avenger effect”, audiences have been prepared by aspects of great films over several decades to be utterly overwhelmed and transported by a robust Barsoom film. That preparation, which consists of appreciating a variety of elements on their own before seeing them brought into synthesis, has in this case happened coincidentally and without the conscious recognition of audience members, which should strengthen the surprise and impact of one day seeing those many qualities woven together in one film.
Burroughs’ world is a complex, rich and sturdy enough framework to support whatever towering constructions and deep resonance, organic to the Barsoomian landscape, that a filmmaker is willing to develop. Though Barsoom is strong on the page, it could very well be made even stronger, especially for the distinct purposes of cinema – and that in perhaps a greater variety and integration than anything we’ve seen yet on screen.
For all the talk of changes and development for the screen, I, for one, take great comfort as an ERB fan in knowing that it could all be done and still retain that feeling of Barsoom from the novels, a feeling that can be difficult to describe but impossible to forget. Some Burroughs fans might be surprised at how a developed adaptation can be made to feel personal and familiar and captivating, in a way second only to how it feels to read the book for the first time. Evoking that feeling of a personal experience, coupled with a cinematic rekindling and furtherance of the pioneer quality of the original stories, (moving things forward for today in a way that mirrors how things were moved forward for 1912), should be the goal of the adaptation; to the extent that cinema can deliver it.
And here is the where a film can become bigger than itself. The capabilities of cinema as a whole are expanded by each new, ambitious, excellent achievement. There are adaptations yet to be made that will redefine our beliefs on how movies can evoke source material while taking cinematic accomplishment forward. It isn’t every day that a prospective project comes along that is positioned to hit a grand slam. This one just needs the right, committed team.
Jack Wrote:
“To answer your initial question, it’s a very different task adapting the Mars books than in adapting LOTR or Harry Potter. It’s a lot more work.”
Or may be it was more work since Stanton threw out the books. Jackson as you mentioned made alterations but did not throw the entire plot, structure or characters out just to please himself. In fact Jackson during the making of the LOTR shot a scene towards the end of The Return of the King where Aragorn was to fight Sauron since Jackson felt that audiences-which he included himself-would be disappointed if Sauron didn’t appear (his comparsion was waiting and not seeing Darth Vader at the end of Episode III). Well he decided after rereading the books and talking with his co-writers that Tolkein’s way was best. Stanton didn’t do that.
“The genius of what Stanton, Andrews and Chabon did is they harnessed that imagination to a three act structure that smartly updates the book for a modern audience.”
That seems debatable considering the low box office, middling reviews and lackluster word of mouth the movie generated. If the film was updated with the idea of appealing to a modern audience it seems that Stanton failed there. His updates didn’t help and it wasn’t all because of the marketing that this film failed at the box office. An opening weekend of 30 million might be seen as disappointing but if the word of mouth was so good why then didn’t it hold up the next week?
“Discussing ERB’s work with longtime fans can be frustrating. There seems to be an inability of being honest about it long enough to acknowledge its weaknesses. If someone says John Carter is a shallow character (a legitimate assessment in my opinion), someone else pipes up with, “He’s supposed to be a cipher!” You know, all of a sudden it’s not a weakness everybody, it’s a hidden strength.”
That’s a funny statement coming from someone who can’t seem to acknowledge Stanton and his pals’ weakenesses. Seriously Jack did Stanton make any mistakes on this film? Even Michael and others who have defended this film have on occasion admitted there was things they didn’t like-from Carter’s pointless back story to the Therns being all powerful to the medallion. Yet you act like it is the most perfect film ever made. There is no such thing despite what you think.
Also not to let you down but Stanton’s John Carter was just as shallow. A selfish whiner who didn’t care for anyone but himself? Basically making Carter an emo teenager didn’t make him more developed or added depth but made him annoying. Plus his lack of interest in Dejah, Barsoom or anyone else made it hard to care about him or the story. If you’re “hero” can’t be bothered to care why should I the viewer care about him or the story being told?
” Stanton, Andrews, and Chabon definitely are fans of Burroughs. Who other than someone who truly loved the man’s work would spend years of their lives working to give meaningful dramatic structure and form to work that was dashed off by its creator a hundred years ago? Nobody since Robert Towne in his original screenplay for GREYSTOKE, or Philip Jose Farmer has taken Edgar Rice Burroughs so seriously.”
Here we go again, the offical PR excuse. First off Chabon didn’t work on this film for 5 years. At most he was hired and worked what, a few months tinkering with the script? As for Stanton-who has made it clear he hated the characters of John Carter and Dejah Thoris and Andrews’ “they’re just for children” attitude they are not fans. As for that “5 year” defense I already had that debate with Michael and the answer I gave was Eyes Wide Shut. Kubrick spent 5 years making that film and the end result was an awful film. As for “meaningful dramatic structure” yeah sure. A confusing narrative with poorly defined villains, a weak and unlikable hero and empty supporting characters does not add structure, meaninful or otherwise.
“You accuse them of throwing out ERB’s ideas in favor of their own, but I don’t see that at all.”
Really? You don’t see turning the Therns into super being with advanced technology doesn’t fly in the face of Burroughs’ idea of them as false gods with none of that? That turning the Tharks into comic buffoons instead of the fierce warrior race that Burroughs created or scrapping the love story and giving Carter a bad back story and making him have no interest in Barsoom or Dejah is a complete trashing of the original material? Exactly what book did you read Jack?
All of that changes the story and the outcome immensely. For example the whole stupid medallion changes the story from being a story of one’s man survival and eventual falling in love with Barsoom and Dejah Thoris into a story of a guy wanting to go home. It changed the sweep of discovering the unexplored and discovering the various cultures and the characters Carter encounters, from his gaining the respect of Tars Tarkas, who in the movie sees him as nothing more than a tool to fight his enemeis, to Sola as a surrogate mother, teaching Carter to talk and survive to Dejah and her inner and outer beauty, her fight to survive. I thought it was funny in this film that she spends the first part fighting and being a “warrior princess” only for Stanton to back slide in the second part and make her a defeated “damsel in distress.”
It changes all of that and makes the story something else entirely. For all of Jackson’s changes to The Lord of the Rings that didn’t happen. Nor to Harry Potter. And it wasn’t just because Tolkien and Rowling spent years writing their books.
“You can see exactly what impressed Danton Burroughs. There’s a level of thought and care behind the movie and its script that just isn’t in the other attempts.”
I love how this is now being used as a defense. I never met Danton Burroughs but he sounds like a wonderful man who cared deeply about his grandfather’s legacy. That said how much did he really know about Stanton’s plans? It sounds like all he saw was a dog and pony show Stanton and Andrews but did he ever see anyting in writing? An outline? A script? He died in 2008 and I’ll bet he never saw a finished script. We know he didn’t see any of Chabon’s rewrites or the rough cut or the final version, with dead family added since that was a Pixar idea suggested after the BrainTrust screeing. It’s like Andrews’ defense that ERB himself would have been pleased. Unless him or you Jack can commune with the dead how can you say he would have been pleased? I agree with a statement that fellow contrarian Henried said about how the Geisel estate endorsed The Lorax, despite it being utter junk. The same thing happened here with the Burroughs estate and ERB Inc, that doesn’t mean that ERB or Danton themselves would have been pleased. Plus in your research you must have missed the part that ERB himself cashed the checks but grew weary of the Tarzan films and their portrayal of his character. But at the time authors didn’t have any say in the films being made from their work unless they themselves made them. That probably explains why the only production made that was close at the time was the one Burroughs himself made, The New Adventures of Tarzan. So forgive me if I don’t buy this defense. It’s just one being used to defend Stanton and his lackeys.
Pascalahad …. exactly. Movie audiences go whereever a great storyteller takes them. Harry Potter has wizards flying around on broomsticks . . . . anyone can make a list a mile long of impossibilities in great films that were embraced by the audience.
I do agree that it might run the risk of being unsatisfying to make a single movie that intends to resolve itself within that movie (as opposed to a trilogy) with no explanation at all for why/how JC went to Mars. I think that the story needs to either resolve that, or hint at a resolution — but I would have fought against the huge change being introduced to solve it. The odd part is that based on the interviews, I don’t think Stanton or Andrews really considered the Thern medallion to be that big a change even though it alters the entire internal (for John Carter) landscape of the film.
It’s kind of like there was the feeling that introducing a “Relic Hunter” motif into the story was necessary but I don’t really see that. A man, out of place in his own world due to his lack of aging, is transported to another world for which he is ideally suited and seems, on a spiritual level, to belong — and where his aging issue is less of a problem due to the lifespan of Martians being so long — and there he makes his way and finds his place in the cosmos. That’s a potentially wonderful, rewarding story without a relic hunter middle third.
And Jack … just so I’m not misunderstood — I’m not arguing for no changes. I’m arguing for preserving the essential nature of the thing being adapted. I would argue that Stanton changed the essential nature. For me, I was willing to eventually let go of the original and enjoy the movie for what it was, not in relation to Burroughs’ original, but on its own merits. But I can completely understand why others might feel that this is a major disservice to the original.
One other thing that someone mentioned — that Danton Burroughs signed off on it. And that’s true — Danton didn’t offer any resistance. It wasn’t really in his nature to do so. He used to tell me that he had trouble reading screenplays the way he could read novels. There was even a time, back in 2002 – 2004, when the movie was with Paramount, that he shared the Paramount screenplays with me and asked for my notes, which he incorporated into his. That ended when Disney came into the picture and I was off overseas, first in South Africa, then in the Bahamas. I so wish I’d had a chance to read this one early on, as I’m pretty sure Danton would have incorporated my concerns into his response. But based on everything that has happened since then, I don’t think it would have really made much difference anyway.
There exist a lot of near-death experiences reports nowadays. Why not playing with this ambiguity in a John Carter story (like Total Recall)? He “dies” in a cave and is transported to another ideal-for-him world, then after a while, wakes up on Earth after a period of coma. (I always wondered if near-death experience reports existed in Burroughs’ time, even if one of the first was apparently in Plato’s Republic. From the near-death experience wiki: “The cognate French term expérience de mort imminente (experience of imminent death) was proposed by the French psychologist and epistemologist Victor Egger as a result of discussions in the 1890s among philosophers and psychologists concerning climbers’ stories of the panoramic life review during falls.”)
I’m sure 21st century audiences could relate to that, and that doesn’t necessarily alter the basic plot. It’s a known phenomenon today even if hardly provable scientifically.
