In the early 1930s, a young animator named Bob Clampett — later of Beany And Cecil and Looney Tunes fame — approached Burroughs with the idea for a series of cartoons based on the John Carter stories. Burroughs felt that the success of Tarzan overshadowed many of his other characters, and he was wildly enthusiastic about a John Carter film series. He also believed that animation was the only way to capture the fantastic Martian world.
Clampett was an innovative artist, and he worked closely with Burrough’s son John Coleman to develop the storyline and characters for the first project. Clampett and the younger Burroughs often worked late into the night and on weekends to put the film together. They used rotoscoping techniques and applied a unique color scheme to achieve a look that was completely different from other animation.
“We would oil paint the side shadowing frame-by-frame in an attempt to get away from the typical outlining that took place in normal animated films… We were working in untested territory at that time. There was no animated film to look at to see how it was done,” Clampett explained.
After nearly five years of labor, the finished product was ready in 1936. Clampett and Burroughs showed their film to MGM executives, who were excited about it until the studio’s sales department convinced them that the cartoon would be a tough sell. MGM went on to make a Tarzan cartoon series, and the idea of a John Carter film would languish for decades.
Fifty years later, Disney purchased the rights to Burroughs’ series and tapped Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna of Carolco Pictures to produce a film. Carolco was a hot commodity at the time, fresh off the successes of the Rambo films and Terminator 2. Screenwriter Charles Pogue took a swing at a draft, and a year later Terry Black polished the script, claiming that Disney wanted the film “to be the next Star Wars.”
Looks like they’ve changed the tone and plot of the book(s) quite a bit. Carter is not my vision of him and Dejah Thoris doesn’t look “incomparable”; I can only hope she’s not “Xena” in this film. People always want to adapt Burroughs cuz it’s so good but then falter and don’t trust the original source novels, change it, and in doing so lose it.
After a century and many films we still have yet to see Burroughs vision of Tarzan, who spoke many languages, was legally married and lived on a ranch. La of Opar and her lost city would be awesome but for some reason it is the original novel that has been lost to film. If one likes the original material so much, have the courage to present it instead of thinking one can out think and outdo Burroughs or Robert E. Howard for that matter.
If the art direction had relied on a combination of the subdued pragmatism of the Ballantine Paperbacks art with Roy Krenkel’s wonderful artistry on the Ace PB covers and also dragged in Reed Crandall, Frazetta and J.Allen St. John, they stood a chance of introducing a weird, distinctive and arcane design.
If one has the money and time it is always tempting to over design a film (I give you “Gangs of New York”). My vision of Carter is of a tall, dark man with features at once amiable and grim and not someone who looks like he’s at the helm of Burroughs 2.0 MTV-style.
At one time, perhaps around 1970, the first three novels were considered as good a trilogy as that odd genre had produced. The 3rd novel “Warlord of Mars,” unfolds with breakneck pacing and some of the fighting scenes towards the end are pretty heady for a 14 year old.
Though this will probably be the best Burroughs adaptation ever made, it still looks likely to disappoint as I can’t see the man whose “features were regular and clear cut, his hair black and closely cropped, while his eyes were of a steel gray, reflecting a strong and loyal character, filled with fire and initiative.” A Heath Ledger look-alike is not Carter.
The succession of writers speaks to the difficulty of adapting Carter but also to the temptation to give in to fixing what isn’t broken.
Fidelity to the source is almost always a good idea. Wardrobe department, take particular note: taking any liberties with Dejah Thoris’s costume would be an insult to the creative arts, adaptational fidelity, the memory of E.R. Burroughs, and the American way. Whatever people say, you hang onto that for grim life, and damn the consequences!
…to say nothing about the fantasies of legions of adolescent boy’s dreams of dejah thoris clad only in a few strategically jewels and wisps of silk. ah, memories.
Like climate change?
From what I can tell for the trailer they have extended the idea of Mars dying atmosphere depicted at the end of the original novel backwards into the plot and made it a centerpiece of the film.
The Conservative and very white and therefore evil Holy Therns have a symbiotic relationship with the black carbon pirates who are black because they burn coal just to be evil and extort carbon credit from the red men of Mars. Those Non-Methane Volatile Organic Compound red men from the aptly named nation of Helium fight back by finding a special anti-ozone depleting substance lost in the old abandoned cities now occupied by 18-armed, 15 ft tall green men with tusks and no sense of humor or clothes.
A blockbuster for sure.
“For Dejah Thoris and Helium compounds!!!!”
Can’t wait for the sequel, “Climate Czar of Mars.”