As a follow-on to the most recent – again I will ask, when it comes to interpreting book-to-film and the statements about this, that or the other thing not translating because – duh – it’s a diffr’nt medium: “Who says?”
One of the greatest things I ever heard a director say during an interview was “Trust your audience, they’re smart, they’ll get it.” and that was Tarantino. Time and again he’s thrown bizarre things up on the screen – buckets of blood, multiply intertwining story threads each told out of sequence, the “history of what shoulda been” and made it work, often phenomenally.
I’ll bet that if you told Quentin that an aspect of one of his upcoming films “won’t work”, rather than re-writing the STORY to something that “will work”, he’d say “Screw you, I’ll find a way to make it work.”
There are only two REAL constraints with what you can do with film, despite all of the apologists claims to the contrary: 1. budget. 2. a passion to tell a story the way the STORY needs to be told and a willingness to do the hard work to make it so.
PIXAR, by its very nature (and self-described working process) is obviously a studio whose ethos is anything but ‘trust the audience’. They spoon feed their audience, tweaking scenes over and over and over again to get the response THEY want to get – NOT the response that the audience will give them based on the story.
That this was going on during the filming of JC is obvious from the interviews with Stanton.
That there was no desire to tell the story as written is a fairly easy conclusion to come to as well.
There is no inherent limitation, no real reason why any individual scene from a book can’t be translated to an understandable rendition on screen. The question of whether to do so or not depends on the director’s decision. When the director chooses not to, he/she has made the decision that their interpretation is “better” than that of the original author’s. In JC’s case, as in the vast majority of other books-to-film instances, the director was wrong.
Jack Wrote
That actually gets to my biggest beef with the screenplay and it helps explain my point. Let’s say what your saying is a given — that John Carter going to Mars needs to be explained and have relevance within the single story A Princess of Mars. In Burroughs version, it wasn’t that it was “random” . . . . how could anyone read the books and think that? But it’s part of some larger scheme of things that is not fully revealed, but into which we get peeks now and then as the succession of stories, with each of the John Carter stories involving a frame story that advances the question of why he’s on Mars, etc. So for starters, I don’t really buy your premise but let’s say I do, so we can discuss the adapation.
So, say I’m a producer and I’ve got he director and his writing team coming to me and saying what you’re saying. I would say okay, that’s fine, so what’s your solution? Our solution is that there is this Thern medallion thing and it becomes a maguffin. When John Carter comes to mars, he does so because he completes the incantation that the other guy, the Thern who owns the thing, is trying to say before he dies. Are you with me so far?
Yeah, guys, but isn’t that random? John Carter is randomly taken to Barsoom because he happens to randomly complete the incantation and says “barsoom” at the right moment and whoosh, he’s kidnapped to Mars accidentally. That’s an improvement?
And they say yeah, it is, because now we’ve got this cool maguffin and JC is trying to learn how to use it so he can get back to Earth, and Dejah is trying to fool JC into taking her to Helium and she uses the fact that she can’t figure out how to work the thing (when she really can figure t out) …..see, and then they’re on the River Iss, etc
Whoa boys, I would say. Let’s take this step by step.
John Carter is on Mars but he has a tool that can get him back to Earth and he’s dying to get back to earth, he just needs to operate the device, but he can’t figure it out, so his story becomes a quest for the solution to operate the device and get him back to Earth, is that it?
Yeah, that’s it, they would respond enthusiastically.
Well guys . . . you see, that is so far afield from the original that it makes me uncomfortable even though I’m willing to make some meaningful changes. You see the original is all about a guy who finds himself “reborn” on a new planet with no way home (he thinks he’s probably dead there anyway), and how he acculturates, wins allies, finds true love, and ultimately finds himself making a difference to the world that he has adopted and finds is his true spiritual home.
Now in your movie if he lands on the planet and immediately has a way home, and all he wants is to get hom, you’re making a vastly different movie. Why not, if you want to have it explained, just withhold it. Let it be an Act 3 revelation. Let John Carter come to Mars, as Burroughs did, in what he believes to be a moment of spiritual transformation, and let him discover Mars not as a prison, but as that place to which he has been drawn and seems to be there for a reason. Then let that reason be revealed later in the story. In that way, you get what you’re looking for without severally damaging the core fabric of the 100 year classic you’re trying to adapt.
Now Jack — supposing that conversation happened, what would be the argument against what I am suggesting? What’s wrong with creating some rational reason fo rthe transport to Mars, but do it in such a way that it doesn’t completely change the entire nature of the story from the moment he goes there?
That, in my view, is the kind of conversation that should have been going on as the story was being constructed. It would have led to an adaptation that has the values you are seeking, without inflicting unnecessary collateral damage on the values of the original story.
Again ….. let me clarify that I don’t hate hate hate what he came up with. But I wish I could have had a chance to talk it out with them as a producer during the development. Alas, I’m a lowbudget indie producer, not a megabudget studio producer, so that’s just a fantasy.
Michael D. Sellers wrote:
Was there a difference in your view in the situation that faced Peter Jackson with LOTR, and the situation the faced Stanton in John Carter, in terms of what the task was and what the sensitivies were? In other words, Did those adapting Lord of the Rings (and let’s throw Harry Potter in there too, just for something modern) have differing responsibilities in this regard to Stanton or were they essentially the same?
The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies benefit tremendously by being based on book series that took years for to write. In Tolkien’s case, he spent decades. The structure was already there from the beginning, brought to fruition over many drafts by their respective authors.
(Did you know that one of Tolkien’s hobbies was inventing languages? That’s where he started, with all the elvish dialects, etc. He then basically wrote his tales of Middle Earth so he’d have someplace to use them. The novels are a byproduct of his love of inventing languages, and not the other way around. That’s nuts.)
Even with all the solid work though, Peter Jackson still had to make changes:
-Speed up and intensify the amount of time it takes Frodo to leave the Shire.
-Lose the whole Tom Bombadil scene. This is always the first thing cut in a LOTR adaptation, because in dramatic terms it’s complete dead space. If ever somebody tells you this scene should’ve been in the movie, they’re too much of a Tolkien fan to be completely honest with themselves.
-LOTR is too much of a sausage fest, so he removed action given to minor male characters that weren’t integral to the story and gave it the Arwen, the elf princess.
-He took the romance between Arwen and Aragorn talked about in the appendices and integrated it into the main story.
-Instead of leaving Aragorn’s taking the Paths of the Dead out of it (as Tolkien did), he dramatized it.
-In the book, Faramir finds Frodo and Sam. When presented with the perfect opportunity to take the Ring, he shows himself to be even more noble than his older brother Boromir and rejects it outright. Since the movie can only put up with so much of Frodo seen walking weakly and struggling internally from the power of the Ring, Jackson puts off Faramir’s response to create suspense and conflict and adds a battle scene with a Ring Wraith. In the end he’s just as noble as he is in the book, but we’ve also had more time to see him in action showing his character.
There are many other changes too. I think the changes are very sound and understandable. Most would call the LOTR movies a creative success. Still, there are always those fans like the guy at the screening of LOTR: The Two Towers I went to. Sitting in the audience a few seats away from me, he had his copy of the hardcover book open in his lap, making comparisons as he watched. As the movie finished, he stood up and said, “Well, that sucked!”
In contrast with Tolkien and Rowling, Burroughs didn’t write the Mars books with a plan. He did very little if any revision at all. This is why I think of him as a “campfire storyteller.” There’s a sense of an imagination going wild with freedom in his work. He’d spin one amazing idea after another. Sometimes he’d come up with a notion (like Martian telepathy), then realize it doesn’t work a few pages later. His solution was not to do another draft to remove the bit that failed –he’d just write his way out and never mention it again.
Burroughs’ structure is a serial: This happened, then this happened, then this happened, cliffhanger! Anyone adapting the Mars books needs to impose a three act structure on it that it didn’t have to begin with. To answer your initial question, it’s a very different task adapting the Mars books than in adapting LOTR or Harry Potter. It’s a lot more work.
Burroughs’ genius was in his imagination. The genius of what Stanton, Andrews and Chabon did is they harnessed that imagination to a three act structure that smartly updates the book for a modern audience.
“If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last.” –Anton Chekhov
What this means, is that if you’ve set something major up in your story –say a man gets transported to Mars– it has to be there for a reason, and that reason has to be given. You might be able to get away with not explaining it in a serialized novel in 1912 or even for a young audience reading the books in the 1960s. I know many longtime fans of ERB who think this whole unexplained mystery is wonderful, because they remember the feelings they had as kids wondering if it were possible to get to Barsoom that way. I understand. It speaks to the intimacy of the books.
However, in the 21st century nobody is going to leave the theater charmed by the fact that his travel to another world wasn’t explained, and they shouldn’t be expected to. They’ll be annoyed, because they already know they can’t get to Barsoom that way.
The movie improves on this by making the villains far more impressive than they are in the book (no blond wigs here, thanks), gives them a technology indistinguishable from magic, and makes that the instrument of Carter’s astral projection.
Now instead of Carter’s travel between worlds being random –go to Mars for no explainable reason, sent back to Earth for no explainable reason, and struggling to return for a decade only to finally get back (again no reason ever given)– it’s because of an action taken by the villain. Carter returns to Mars by his outwitting the villains at their own game. This makes both characters look stronger.
Discussing ERB’s work with longtime fans can be frustrating. There seems to be an inability of being honest about it long enough to acknowledge its weaknesses. If someone says John Carter is a shallow character (a legitimate assessment in my opinion), someone else pipes up with, “He’s supposed to be a cipher!” You know, all of a sudden it’s not a weakness everybody, it’s a hidden strength.
Well, no. It’s a weakness. It might be useful in helping a child put themselves in the action, but only as an unintentional byproduct. It’s a detriment for more sophisticated readers. I know it was for me.
MCR wrote:
Then why Smart Jack did they say they were fans of them if they were dismissive or dislike them? You got an answer for that?
Michael made a good response there. What bothers ERB fans is the ‘disengenuity of on the one hand claiming to be a big fan of the books, and on the other hand perhaps secretly harboring thoughts not that different for the “Swamp Thing situation you cite.” If they don’t like the books or were never fans then fine. I don’t have a problem with people like JJ Abrams admitting to being a Star Wars fan, not a Trekker or Bryan Singer saying he wasn’t a comic book kid and knew nothing about X-Men. Or even George RR Martin, who at one point was hired to write John Carter of Mars and made it clear he had never read the books and thought nothing of them.
I consider myself a fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs. I’ve spent somewhere in the realm of $2000 in the last couple years on Burroughs related stuff. That includes:
-All the Mars books in paperback
-All the Venus books in paperback
-All the Tarzan books in paperback
-All the Pellucidar books in paperback
-All the Land Time Forgot books in paperback
-War Chief and Apache Devil in paperback
-All three Tarzan novels by Andy Briggs published so far
-The Art of John Carter by Josh Kushins
-Tarzan Alive by Philip Jose Farmer
-Irwin Porges biography of Burroughs
-The two Library of America editions of ‘A Princess of Mars’ and ‘Tarzan of the Apes’
-Tarzan by Hal Foster
-Four copies of the JOHN CARTER novelization (one for myself, three as school donations)
-Six copies of the JOHN CARTER Blu Ray or dvd (one for myself, the others as gifts)
-Flight to another state to take my niece and nephews to see JOHN CARTER
-Two copies the Mars trilogy paperback as gifts
-A ticket to last year’s Dum-Dum ($100 a ticket wasn’t it?)
Even with all of that, MCR. Even with holding the opinion that “Burroughs is as important an American original as Mark Twain” –I also think that ‘A Princess of Mars’ is the best badly written novel I’ve ever read. The two are not mutually exclusive ideas.
My point with the Swamp Thing example was to point out that being a fan is not a requirement to turning out exceptional work, not to say that Stanton and company weren’t fans. You can love the man’s work and how it inspired you and not think it was holy writ.
Stanton, Andrews, and Chabon definitely are fans of Burroughs. Who other than someone who truly loved the man’s work would spend years of their lives working to give meaningful dramatic structure and form to work that was dashed off by its creator a hundred years ago? Nobody since Robert Towne in his original screenplay for GREYSTOKE, or Philip Jose Farmer has taken Edgar Rice Burroughs so seriously.
You accuse them of throwing out ERB’s ideas in favor of their own, but I don’t see that at all. There’s really no comparison between it and the previous screenplays. You can see exactly what impressed Danton Burroughs. There’s a level of thought and care behind the movie and its script that just isn’t in the other attempts.
You ignored the bit I posted regarding Niels Bohr and Richard Feynman I see. Too bad, as that was the most important part. Writers talk about the work of their heroes (like Burroughs) in the same way that Feynman spoke to Bohr about physics. It only seems disrespectful to somebody so in awe of the man you can’t discuss his work objectively.
When I left the theater after seeing JOHN CARTER the first time, I felt like I was eleven years old again. When I’d read ‘A Princess of Mars’ for the first time a few months earlier, I wished I’d been eleven when I read it. Yet I didn’t rush right out and buy every Andrew Stanton movie (JOHN CARTER is still the only one I own). I went and bought Edgar Rice Burroughs novels. Say what you like, but that’s the sign of a great movie adaptation to me.
Michael,
I don’t doubt your sincerity, nor that of the BTBers, but you know something? When I’m engaging in conversation on a board/comments/whatever, I really try to remember that at least 50% of what I’m saying is lost because of the lack of face-to-face communication. If something upsets me because of the wording, I put it down to the wording and follow-up with questions designed to ferret out whether or not it WAS the wording, the intent or some mixture thereof, I don’t immediately assume anything.
Additionally, I don’t see my characterization as “utter dreck” as being any different than someone else saying that it was the greatest film they’ve ever seen. One is positive hyperbole, the other negative hyperbole, both are hyperbole.
“Abomination!” “Fantastic!”. “Awful” “Wonderful”
I presume that those who thought the film to be fantastic use that word to convey the positives they feel about it, just as I used abomination to convey the negatives I felt about it.
The difference in my early posts was, I was asking questions, rather than making statements that brooked no argument.
Perhaps it’s the people – these days very few seem to be interested in anyone else’s opinion unless it coincides with their own.
Steve Davidson wrote:
I’m not sure …. it’s true the Facebook group has stalled out at 11,600 . . . . the strange part is that it has been adding 40-60 new members a week, but this is balanced by some fans leaving the group. The way it works on Facebook, you get annoying notifications every time stuff happens in a group and that can motivate people to leave. Last week, the one year anniversary (plus people were talking about Oz TGP), there were about 80 new members.
One interesting stat is that here on JCF, it averages from a low of 300 a day to a high of 600 a day — people googling “John Carter Sequel” or “John Carter 2″ . . . . and that number has been stable for quite a while. Actually, just so I’m not mis-stating anything, here are the top searches by which people have found this site in the last 30 days:
John carter 2 1,852
john carter sequel 1,382
john carter files 381
john carter 2 movie 117
will there be a john carter 2 94
john carter 59
john carter 2 announced 52
john carter sequel news 52
john carter of mars sequel 48
sequel to john carter 43
the john carter files 43
So . . . .
One thing that’s a little bit interesting. During the last 3-4 months when the John Carter Facebook Group has been stuck between 11,000 and 12,000, the Facebook Page operated by the group has gone from 2,300 likes to 3,600 likes and the truth is they don’t pay much attention to that. That page, however, comes up as the fourth or fifth search result on those same searches listed above, and they have been having a steady flow of new “Likes”, so that number is rising. (They didn’t create the page until they already had 10,000 members in the group.” They’ve got a couple of web-savvy people now working on stuff and my guess is that the Facebook Page and the “Like” meter will gradually become the measure by which they will try and show growth. Remains to be seen how successful it will be. Here is the link to the page I’m talking about: http://www.facebook.com/JohnCarterBackToBarsoomTheSequelCampaign
Another “food for thought” aspect — that group has various sub-elements including a) those who want a sequel from Disney and that’s all they want, b) those who would be happy with either a sequel or a reboot by Disney or someone else, c) those who have had it with Disney and want the rights to revert back to ERB so a reboot can be initiated. The point is, it’s not monolithic.
Steve …fixed the name typo, sorry.
Well, one thought about that and it’s kind of embedded int he question the way you ask it. You may think that your questions, as you asked them oh so long ago (not here in this thread) were not “flame bait”, but as you mention, the film was, as far as you were concerned “utter drek”. And therein lies at least some of the problem. Perhaps I can create two examples and ask you–is one of these flame-bait and if so, which one, and which one is closer to the way you and good ol’ MCR have tended to approach the BTBers.
A:
I just watched John Carter and as a long time ERB fan, and a sci-fi fan of many years, I was really disappointed. It seemed to me like Stanton abandoned many of the things that made the novels great, and introduced changes that diminished the impact of the story. But here you guys are, clamoring for a sequel? Why? I found the John Carter character to be unengaging in the extreme, and moving Zodanga and the Therns …didn’t like it. What is it that makes you so passionate about the film?
B:
Stanton has wrecked one of the great pieces of literature of the last century and turned it into a stinking mess of poo. The guy doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing and if you can’t tell crap when you see it, then there’s not much that can be done to help you get over your disease. Are you telling me, seriously, that you like this crap?
Now, without going back and dredging up old old comments, which one of these sounds more like the way you guys posed whatever questions you had? And is that flame bait or not?
For me, if you’re asking questions in a way that is likely to make the party receiving the question “see red” and have a deeply emotional response, either because it seems like you’re harshly attacking that thing that they love, or harshly attacking their intelligence and taste, or both — it moves along the spectrum toward flamebait. If you pose the question in a way that acknowledges that people have different tastes, that your tastes are just your tastes and not necessarily universal truths, and generally convey that you respect them and their view even if you don’t agree with it, then I don’t think you get that kind of rabid response. At least I don’t — and I have posed those kinds of questions many times.
Look . . . . I’m not trying to put the blame all on one side. That’s not it at all . . . . there is no doubt that some of the BTBers will push back pretty hard and may go overboard. At the same time, when the question is posed in let’s just say an ‘overly provocative’ way, it tends to support the view that the questioner was trying to get that kind of emotional response, rather than a rational sincere one — like poking a worm in a jar and watching it writhe and squirm.
I do think that our discussions here have evolved over time into something pretty productive so I don’t want any of this to revive the vitriol.
And by the way . . . I may take on as a challenge writing a blog post that tells the “magic of John Carter” as perceived by so many of the BTBers (as distinct from any personal thoughts I have one way or the other). If anybody has had a front row seat to that, it should be me — and my own reaction is on record as not being that precise reaction, meaning, as an ERBophile my reaction to the movie, while generally positive, was tempered by my love of Burroughs and the feeling that a lot of what got changed, while it might work better with “modern audiences” (or not), would have been better left as it was.
Michael wrote “I should add that I think the level of discourse on this particular thread has been great. MCR you vented a little in some posts but in others you were reasonable, and Steve Davidsom, who also comes in for some heat from the BTBers, has been a strong contributor.” First – typo in my name – it’s DavidsoN.
My initial problem with the BTBers was THEIR failure to recognize an honest question (or two) from “flame bait”. I couldn’t figure out how (seemingly) so many had such a positive view of the film when it was (drawing from past references) “utter drek” as far as I was concerned.
I’d previously read most of ERB’s works, have copies of the critical tomes devoted to them, have several copies of various “fanzines” produced over the years by the real experts, visit their websites fairly regularly; I’ve also got at least minimal credentials for film reviewing, having served as the reviewer for my college paper and reprising that later on the web.
I was on a genuine hunt to discover what they were seeing in JC that I must have missed. I wanted to know the reasons (which largely turn out to be one of age and lack of familiarity with the original material, as well as largely a lack of experience with things “fannish”. Note I used the word “largely” there (twice), meaning that I do recognize that there are exceptions to both. (No accounting for taste, I guess. That’s tongue-in-cheek for those who read everything I write on this subject with an eye towards angrily responding with near incoherent blatherings – and THAT previous remark itself is partially tongue-in-cheek.)
Instead of being met by people who were willing to engage in dialogue on the subject, I was met by people who wanted nothing but lock-step, lick-spittle agreement with their point of view, who had NO eye towards making converts with positives. (One wonders how many “sequelistas” are also members of a Tea Party, as the “our way or the hiway” approach strikes me as being very similar.)
I also suspect that the above mentioned attitude may have something to do with the movement’s inability to move beyond the 10K or so interested individuals, their affection for the film amounting to nothing more than a low-grade cult film at this point in time. Contrast with The Rocky Horror Picture Show, for example, and you’ll find a world-wide cult that welcomes just about any interested party into their fold, and is still going strong. Or Trek fans write in campaign to have the first shuttle named Enterprise. Millions. World wide. (But don’t compare it to the renewal of Star Trek; THAT was done by people who had worked on the show, not by the fans.)