It is changed because the contemporary view of men, society, and man’s place in the world have changed very much. I would imagine most hollywood types find the original very offensive; independant, stong willed white man conquers all before him.
I grew up on that stuff….Howard and Burroughs…..
As opposed to Queen Latifah, Eddie Murphy and Whoopi Goldberg funkifying nuns, detectives and opening the eyes of white people to “real” whatever. That’s perfectly fine.
Sounds very interesting!
I have to admit, those are the images I have held in my memory of Burrough’s John Carter books since I was a child. The Hurtling Moons of Barsoom…
Walt may be spinning in his grave, though. It’s a long journey from Steamboat Willie to John Carter for Disney.
Still, it looks like a treat for us old F&SF fans.
They should have left the title. They should have kept Dejah Thoris’s six limbs. They need something unique in this day and age.
Not to worry; Dejah Thoris, being a red Martian, didn’t have six limbs! Only the green Martian species had those; all the other colors were conventional humanoids. Oviparous, though; wonder if they’ll change that.
I can’t help but look forward to this, but I think they should have gone back to the firstest first title of all, “Under the Moons of Mars.” That would have worked. Hope it’ll be good…
Deja Thoris had 6 limbs? What book were you reading? And what medication were you on?
She did lay eggs.
I love the Barsoom series; it is what got me started as a serious reader.
I think this movie is beyond doomed, particularly from what the trailers are showing. It has:
1. A white
2. Confederate (slave owner)
3. Militia commander
4. Who clings to his (radium) pistol and sword
5. Trying to save the (newer) world
6. And its native (Red Men) population
7. From an ecological catastrophe
While the last set were sort of done with Dances With Wolves and the Dances With Cat-Smurfs ripoff, it is those other elements that will kill it among the hard left crowd, while if they try playing it up as if the lost White Men of Mars were responsible for ecological collapse they will lose any possible support from the conservative spectrum, leaving the whole thing to depend on being a 18-34 action flick, which those trailers show little sign of it being able to produce.
Add in the budget for this thing and it is on a track to make Heaven’s Gate look like blockbuster.
I regret that I’ve already seen some movie “experts” pooh-poohing this as too much like Prince of Persia. Never bothered to see that one, but as an old pulp fan, will definitely be looking for this one.
PS – Is it true? Was the first season med student in ER based on the Burrough’s character? j/k
not very authentic, especially the mode of dress of the actors
And of course the real John Carter wouldn’t be seen dead with long hair, clean shaven face, and early 21st century mannerisms.
Special effects and music look nice though, might be enough to get me to a movie theater for the first time in over a decade.
I loved the John Carter books when I read them many years ago, and I want this movie to be good.
But the trailer makes me think “Dune”; a movie that was widely anticipated, had all the backing in the world, and ultimately fell flat from its own weight. I hope John Carter isn’t this decade’s “Dune”.
Dune had the disadvantage of being a big complicated book. There was a lot there that never made it to the big screen (that error was fixed to a certain degree with the mini-series), and those missing parts were the ones that made the story work.
The Mars books don’t have that problem. They are simple straight forward stories that can be easily told without a lot of nuance. The only way to ruin them is to try to force feed some lame agenda into the narrative.
we can devoutly hope, i had doubts about the first “conan” movie, but speaking with the late l. sprague decamp, then the executor of howard’s literary estate, he assured me that he had kept close watch on dino delaurentis, and allowed no liberties to be taken, and arnold schwarznegger was perfect as a hulking, inarticulate barbarian from the northern wastelands of hyperboria. perhaps we’ll get lucky again.
I dunno about that – Conan’s image suffered horribly from pastiches, some of which were even written by de Camp, and share very little with the Conan of Howard.
Conan was not particularly inarticulate, just direct. He was actually exceptionally bright and something of a scholar. It was the pastiches (especially the comics) that turned him into an inarticulate simple minded fool.
And having read a lot of de Camp’s writings about Howard, I think he often put him down (and his work) because he was jealous of Howard’s writing ability and his characters, which largely overshadowed his own. de Camp write some good books, but he’s largely forgotten today. Even in the 80s he wasn’t so popular any more.
So, the ordinary number of limbs and naked (bet Disney changes that!) and if Carter noticed an ovipositor, he didn’t mention it.
And, that’s some double-plus shitty writing there. I had always assumed the people excited by literary “faithfulness” had never read Dracula or Frankenstein, but people here seem to have genuinely suffered through Burroughs.
“Double-plus shitty”? I think you’re going overboard there. Considering the fact that a pathetic slouch like JK Rowling is a billionaire, what the hell is “literature” anyway?