It would be a stretch for me to say I agree completely with either the changes made or the claim of there being a need, but I will say that despite my opposition to those changes they may have been effective in bringing in a fresh audience to the material. I also liked a lot of what was done. For me the changes was successful for two reasons: 1 they felt sincere and were just complex enough to keep the viewer from being talked down to and, 2. they kept the romance real and the heart of Burroughs tales intact. Many will disagree but after seeing the major changes in other pulp fare on the big screen this one actually worked. The hesitant romance was well done though not entirely unique to cinema. To even trying coerce the original episodic adventure into a 2 hour format would have impossible, yes, impossible. It need one big sweeping story with adventurous action to drive it.
The changing of the Therns from being secret exploiters and tyrants to above-it-all movers and shapers of -not just Martian society- but an interstellar presence had a very nice feel to it. Curse the Ancient Aliens aspect of that all you want but it lent the notion that they are bigger and more insidious and that resonates with the feeling most people have today whether we like it or not.
Now Carter is not just a uniter of Barsoomians but he also knows about these people and their mechinations. Some may have missed this but it could tie in and create a bigger web of intrigue for the entire Burroughs line.
As purists we still have the books, but this could have launch a HUGE franchise for an epic conflict that spanned our solar system and maybe the galaxy.
The thing we have to remember about Burroughs was that he only starting writing these stories to satisfy a curiosity and to dabble in the medium in effort to find his way to a regular income. Essentially he was dipping his toe in the water and amazingly enough wound up swimming the English channel. He didn’t plan these out until he’d been writing a while and by then he had a franchise to manage so even as he became a more worldly man and better writer the horse was out of the gate. What happened here is a chance to gather his ideas into a cohesive, shared narrative. Imagine all of Burrough’s protagonists having to deal with both the Therns and the fallout directly or indirectly created by their designs? They don’t have to have direct cause, because that would grow old, but their influence being at the heart of contentious issues that everyone from Tarzan to David Innes to Carson Napier are forced to deal with, that could be good.
Well, MCR, here is the whole thread. You didn’t mention that in my comments I tried to provide some positive context about you in the face of the bitching that was going on, and I even put a link to your blog. Oh well…..
So these are comments on a post where I told them about this post, and our dialoge and discussion about Stanton’s changes and Jack’s statement about them. In my post that they are commenting on, I had made the pitch that it was a civil conversation with good points being made on both sides. What strikes me about it is that you don’t hear any Stanton-worshiping here — you just hear people who are frustrated with what they perceive to be over the top negativity over here.
I should add that I think the level of discourse on this particular thread has been great. MCR you vented a little in some posts but in others you were reasonable, and Steve Davidson, who also comes in for some heat from the BTBers, has been a strong contributor.
Actually, teh whole thread is too long to put here — so I’ve created a link for it for anybody who wants to hear what the “Stanton worshipers” are saying: http://thejohncarterfiles.com/comments-from-facebook-about-the-raucus-john-carter-files-commentary/
And by the way — the main ones taking MCR to task or Burroughs fans — Jeff Doten and Diane Cole — who are longtime Burroughs fans, bloggers, etc, who are simply ERBophiles who decided not to hate the movie like you do. Their credentials as ERBophiles are above reproach.
No I don’t mind the ERBist or ERBophiles. It’s a badge of honor, like Trekker.
As for my comment about “Super Secret Stanton Bat Cave” let me explain. I decided for once to log onto my Facebook account-which I don’t use often-and went over to their group. And while most of it looked fine what got my attention was your post concering what’s being debated now-the Stanton changes and the comments being made there. While I don’t mind being talked about behind my back what I do find funny or hypocritical is this: Many of them take me or other contrarians (especially the iMDB board) to task for being basically one-sided, for attacking anyone who doesn’t agree with their viewpoint. Yet all of the comments they were posting were basically that, attacking someone who isn’t there to defend themselves or offer their point of view because they don’t agree with them. Especially your pal Jack, whose made it clear he doesn’t respect anyone who disagree with him or doesn’t bow before Stanton. To me that seems hypocritical, attacking someone or a group yet acting the same way they do.
Now I understand yes this was a group started to drum up support for a sequel and maybe they think their comments won’t be read by outsiders (like Mark Andrews and his dismissive statement) but guess what? I did read them. And I’m sure others who don’t share their opinion but have been criticized or called a troll can. Now understand I’m not defending all of the iMDb board, most of them are flop trolls who are just there to revel in the film’s box office failure. But a lot of them are Edgar Rice Burroughs fans who just didn’t like this film. Yes some of them are combative but so are this film’s defenders.
I don’t have anything against them or you but they apparently, despite your claims of not being the enemy do for anyone who doesn’t share their viewpoints. I know this comes across as the pot calling the kettle but maybe if they weren’t being so busy pretending they’re taking the high road and thinking they don’t engage in the same behavior then maybe they would be more open or understanding or realize that they are ERB fans out there who hated this film.
There’s my explanation. I’m sure this gives them more ammunition but it had to be said. Thanks.
Yeah, I’ll revert back ERBophile…I like that better anyway, and I’ve been using that for a long time — ever since I started JCF.
Well, I’d prefer ERBophile (just as I prefer “Trekkie” to “Trekker” – because, after all, Trekkie was the original form and, if nothing else I am consistent: the original is ALWAYS better than the sequel, lol.
In terms of the folks who want a sequel (as opposed to those who are being a little more realistic and are hoping for a re-do), I prefer the term “sequelistas”.
I may be a Trekkie and an ERBophile (actually what I am is a FAN in the original and true sense of the word), but I am not a sequelista.
Again, just for consistency’s sake – the Star Trek reboot sucked too. (Your suspicions are correct – the wife and I have not seen a decent film in the theater going on 5 years now. Oh wait, I’ll amend that so long as Ironman (1) falls within that time frame. If so, I’ve seen one film in the past five years that I actually enjoyed, had little critical to say about it and felt was worth the outrageous ticket price I had to pay.
Awww…MCR….just when you were starting to play nice……
You’re citing me and calling it “defense of Stanton” …. but the biggest defense coming from me was “everybody does it” in Hollywood….i.e.everybody doing an adaptation tends to jump to their own ideas and claim it was “necessary” in order for he adaptation to work. That’s not much of a defense and by now you should know, I would hope, that I’m not about defending or attacking, I’m about trying to understand. I have called Stanton “tone deaf” in some respects to I’m hardly the one to go after and charge with writing “some other lame excuse for not wanting to face facts that Stanton had zero respect for the source material.” On the other hand, I think “zero respect for the source material” is a hyperbole when you consider all aspects of the source material, many of which he did retain but you just don’t mention or probably even think about them because you are so focused on the things he didn’t retain. Whatever……
I really do get the source of your ire, though — the disparity between the statements made about loving the source material, and the decisions made which seem to undermine that. You feel like he paid lip service to ERB and that’s about it.
“ERBist” is not something they use over there. I used to use “ERBophile” and I started using “ERBist” here to describe a slightly more rigid and doctrinaire “ERBophile” — i.e. you and Davidson, to name two. It’s not meant to be derogatory. It’s meant to describe your point of view. I’m happy to drop it — it’s not like I sit and stare into my navel for an hour before writing a comment here.
So blame me, not them. The term I hear most often over there is “purists” and I don’t think that’s unfair at all. Peeps like you and Steve are nothing if not “purists”, wouldn’t you agree? You certainly both make a thunderous case for a pure adaptation…….
And finally, it’s no more fair when you call the BTB Facebook Pae the “Super Secret Stanton Bat Cave” than it is when Jack over there talks about the Worldwide Happy ERB Marching Society. There are tons of people over there who love the books — many who knew the books before the movie, others who discovered it afterwards. They are not the enemy and that’s not an accurate characterization of them. And just so you know, I have to mount a similar and completely symmetrical corollary defense of John Carter Files over there, because when people from BTB Facebook come over here and see your frequently snarling comments, they tend to go back and characterize the whole JCF site as being dominated by rabid purists. You know that’s not fair a fair way to characterize JCF, and what you’re saying BTB isn’t a fair way to characterize that community either. As a participant in both, I’m sure of it.
Michael Sellers wrote:
” I never expected them to have the respect for the original that many ERBists who love ERB dearly (but no more dearly than I do) seemed to expect and indeed demand. I just knew it (the screen adaptation) was never going to be like that.”
Then why did Stanton, Andrews and Chabon BS so much about being a fan? It seems no one can answer this question. Instead its one questionable defense after another for a man-who by the way isn’t exactly spending time giving support to his followers or the Back to Barsoomers-about how, well he doesn’t have to like the books, he’s only writing a screenplay. Or some other lame excuse for not wanting to face facts that Stanton had zero respect for the source material.
That’s what bothers me most-that and his obsession with whiny lead characters, dead wives and ripping off other movies. That instead of being honest he just spread this lie about loving the books when in fact he pretty much proved with his comments and this movie that he didn’t.
So here’s something the worshippers can think about and try to come up with an answer. Since I doubt any of them really can since they can’t see past Stanton’s lies and bull.
Also “ERBists.” Is that what they’re calling us fans of ERB now at the Super Secret Stanton Bat Cave (or better known as the Back to Barsoom Facebook Page). Just curious…
Henried…some interesting ideas there about how to play with telepathy, and it helps me imagine how it might work. And certainly with all the resources at the disposal of a director of a film like this, much is possible. Kind of reminds me of some of the ideas I had when I was making a film — two of them, actually — about dolphins and I was trying to figure out a cool way to show what a dolphin “sees” with sonar. Unfortunately the “indie-ness” of it all (i.e. no money) caused me to retreat from that, but I think wistfully about it every now and then and wonder what would have been possible with more money and more time. Who knows, telepathy might work. . . . .
I always felt that Chabon/Stanton/Andrews threw the telepathy out without really considering it’s value. Burroughs used it unevenly, but I thought he covered his bases well enough, and it’s one of the more exotic and tantalizing aspects of Barsoom that would be fertile for cinematic development. Hurling color/thought shapes always seemed like such a wonderful concept to visualize, and what Cameron (ahem) did worked because he integrated the neural-connections so deeply into the story. I’m of the mind that the telepathy can be utilized effectively, more or less the way it is described, and that a potential reboot would benefit from specifically emphasizing some of the elements that the Disney film discarded.
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Steve, you’re *technically* right about the lawsuit, but you avoided my actual point about validity and that’s fine – I agree this isn’t the thread for it. I shall endeavour to find a way to control myself and avoid any further breaking of the ‘rules’.
Steve, I think that on a philosophical level there is something to be debated there or at least some qualifications to be made. As a writer turned filmmaker turned writer I have thought more than a little about what the relationship is between literature and film in our culture at this point in time . . . . but I haven’t really figured anything out. It’s complicated. Literature ruled when that’s all there was. Film/Television rules now and the stature of literature has suffered, at least if you consider the “broad masses” who pay a whole lot more attention to film than to literature.
When I think of literature, I think of the unfettered freedom to create absolutely whatever you want — there are no limitations. But it’s all done with words.
When I think of film, I think of the incredible array of tools that are available to tell a story and make the audience be touched by it — I’m talking about the orchestration of all the elements represented by the separate disciplines of visuals, sound, music, and special effects and, if all of these are used judiciously and effectively, how powerful and expressive the medium can be.
So I don’t exactly feel that it automatically follows that the first tet of any film would be adherence to the original. I do feel that this could or should be the first test of any film that is an adaptation of a piece of literature that has had the kind of successful 100 year run that A Princess of Mars had. I just don’t feel that’s the case for every literary adaptation.
The odd part is that Burroughs moreso than many writers wrote very cinematically. He stays very much in the “here and now” of the story, and the stories move from scene to scene more in the way movies do than is the case with many authors. His descriptions are crisp and precise — when he goes into extreme levels of detail it is simply to construct something we have never seen before so vividly with words that it’s almost as if he’s given us a concept drawing of it. (The teen readers who went through our focus group were very struck by this … they very much liked the way the story was told by John Carter himself in what they felt was the way an explorer might write a journal, being certain to carefully describe what he was seeing in almost scientific terms.) But my point is, this idea I keep hearing that it is somehow unfilmable or uncinematic .. . . . don’t really think so.
I was talking offline with Abraham Sherman, who has written the best APOM adapted screenplay I’ve seen yet, about how I would go about doing a screen adaptation of APOM. Now this is very revolutionary but I’ve done it before once, and I wonder why no one in Hollywood to my knowledge has ever done it.
Why not start out by taking the book, and simply convert it to screenplay format. How hard can that be? It would take a week to do, no more. At the end of it you would have a screenplay that is probably 200 pages instead of 120, but you’d now have an actual screenplay that is true to the actual book.
Now read the screenplay the way directors read a screenplay — slowly, imagining each scene, each moment.
Then — and only then — start making changes.
You see, what I think happens too often is that the director has his own “great ideas” and the writers have their “great ideas” and they just don’t give the original a chance. They start making changes up on changes without first giving the author’s original a chance.
For example, in APOM I think the genius of how Burroughs withheld the red Martians for awhile, and then introduced them first by the appearance of Dejah, then by Dejah telling JC a bit about red martian culture, and then finally bringing them full force into the story — was very effective, and maybe in this Case Stanton would have recognized how effective it is if he had given it this kind of chance. But we know from his various interviews that he always had imagined starting the story with the scene on Mars — which meant that he had always imagined abandoning the POV of Carter even though that didn’t have to be a “given” (for example we never leave Dunbar’s POV in Dances With Wolves, and by that I mean we don’t have another other than a couple of snippet scenes in which he is not present, if I remember it correctly, and it worked out pretty well as a movie).
Anyway . . . .what I’m describing as a process is just never done. There is not that kind of respect for the underlying literary property and indeed, many such properties pose huge challenges for adaptation. APOM — not so much. It was written like a movie — very visual, linear, fast-paced — and the process I describe could have made sense but it’s just not how Hollywood does it — and that’s important too, because to me it’s not like Stanton and company did something that is horribly egregious vis-a-vis the norm in Hollywood. They kinda did what Hollywood does for the most part — and that, perhaps, is why it didn’t get my ire up the way it did you and MCR, for example, because my expectation was different — I never expected them to have the respect for the original that many ERBists who love ERB dearly (but no more dearly than I do) seemed to expect and indeed demand. I just knew it (the screen adaptation) was never going to be like that.
I think the one thing that stands out for me in this entire discussion – at this point – was brought to greater light my MCR’s latest: those who are generally supportive of Stanton/Pixar seem to be treating what HE did as sacrosanct and placing Stanton into some kind of god-like, unquestionable authority throne.
He made two well-received animated films (one I thought was ok – Nemo – one I found trope-laden and un-cute – Wall-E), no live action films prior to JC and while this may give him some claim to authority over ANIMATED film, that does not extend to either live action film OR to the literature in question. Just because the man presided over a 250 million dollar budget doesn’t mean he ought to be diagnosing your bunions.
He has no demonstrated credibility in literary fields – none whatsoever – and therefore you all ought to be listening more to those who do have some, and potentially giving those opinions greater weight, than that given to Stanton.
(Aside: Michael Chabon has been a friend to genre literature, despite his lofty status as a main stream “literary” author and best seller. I therefore cut his involvement a bit more slack – perhaps more so than I ought to – as I continue to hope that the work he did on the script was of a very specific, under-direction, kind, rather than a willingness to chop up what he would have to recognize as a form of literary genius; I’m sure the payday was a very good one which would be reason enough. Absent evidence to the contrary, I continue to absolve him of any real responsibility.).
There is also this tendency to accord film greater import and deference when compared to literature (after all – films make billions of dollars and we can SEE them constantly being promoted and lauded and awarded) and that is completely the opposite of the way it ought to be. Literature is where the ideas come from, where the characters come from: literature is the originating source, film a secondary one and therefore almost always a derivative art.
The measure of a good film OUGHT to be how well it managed to stay true to the written word; not adhering to the text ought to have to be explained thoroughly – and it better be a damned good explanation (especially in this age of CGI when you can put virtually anything you want to on the screen); excuses should not be needed when a film diverges from the text. In doing so, a film maker ought to realize that he/she is probably going to pay a major price in terms of Box Office and potential awards; the FIRST review of such a film ought to be from the author of the original text.
That the actual relationship is completely reversed is due to nothing more than the power and influence of crass money; authors are willing to allow their original works to be butchered in the name of a large check and residuals. Most will admit that they were happy for the money but would prefer not to talk about the film perversion of their work – but they’ll not often say what they really feel because of the threat of not being in the running for another big Hollywood check.
For those primarily interested in literature, keep the above in mind. The original work comes first; everything else is derivative and not deserving of as much attention as the original.
The derivative works are the ones that must explain themselves – not the original.
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PS Michael – I’m done with the Cameron/Henreid thing. I felt compelled to answer because of the content of the last one, but as I said in my FIRST response to H, I don’t want this thread to turn into a discussion of Cameron/Avatar/Ellison/Starlog/Copyright/Outer Limits/Titanic/et al. If Henreid feels compelled to come back again, I can’t control that.
That’s the one thing from the books that I feel like I would have to pull the plug on for sure. I think something along the lines of what we saw in Avatar would be okay …but not fullblown telepathy.
But remember — no one could read JC’s thoughts. So it might not be that big a deal . . . . . maybe just de-emphasize it.
Michael, even though I fell in love with John Carter the movie (though also not at first sight) and agreed with most of Stanton’s changes (the ones I was aware of anyway, not having read A Princess of Mars yet at the time), I want you to know that the persuasive arguments you and your fellow ERB fans have made in this post have now convinced me that I could have loved a more faithful adaptation of of the story just as much. In fact, it’s got me thinking of minor changes to the nature of John Carter’s immortality that might have removed some of the perceived inconsistencies with his past.
What if, rather than living one uninterrupted life spanning hundreds (or thousands) of years, he lived during a series of 10-20 year stretches until “dying,” as he did in the Arizona cave, and being projected forward through time, just as he would eventually be projected through space? This would explain why others didn’t notice his eternal youth or why he didn’t have the wealth or other resources you would expect an immortal to have amassed. Multiple experiences with this sort of astral projection would also explain why he so readily accepted his transportation to Mars. Perhaps he goes from one armed conflict to another so that his sense of honor, his courage and his fighting skill can fulfill some great purpose, as it did on Barsoom. Even as a Confederate officer, he may have been responsible for preventing injustices and cruelties where someone of lesser character and abilities wouldn’t have.
(Not wanting to get too far off track, I do feel compelled to state that, regardless of the motives individual Southern soldiers may have had for fighting against the Union, the Confederacy was then as now, irrefutably on the wrong side of the conflict in the Civil War. Jefferson Davis was explicit in the goal of his government to preserve the institution of slavery: the Confederate constitution specifically forbade any member state from abolishing slavery within its own borders–a peculiar proclamation to make in the alleged cause of preserving states’ rights.)
I also think that demoting the full-blown telepathy of the books to a lesser form of psychic empathy would have helped explain how Carter could pick up the native language so quickly. I’d also suggest making it clear that Carter’s sudden aptitude for psychic communication was another aspect of his unique nature, rather than just a natural benefit of spending time on Mars.
Lastly, as much as I enjoy the movie, I want to express my own empathy for the disappointment and sadness you and other fans feel over Stanton’s failure to convey those aspects of the characters and settings that you fell in love with reading ERB’s books. My pulp hero obsession growing up was Doc Savage, and I was appalled by George Pal’s 1975 abysmal movie adaptation (which, bringing it back to ERB, starred former television Tarzan, Ron Ely). More than 35 years later, I’m still waiting for someone to erase my memory of that travesty with a decent film version. I hope for the sake of you and the legions of fans fighting to preserve ERB’s legacy that you don’t have to wait that long to see the faithful film adaptation you and he deserve.
I think that some of his changes were good and others were a little odd. My main issue with his changes was to the mythology of the Therns – it adds a lot of plot holes, especially when you try to think of how the adaptations of the second and third films would work.
I think it was flawed but still an entertaining and fun movie that deserved a better fate than “box office bomb”
“What you fail to grasp is that it doesn’t matter if Stanton, Andrews and Chabon are collectively dismissive of Burroughs’ work, if they think the books don’t hold up after hundred years, or if they outright dislike them. It makes zero difference. Zip. Nada.
The job isn’t and never was about being Field Marshal of the Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Happy Worldwide Marching Society and loving him more than anyone ever has ever. It’s about writing.”
Then why Smart Jack did they say they were fans of them if they were dismissive or dislike them? You got an answer for that?