My favorite writer has always been Thomas Hardy. But I recently reread “Under the Greewood Tree” and it was atrocious. I’ve come to think that “a brilliant writer” is whoever we want it to be at the time, before we cast him aside and mock him. We’re not on a quest for great literature; we’re just in a never-ending cycle of putting someone on the throne and then assassinating him.
Suffered? Burroughs was the first truly modern American writer of fantastic literature; the fact that he saw a huge resurgence in the ’60s speaks to that. I actually love the passage you cited and was genuinely moved by much of what Burroughs wrote when I was 14.
And Carter did mention it: “similar in every detail” so she wasn’t a wasp.
I’d be the first to admit that Burroughs could be a lazy writer and the master of the amazing coincidence but he also gave up heaping helpings of creativity in a distinct tone and style never duplicated. Burroughs is a towering figure in American literature whether you like it or not, a mix of the simple minded and the stunningly innovative that some people are always going to be uncomfortable with. So he wasn’t Edith Wharton; I consider that a plus.
And you’d think feminists would love Burroughs’s women since they weren’t politically correct, apologetic versions of men but the real deal; feisty, courageous and no one to mess with. Try telling Dejah Thoris she can’t vote.
ERB never laid claim to literature, quite the opposite. He wrote pulp fiction and proud of it.
John Carter’s saga is even more convoluted–Burroughs lifted big chunks of John Carter from a book called Phra the Phoenician.
I think every author since Herodotus has been accused of lifting their story ideas from other authors.
Hee! Burroughs was before my time, so my acquaintance with John Carter and Deja Thoris came from Robert Heinlein’s homages.
I’m really looking forward to this movie. Loved the Mars books when I was a kid.
And, I sincerely hope that the movie is true to the book, and shows Dejah Thoris’ perfect body in all it’s incomparable stark naked glory.
It might also be interesting to watch her lay an egg.
I always thought John Carter belonged to me. No one knew who he was, no one understood Barsoom or Burroughs or who Tarzan really was. It’s alittle frightening and wonderful to see that I am not alone on Barsoom.
13. Mark Andreasen
I always thought John Carter belonged to me. No one knew who he was, no one understood Barsoom or Burroughs or who Tarzan really was. It’s alittle frightening and wonderful to see that I am not alone on Barsoom.
KAOR! Or hello as they say on Mars. I too thought that for the longest time. I had never heard of John Carter till I was in my HS library and picked up a copy of “Swords of Mars”. I was hooked and been a big fan of ERB ever since.
I am looking forward to the movie, however, I too have a healthy dose of skeptism. I remember what the movies did to another favorite book, “Starship Troopers”. I didn’t even recognize it.
John Carter’s heroic actions maybe too much for today’s audience. I agree with LaSuthenboy and #5 Sam. What probably will be forgotten in the movie is the chivalry one sees throughout the series. Women were treated with respect and a man’s honor was above all.
Dejah Thoris, being a red Martian, didn’t have six limbs! So she was a Bug! and John Carter knew that when he ahhump became involved with her?
Wow, Mark and Spartan… you young ‘uns! OK, maybe not so much, considering how OLD this series is – I’m 47, and the John Carter series was introduced to me by my *Grandfather* back in the late ’70s, when he was IN his ’70′s… and they were pretty dated by even HIS standards!
My observation of ERB was that he was the Dean Koonz of his day, although I’m not at all sure he was that way because of publisher and contractual pressure like Koonz was. ERB may have simply found a formula that worked and stuck with it, because, well, it made him money. Koonz claims to this day his repetitive plots and themes for so many years were the fault of his publisher who told him “Write more ‘Watcher’”; ERB simply seems to have had a gift for putting what we now call “comic books” into prose. If repetition sold, well, then, it sold.
Nevertheless, these stories were and are AWESOME, if one is willing to suspend some disbelief and just accept a fun tale as a fun tale. And yes, as has been mentioned, his stories HAVE been given a bad showing by Hollywood over the decades – completely ignoring the subtleties he DOES include. I, too, remember the sophistication of Lord Greystoke as deliberate juxtaposition to his persona of Tarzan, and how it was utterly dismissed in the movies/TV shows. This was especially evident in the … what, 2nd or 3rd book… where he was talked into “becoming Tarzan” as a spy for GB during WWI. Awesome stuff!
I will either like this film… or hate it. Can’t tell yet from the previews; I can forgive a lot of my inner imagination of what the production should look like, if they just manage to get the characters right – but can condemn the whole thing even if everything LOOKS correct but they screw up the story and/or characters.
We shall see…
-MJ