Michael made a good response there. What bothers ERB fans is the “disengenuity of on the one hand claiming to be a big fan of the books, and on the other hand perhaps secretly harboring thoughts not that different for the “Swamp Thing” situation you cite.” If they don’t like the books or were never fans then fine. I don’t have a problem with people like JJ Abrams admitting to being a Star Wars fan, not a Trekker or Bryan Singer saying he wasn’t a comic book kid and knew nothing about X-Men. Or even George RR Martin, who at one point was hired to write John Carter of Mars and made it clear he had never read the books and thought nothing of them.
Yet Stanton, Andrews and Chabon kept telling everyone they were fans of ERB and his work. And yet at the same time Stanton bashed them for hating the characters of John Carter and Dejah Thoris. Andrews smugly dismisses them as books “written for children” and Chabon, well he just went with anything Stanton said, including his arrogant downplaying of Frazetta’s work as nothing more than art on the side of hippie Dead Head vans.
Also despite your claims that dismissives does affect the writing because if you dislike something it means you are just as likely to miss the strengths of a work as much as you are focusing on the weaknesses. Again Michael has pointed this out in his discussion of Stanton being “tone deaf” with regards to character and what made Burroughs’ work unique. The things that most fans I’ve talked to about John Carter of Mars they loved most-the travelogue qualities of the story from Carter’s point of view, discovering Barsoom; his falling in love with Dejah and his courting of her; his growing up among the Tharks and learning their ways and earning them as eventual allies-all of that is regarded as strengths by fans, including Ray Bradbury.
But this film? Stanton told his precious Pixar Brain Trust when they suggested opening the film the same way as Burroughs did that it was “lazy.” The love story became nothing more than two people bickering with each other, like poor versions of Han Solo and Princess Leia in The Empire Strikes Back, just without Leigh Brackett, Larry Kasdan, Irvin Kershner or Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher. Carter’s time among the Tharks was reduced to the silly “voice of Barsoom” and made jokes out of Tars Tarkas and Sola.
But in your eyes-or rather Stanton’s eyes since you don’t disagree with anything he did, like you do Ken Burns-these are improvements, despite the fact that they are not generally seen as a weakness in the novel by fans. That’s why I fell in love with them and I get the impression so did other people. It wasn’t all because of cool aliens and naked women.
Finally again you skirted another issue. Iron Man wasn’t the sixth film in a franchise. Nor was Thor. Yet all you focus on was The Avengers, a film that early estimates suggested would make about what Thor or Captain America did at the box office and be outgrossed by The Dark Knight Rises. Instead it outgrossed DKR and why? Because it gave people something they wanted-likable characters and a fun story. Something your precious Stanton failed to deliver.
I would hope Steve Davidson and Henried can make peace with each other as you both offer good insights.
I’m going to start a thread about Cameron and Avatar and whether Cameron did Burroughs better than Stanton (or, alternatively, ripped Burroughs off) at some point after this cools off a bit. I’d say let this issue lie for awhile in anticipation that we can air it out more thoroughly then. Curious to hear more of what you both have to say.
Henreid,
I thought the way it was played was – you had your say, I had mine and, since it is not the main thread of discussion, that’s the end of it.
Evidently you don’t play by the rules.
I’m surprised to see you make such declarative statements regarding a settlement out of court when the results are sealed. But regardless – Ellison got the mention because of Cameron’s theft that was fully admitted to in the Starlog interview – that he then tried to have pulled/edited/whatever, another reveal of his guilt.
Do you think for one second they’d have put the credit in the film if they didn’t have to? The ‘have to’ came from Ellison’s promise that there would be a fully blown court battle if things didn’t go his way. You’ve not mentioned the two lawsuits brought and then hushed up over Titanic, nor the Strugatsky’s statement that for a variety of reasons they weren’t bringing suit over Avatar.
Elsewhere I have said much about Avatar and what a stinker of a film it is, no need to repeat that here.
It’s ok if you want to be a fan of a ummm – of Cameron – different strokes you know.
And I agree — the answer to most of MANDREWS facetious questions is an emphatic YES. Not that we expected that from a Disney film, but if he’s asking what we want…
The third act of the book undoubtedly requires the most work, but the problems are far smaller than they’ve been made out to be. One must only apply an open mind to story structure, and not be so rigidly tied into “Screenwriting 101″.
Neither do I want to further hijack this discussion, Steve, but you understand it’s not cool to accuse someone of being a thief and then drop the subject.
There is more to it than that. No, he didn’t lose any case. Carolco settled out of court and gave Ellison an ‘acknowledgement’ credit – and the only reason they did so was because JC had made an unfortunate remark in Starlog. The “plaigerism” in question regards one single element – that of a future soldier getting sent back in time. The rest of the rather strikingly original concept for The Terminator is his own. Cameron isn’t the only filmmaker whose success has brought legal attacks from the dark corners, but it matters not because for every borrowed element stand 3 or 4 original ones. His work is inspired by what has come before, like everyone else (including Burroughs), but it also stands on it’s own legs.
I’m a little surprised for this to be your only take on Avatar, because so many of the complaints we have for Stanton’s DJC are handled admirably, properly – with dignity – in Cameron’s planetary romance. You’re missing out, amigo!
Michael, I’m sure I saw somewhere – in print – that Stanton admitted that his first exposure to Barsoom was the Marvel comics and it is pretty clear to anyone who has read them (I’ve got them all mwuh ha ha!) that the visual esthetic of the film is most likely drawn from the imagery in the comics, not the books.
In answer to Mark Andrews question – would you want to see everyone nekkid and yada yada dismissive put down BS – my answer would be YES.
(As an aside: if they were really planning for a trilogy of films, they had PLENTY of screen time to devote to Carter’s advent on Mars and all of the acculturation stuff that followed.)
Fighting harnesses, silks, furs and diadems – nothing more is needed. And those elements were ABSOLUTELY NOT well represented by full-body blue and red tattooing.
Naked Mars – how’s that for a title of a film with Mars in the name that wouldn’t have any trouble getting attention? Sure wouldn’t be under the Disney banner, but they do have other studios for that.
And don’t go pulling up the Tracy Lords near-porno thingie in response – it’s an invalid comparison with negative connotation.
With that title and a couple of properly staged still images, Disney could have saved all of the rest of their suppoedly ill-spent marketing budget.
Jack wrote:
Was there a difference in your view in the situation that faced Peter Jackson with LOTR, and the situation the faced Stanton in John Carter, in terms of what the task was and what the sensitivies were? In other words, Did those adapting Lord of the Rings (and let’s throw Harry Potter in there too, just for something modern) have differing responsibilities in this regard to Stanton or were they essentially the same?
I think one of the things that gets the goat of the members of the ERB Worldwide Marching Society is the perceived disengenuity of on the one hand claiming to be a big fan of the books, and on the other hand perhaps secretly harboring thoughts not that different for the “Swamp Thing” situation you cite. Andrew Stanton always said in interviews that he was a fan of the books, had really enjoyed them as a boy . . . . .yet there were elements within his comments and especially the choices he made that led many to believe his real attitude was quite different. In the work I did for John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood I came to the conclusion that Stanton was introduced via the Marvel comics and was taken by the world created by Edgar Rice Burroughs — he liked to draw Tharks and thoats and such — but always had reservations about John Carter and Dejah Thoris as characters — the books entertained him, but never spoke to him on the level that they did to those who you now find online excoriating Stanton.
This exchange between an irate Burroughs fan (MCR’s doppelganger, by the sound of it) and Mark Andrews, who cowrote the script with Stanton, seems a little more direct and perhaps a little more honest. I would note that Andrews was responding to a very aggressive flame post on an obscure, barely public message board, when he said what he said, and thus may not have been thinking it would be there for all the world to read . . . .otherwise it’s hard to imagine him responding the way he did. But it is in fact there for all the world to see, so ….it’s worth reading and contemplating.
Steve Wayne said…
Congratulations on ‘Disney-fying’ Edgar Rice Burroughs great masterpiece story. His ghost should haunt you and your mediocre sell-out low-talent cohorts for the injustice you pixar punkboys did him. Maybe you Disney suck-ups should read the original novel before you tarnish a real artist’s work.
Thanks alot,
Sw
11:54 AM
MANDREWS said…
Steve thanks for your comment. But I really don’t understand it. I mean if you would have preferred we make the film with all the characters naked like in the story and the repeated story lines and the way there are confusing villains and moments with Martian farmers and how carter painted himself with berry juice to imitate redmen and the fact he had mind reading capabilities and the fact “green gas” sent him to mars with no explanation and the second time he goes there’s no mechanic at all he just wishes to be back, and so on and so forth, I am very happy to disappoint you cause the books were far from perfect. Yes I read them
Loved them but they were written for children. The world he ERB created was not without it’s flaws and you could not do that story verbatim to do it justice. We did not “Disney-Fi” it by any means we adapted it and kept with the character of Burroughs original tale. It was vetted with Dalton Burroughs, grandson and champion of all of his grandfathers work, who, by the way- loved it.
ERB would have been proud of this film for the simple fact his character and story had inspired someone to visually realize it beyond the tired and repeated schoonover and frazetta art. To make his world authentic and come to life was his dream come true and I’m proud to have been an integral part of that.
I really have tons to do today so I’m relying on something I wrote last year. I think it applies to the conversation in a couple of ways. ( Finishing this it’s much longer than I intended. )
Mark Andrew and farmers : yea he shot his mouth off, but what is a type A personality ( aren’t all of these guys ? ) who has has slaved for years to bring a dream to the screen only to get the Flop treatment supposed to do ? Be a gentleman like all of you guys ? Yea right. Initially they’re supposed to to look at the material and give it a good analysis, and that includes really understanding its structure, plot points, arcs , themes and being willing be honest about something you love.
The JC team looked at it as a trilogy designed it that way, something ERB wasn’t doing. So taking out the toy box of all three books, scattering them on the table rearranging them into 3 movies and a trilogy arc inevitably lead to John Carter/APOM not being the same shape as the book. I’m surprised to what degree APOM is in the movie, even though it may not appear like it on first glance. A lot of its compressed, but an examination of the text reveals more descriptive passages and mini-essays on child rearing than memory may serve up.
Still, I do miss some of the early John Carter and his Adventures with the Tharks. I think that’s what Favreau was going to do and would have gladly accepted that.
On a critical note it can be said that the middle portion of the book is just one Thark challenge after another. That’s something some people here have been really focused on as something of great interest to them. I think they’re saying that they see it as a series of ‘Challenges’ and ‘Honors’ or something. A sequence of rank building that I’m completely oblivious to ( and could care less about ) but it reveals that people take away slightly different experiences of the book.Long before the movie came out some people would go on and on about APOM as naked bloodbath, ‘John Carter and the Dangling Participle of Mars !’ I didn’t read it way either.
For me Stanton’s take on it wonderful and frustrating. I find parts of the to be of such a high standard of excellence that I’m delirious , and others only elicit a WTF ? response out of me. I really like the movie, and I really want to see the next two. I think a trilogy as whole would be amazing. Treating it as a trilogy up front was probably the best way to go, but it does result in something different than just APOM.
I wrote the below a couple of years ago after long crazy conversations about what APOM ‘should be’. After reading many screenplays I felt there where two challenges 1) I often didn’t care, there was no heart. 2) and the story structure itself. Every screenplay pulled Zodanga forward into the story. As I was rewriting a novel at the time my head was all about Structure. This led me to open up APOM with a critical eye and think back to my first and subsequent readings of what is one of my all Favorite Ever books. The screenplays were drawing my attention to the part of the book I didn’t care about – Zodanga. So being a smart ass , and realizing that I had to shake this thing out of my brain or I’d never get over it I had to write down what 14 year Jeff had thought the book was going to be. I still see this as more or less the trajectory ERB was indicating in the text despite an early mention of Zodanga. Not that he meant too, it’s just the way it came out. – Jeff (the heretic ) http://www.barsoomia.org
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Why adapting A Princess of Mars to the screen has always been hard. Or ‘Jeff commits heresy.’
I’ve read a couple of good APOM screenplays, but most that just lay there on the page. I’ve always been fascinated with story structure, and since I’m obsessed with APOM I’ve certainly being eyeing it under that light for a long time. I think the movie, by thinking in terms if a trilogy tries to come to terms with this. It’s both a strength and a weakness on screen. If we see two more movies John Carter will probably look ‘more brilliant’ from that vantage.
As for the book, I’ve had the feeling that ERB set out to ( or was in the process of, regardless of his plans ) writing a somewhat different book. Given the pulp patterns of the era, he may have been planning, or just accepted, the idea of Zodanga when it occurred to him. It would have been yet another new and exciting environment and challenge.
As a first time reader (14 years old ) I was deeply enthralled pretty much until ‘ the road to Zodandga’. If there hadn’t had been Gods of Mars, I don’t know that I’d be as big fan of Princess. It may well have been that book with the cool Tharks that I liked the first half of but not so much second part.
Princess’ is basically Planet of the Tharks for about 65% and then it just goes off of its own trajectory. My theory is that if he had stayed on his initial path it could have looked something like this –
John Carter, Dejah and Sola flee the Tharks but are captured by the Warhoons. John Carter still gets a chance to be a hero and slaughter tons of Warhoons but eventually he is overcome. They’re separated and John Carter is sent to the arena. Dejah and Sola are the prisoners of the Warhoon Jeddak.
In the arena John Carter meets Kantos Kan and with the other prisoners go all Spartacus and escape. They then turn their attention towards rescuing Deja and Sola but soon learn they don’t have the forces to breach the palace where they are held captive.
John Carter decides that they need a bigger army and he returns to the Tharks to enlist their aid since the Tharks some Warhoons are enemies. Carter probably has to kill somebody to make this work. They defeat the Warhoons and the victorious army would travel to Helium where John Carter would be doused in the the standard ERB style accolades.
There, that’s the first time I’ve put those those thoughts into any kind of written coherence. Sort of. I’m not saying its better, but I think it’s more in keeping with what was happening in the text. And I think it shows why adaptations have always had trouble, because APOM is an odd duck structurally.
Discuss, rant or send murderous responses below. -Jeff
Someone previously stated that they thought that the voice of barsoom drink was a nice touch because it condensed yada yada, no one wants to sit around as Carter learns about Barsoom.
And here I thought it was one of the most awful changes
made to the story.
Forgetting for a moment the illogical concept of the drink (how did the first Green Martian learn about it?) Using it robbed us of learning all about Thark culture AND of watching Carter gradually introducing his ‘Virginian ways’ to the Tharks.
In APOM, Carter wins a couple of Throats and begins treating them like much-loved horses (the Virginian way). The Tharks treated their ghosts like necessary evils and are shocked to see Carter’s responding to voice commands. Quickly realizing the value of z cooperative throat in battle, the other Tharks begin copying Carter and end up with the fiercest, most capable cavalry on Barsoom as a result.
Not only does this play into their ability to deal with Zodanga effectively (if they could have taken Zodanga before they would have), but it is also metaphor and foreshadowing of everything Carter does on/to Barsoom.
Related but different. I’m sick to death of hearing that this, that or the other “couldn’t be translated to film”. What utter nonsense. ANYTHING can be translated to film – haven’t we been seeing that for the past ten+ years?
If Stanton et al had considered the previous to be important (that they didn’t is another reveal of their misunderstanding of the story) they had the tools at their disposal to make it work. scenes with Sola would have been the perfect opportunity to learn nearly everything about Barsoom that the audience needed to learn, and having them do so along with Carter, would, I believe, have been a very powerful way to make the audience care and get them involved. Language lesson – no – but cut scenes or even montage could have easily handled that. And it could have introduced some humor as well – having Carter use the wrong word to try and command Wools for example.
Why hasn’t anyone mentioned the awfulness of the walking city of Zodanga? Where did that ‘thing’ come from? Did Stanton like Wild Wild West SOOO very much that he just had to have his own steam-powered mechanical giant spider? Ug. It’s the perfect example of the director’s hubris. Totally u necessary to the plot, no basis in the story at all, logically stupid (resources drying up – so you build a resource hog), visually – been there, done that.
Henreid, I don’t want this to turn into an Avatar discussion, but no – what’s Tarantino does is normal and customary for literature as much as for film. Cameron tho has LOST his case with Ellison (thus the enforced credit placed in later versions of the film) was quoted as absconding with Outer Limits material and subsequent suits reveal a continuing pattern. It’s on the books. Question all you want, but its on the books.
I wrote:
“Because THE AVENGERS was the sixth movie in a series following THE INCREDIBLE HULK, IRON MAN, IRON MAN 2 and CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER. Each one introduced its character (IM2 introduced Black Widow) and worked as a two hour trailer for the next movie in the Marvel series. It’s not rocket science.”
Forgot to add THOR.
MCR wrote:
“The problem isn’t that Burroughs or Bradbury wrote stories that children would enjoy, it’s Mark Andrews’ arrogant dismissal of the Barsoom book as nothing more than books written for children. You don’t see the negative connotation that creates?”
What you fail to grasp is that it doesn’t matter if Stanton, Andrews and Chabon are collectively dismissive of Burroughs’ work, if they think the books don’t hold up after hundred years, or if they outright dislike them. It makes zero difference. Zip. Nada.
The job isn’t and never was about being Field Marshal of the Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Happy Worldwide Marching Society and loving him more than anyone ever has ever. It’s about writing.
Swamp Thing was created for comics by Len Wein in 1971. In 1984 a British writer named Alan Moore took over as writer of the book. When initially offered the job, he’d demurred saying he didn’t think it a very promising premise –Swamp Thing was basically “Hamlet covered in snot.” Hmmm. Does that sound like he was a fan of the book?
Moore agreed to take over Swamp Thing anyway –and transformed it into one of the greatest comics of the 1980s, and among the smartest most imaginative horror comics of all time. He couldn’t have done a lick of that if he were a slavish fan to the material. Thirty years later Moore’s take on the character remains definitive, the one all others are judged against.
Nobody loved Moore’s writing more than Len Wein. He demanded to see Alan Moore’s scripts as soon as possible. In fact, he was the one who picked him for the job in the first place.
Warren Ellis and Garth Ennis are two more British comics writers. They both hate the superhero genre. You know what happens when they each write in it though? They think about them in sharply original ways and write great comics.
“Plus you want to explain how The Avengers-notably with such non anti-heroes like Captain America, Thor and Iron Man-was the biggest film of the year? Clearly they didn’t need someone whining about a cave of gold or pushing women off their rides or doing stupid things like throwing away medallions to get an audience and critical acclaim. Any thoughts on that?”
Because THE AVENGERS was the sixth movie in a series following THE INCREDIBLE HULK, IRON MAN, IRON MAN 2 and CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER. Each one introduced its character (IM2 introduced Black Widow) and worked as a two hour trailer for the next movie in the Marvel series. It’s not rocket science.
I think I fall into the camp of . . . . I would be okay with either. I think that most of the things that threw me off with the origins story are well taken care of by the end of the movie, and the John Carter who is on his way back to Barsoom is just fine with me. . . . .
All our yakking about it, and the fan group on Facebook, and the continued work of ERB Inc, might yield something unexpected — an animated series, an HBO/Showtime series, who knows.
And Disney is now rebooting Rocketeer which is getting a reboot after a $46M domestic total in 1991……..and it didn’t have the kind of organized push JC is getting…..
We still live!
Michael:
I enjoyed reading your thoughts about the “Voice of Barsoom.” You are right that a montage certainly could have been done, and it might have added more depth of knowledge about Thark culture to the film, made John Carter’s “we ride to Zodanga” scene more credible, etc. Compared to my negative comments about Stanton’s other choices, the voice of Barsoom is just something I can live with, I guess.
Shifting gears, here are my comments on another discussion in this thread: Stanton sequels vs. a total re-boot of John Carter.
Despite my negative comments earlier about Stanton’s film, I would gladly deal with shape shifting Therns, Blue Ray weapons and the rest to see ANY film version of The Gods of Wars and The Warlord of Mars on the big screen. Imagine JC and Tars Tarkas battling Plant Men, Carter meeting Carthoris for the first time, and all the other great Burroughs scenes on film! Would all the things we want to see be there in the Stanton sequels? Of course not! But I would rather be disappointed in certain aspects of his films upon seeing them than never see them at all.
I, obviously, would have no problem with a re-boot of John Carter either. I like the outline Michael presented as a good starting point. Make competing versions for all I care – just get one or more produced and released!
Unfortunately, reality tells me that neither scenario will ever happen. Despite Michael’s rational chapter in his book about cutting the budget, working with foreign markets to help with the cost, etc. to make it happen, I don’t see it coming to pass.
I hope I am dead wrong on this, but I don’t see a re-boot of a “failed” movie being any more likely than Disney continuing its “failed” version. ERB’s legacy deserves better and those that support Stanton’s film can argue that he deserved more marketing support, too. We can dream, though!
Brad Askew
Hi Sparky, thanks for joining the fray . . . .
As preamble — I’m finding myself on the “ERB side” of most of this so I have to start making sure that people know I’m not ragging on Stanton ….. but I do think “sufficient time has passed” (whatever that means — nobody died or anything) for me to state why I prefer some aspects of the original even while I enjoy and appreciate Stanton’s film ….
So with that as preamble … you say you think the Thern Medallion works great — a great MacGuffin …. allow me to differ. Here’s why.
The thern medaillion is, other than the change to Carter’s character, the single most significant change that made it “feel” different from the original. Why? Because in the original, John Carter’s arrival on Mars is a spiritual thing and he knows he’s there for a reason — it’s his destiny. He thinks he died on Earth…he isn’t sure if this is the afterlife or what . . . there is no way back to Earth.
Because of this, he views Barsoom as where he is meant to be. The feeling is much like Dunbar in Dances With Wolves, or Sully in Avatar — Carter doesn’t want to go back to Earth, he wants to make his way in his new world. That is such a HUGE part of the appeal — and the Thern medallion changes that completely. Instead of being drawn to his place of destiny, Carter is snatched, kidnapped, exiled to a place he doesn’t want to be — a prisoner in a place that is keeping him from his destiny which in his view for most of the movie is on Earth, with his cave of gold. He is more like Taylor in Planet of the Apes than either Dunbar or Sully, both of whom are more like the Carter from the books.
The Thern medallion as a MacGuffin is a kind of mixed metaphor … it’s mixing a relic hunter motif into a story that previously had never had such. I ain’t sayin’ I hate it …. but if there was only one thing I could change, it would probably be that — lose the Thern medallion or at least structure it so that Carter goes to Mars thinking it’s happened mystically and there is no return and he’s supposed to be there. The fact that it was technology that did it could be revealed later, and that technology could whisk him back to Earth just like it does now. But I wish Carter getting to Mars wasn’t a kidnapping…..I would rather it at least seem (until technology is revealed) mysterious and purposeful.
Daniel … thanks for throwing some red meat my way. I”ll try not to roar too much like a banth as I attempt to chomp on it!
Well …. first of all it’s a period movie so there’s that …meaning it’s a more elegant age, yep, and a character more in synch with that could be argued. But I won’t even go there other than to say ….. thats part of the intrigue — it’s positively Arthurian, I agree. It’s Cosmic Knight Errantry ……so now…..Movies about things like that still get made all the time — Gladiator comes to mind, Braveheart, Arthur, Troy . . . .Of all those only Achilles in Troy gets kind of “mopey” to use MCR’s dreaded word — but that’s BECAUSE Achilles in the Iliad is mopey or at least petulant. Anyway, you’ve just caused a little light bulb to fo off in my mind. When we first meet John Carter in the frame story, which is after he finished his first journey to Barsoom of course, he is the John Carter we were expecting — I’m speaking of the guy in the New York Telegraph office and the guy ERB greets …..but then when we see him in Arizona, the decision was to have him really be completely broken by the loss of his wife and be unkempt,cranky, etc. I wish that Stanton had decided to leave him with a little bit of his Virginia gentleman charm in those early scenes…..perhaps a tiny moment of chivalry (in the bar scene it would have been easy to manufacture something) …. so that se see those Virginian roots which, to Burroughs, made him sort of knightlike…..He could have still had a layer of agony over his lost family — just not wearing it so much on his sleeve. Ah well…just dreamin’. Not hating it the way it is, just thinking about alternatives that could have worked better.
With utmost respect …. you’re conflating Dejah in subsequent books (where Burroughs runs out of ways to make her relevant and yes, she gets kidnapped a lot) and Dejah in APOM. In APOM she is NO shrinking violet …. She a) leads scientific expedition into hostile territory, b) stands up and confronts Tal Hajus with a brave speech that would bring chills if someone would do it, c) grabs a knife and attacks Sarkoja when Sarkoja attempts to blind JC with a mirror when he is fighting a Thark warrior, and d) bravely is willing to sacrifice herself for her people by marrying Sab Than, even going to far as to feel she must do it AFTER she discovers that Carter didn’t die at the hands of the Warhoons, and is still alive. Remember that Dejah in the movie a) runs away from Tal Hajus and is unwilling to marry him even though her father demands it and Helium needs it, and b) she really manipulates Carter a ton …. she knew all along how to get him back to earth (after the Gates of Iss) but withheld the information. I don’t dislike the Dejah of the movie … I think Lynn Collins was great and the character was fine with one or two writing exceptions noted. But no one will ever convince me that the character of Dejah as presented specifically in APOM was in such need of a makeover. Sorry … not buying that one. (And for ALL the details see In Defense of Dejah Thoris, my long treatise on this which I wrote when this came up a hundred times previously!
http://thejohncarterfiles.com/2012/04/john-carter-unsheathing-a-sword-in-defense-of-dejah-thoris/
Michael:
I enjoyed reading your thoughts about the “Voice of Barsoom.” You are right that a montage certainly could have been done, and it might have added more depth of knowledge about Thark culture to the film, made John Carter’s “we ride to Zodanga” scene more credible, etc. Compared to my negative comments about Stanton’s other choices, the voice of Barsoom is just something I can live with, I guess.
Switching gears, here are my comments on a different topic being discussed: Stanton sequels vs. a total re-boot of John Carter.
Despite my negative comments before about his film, I would have no problem with seeing Stanton’s sequels. I would deal with shape shifting Therns, Blue Ray weapons, and the rest to see ANY version of The Gods of Mars on the big screen. Imagine JC and Tars Tarkas battling Plant Men, JC meeting Carthoris, and all the other great scenes from Gods of Mars and Warlord of Mars! Would all the things we want to see be there? Of course not. But I would rather see those films and be disappointed in certain things than never see them at all.
I, of course, would have no problem with a re-boot either. Make competing versions for all I care – just get one or more done!
Unfortunately, my sense of reality tells me than neither scenario will EVER happen.
Despite Michael’s rational chapter in his book about how cutting the budget, working with the foreign markets to help fund it, etc. could make it work, I can’t see it coming to pass.
I hope I am so wrong, but I don’t see a re-boot of a “failed” movie being any more likely than Disney continuing their own “failed” version. ERB’s legacy deserves better, and those that support Stanton could argue he deserved more marketing support from Disney, etc. We can all dream, folks, but I think that is our unfortunate reality.
Brad Askew
The bizarre grammar and serial typos in Mark Andrews’ petulant response on his official blog seems telling, and his overboard reaction does reveal the general arrogance practiced by the screenwriting team. He calms down by the end but his open hostility to the text (not to mention profound misread of it) obscures what almost approached a coherent point being made about adaptations. I’m especially amused by how he singles out ‘moments with farmers’ as something wrong with the novel.
The approval of estates always sounds good, but it’s not like the integrity of the work is the only concern of rights-holders. Even that abominable (but lucrative) ‘The Lorax’ had the approval of Geisel’s family.
Of course he meant ‘written for children’ as demeaning, the whole tone of his response comes off that way. The most surreal part of the exchange is that he fervently claims no Disney-fication as if he missed all the passages describing bloodsoaked gore and the perpetual nudity he mentioned only moments before.
MCR is right on target about this one.
Steve –
Opinions of Avatar aside… Is Tarantino also a thief unworthy even of discussion because his films mine the history of grindhouse cinema? QT mixes and matches the ideas and elements of other artists like a DJ, shot through with his own passions and insights. What Cameron has done is more archetypal, but similar enough – and there’s a ton of originality in the mix as well.
No, he is not a known thief. He is known to have been sued a few times with questionable veracity and successfully defended himself. Even the Ellison suit regarding ‘The Terminator’ has major holes. He’s very open about having been inspired by ‘every science-fiction book I’ve ever read’ and names specific examples. I recommend at least scanning through this 45-page court document citing the inspirations and origins of Avatar in past works throughout his entire life.
http://www.businessinsider.com/document/50ca408c69beddc13400000c/james%20cameron%27s%20sworn%20declaration%20to%20the%20avatar%20idea.pdf
I think most of the changes worked; Here’s what I think did and didn’t. I’m up on 75 plus viewings of the film.
Worked
1. Making John Carter more human (and not finding out being a telegram of himself is why he is now near immortal) …
2. The Voice of Barsoom replacing the on and off again telepathy.
3. Giving Carter a better enemy than a some blood crazed war chief in the Therns.
4. The Tharks.
5. The Medallion – a fantastic macguffin!
6. Woola!
Didn’t Work
1. Arizona – should have shown as a blur – we don’t need much of his backstory. It slowed the film which isn’t a Western or antebellum tale of a lost Rebel soldier …
2. Not anchoring John Carter with ‘Ned’ – those cut scenes make a better film. They establish John Carter as a insanely wealthy man.
3. We know John Carter was on Barsoom for a long period of time, it was not made clear save for Powell’s bones. We needed to see Virginia bond with the Thark warriors.
All in all, this can be addressed with a director’s cut edition of the Film.
—————
And MCR? Some of us were friends with Jack Kirby. I have dinner once a month with one of the lawyers that represent his estate.
_________
OK let’s back up a bit here. How many normal moviegoers knew who Iron Man was before 2008? Thor? Even Cap had been out of the public eye for a long time so no that was not the reason for their individual films or The Avengers succeeding.
As for making Carter a more “dimensional” character I didn’t realize that unlikable whiner was a way to add dimension. This constant Pro-Stanton excuse (and let’s be honest, it was Stanton who decided to go in this path with his Moping Jerk Carter) just doens’t cut it. The box office shows that. The poor reviews showed it. The lack of word of mouth showed it. Audiences didn’t want a whiny anti-hero with John Carter. So adding this “dimension” didn’t work to make him more modern or accessible.
Regarding the Avengers, it made a billion dollars mainly because the characters have been in the public eye every month since 1960s and with Captain America since the 1940′s non stop. The Q factor on those characters was much higher than John Carter. With the books going in and out of print so often ERB works have faded out of the public’s short attention span. Marvel has had a constant media presence for over 50 years with their characters via film, TV and publishing. Its like apples and white apes to compare. Yes reading the books as an adult you do get the feeling that there never is a threat to Carter. Much like a Hulk Hogan wrasslin match, you know the outcome ahead of time. Not that its not enjoyable but a more dimensional character is more interesting. My 78 year old mother with no knowledge saw the movie first and then went and bought all the books and enjoyed them equally. There is room for both versions if you have an open mind..