"Preview stills from John Carter" Topic

link

Including a neat image of one of the fliers.

'based on the original comic books' huh?

I hope his attention to detail on the movie is better than to the source material.

Well, I never pictured the flyers looking like that but the rest seems close enough. Of course we'd like to see even less clothing on the actors (male and female) but let's keep our expectations realistic.

TheDreadnought: 'based on the original comic books' huh?

I think we can credit that gaffe to the copy writer.

Director Andrew Stanton's actual quotes are: "I stumbled across these books …" and most tellingly "Because the subject matter was written so long ago, it was also a bit of an origin of those kinds of stories: a comic book before there were comic books, an adventure story before that became a genre of its own.'

It's clear he's talking about the original Burroughs prose novels, not the later comic book adaptions.

Thanks for the link. I am more hopeful now than I ever was.

If that's Woola in the one still, I think we can safely assume attention to detail is out the window. Calots (at least the breed favored by Green Martians) have ten legs, and they're the size of a Shetland pony. Odd take on the tusks on that Thark, too.

I suppose it's too late to email the sfx company links to Bronze Age Miniatures' site? :)

I am sure that's supposed to be Woola. Who, IIRC, was described as being hideously ugly by ERB. With ten legs, etc.

That Woola is supposed to be cute I guess…

Here is the discussion on these stills from the TMP Plus Movie Board:

TMP link

the girl appears to be a bit chilly

I tried to re-read the books at the beginning of the year, having first read them long ago. The story is good, but my lawd the novel's prose style is god awful. Had to stop, it was pretty dire. Guess the years had dimmed my memory of the writing style.

Nah, I just think we've been spoiled by newer writers lately.

I know from one of the earlier threads that they ended up making the Tharks much smaller than they were in the books (9feet tall in movie versus 12 feet tall in books). JC versus a 12-foot tall Thark looks like an adult getting beaten on by a toddler!

TheDreadnought: 'based on the original comic books' huh?

Comic book movies (and young adult books) are hot properties in Hollyweird right now as they get paying butts in seats.

John wears less clothes than Dejah. Surely that is wrong on so many levels!

It's the lead actors that bother me the most. That guy just isn't John Carter, and although it's generally poor form to assess actors' merits based on their looks, Dejah Thoris' great beauty is one of her defining characteristics. Lynn Collins may be a fine actress (I don't know) but she's a long way from "incomparable". Never mind the fact that her character has apparently been turned into Xena.

Never mind the fact that her character has apparently been turned into Xena.

Other times, other views: 'heroines' who scream and have to be rescued are more and replaced with 'female heroes'. Not a bad thing: I did not catch on the 'Legend of the Seeker' TV series, but the two warrior women were for me the only redeeming features of the program. Seemingly the next 'Snow White' will have the heroine contributing more actively than cleaning the dwarfs' burrow: YouTube link ? A positive change from the syrupy candy of WD. As for Dejah Thoris, the comic 'Warlords of Mars: Dejah Thoris' presents her as a warrior princess:

Other times, other views: 'heroines' who scream and have to be rescued are more and replaced with 'female heroes'.

Yes, that's true of modern storytelling (though I would disagree with the suggestion that ERB's heroines are helpless screamers). But why impose it on older stories?

The makers of this movie have chosen to film a classic adventure story from another time. Of course, they can't *actually* film that classic adventure story, because it doesn't sit well with current story and character trends (for example, that "strong female character" has come to mean "warrior woman"; the message being that we can only respect a woman if she demonstrates the ability to beat up a man).

So instead, they keep the names and some of the visuals from the classic tale, hollow out the heart and soul of the story and replace it with a generic modern action movie.

Or maybe I'm jumping to conclusions.

John wears less clothes than Dejah. Surely that is wrong on so many levels!

Quoted for truth!

And I'm not sure I like their image of flying ships:

Too much 'airplane,' not enough 'ship'

Most of the 'canonical' visualization of Barsoom came, not from Edgar Rice Burroughs' texts -barely descriptive and leaving a lot to the imagination of the reader- but from the successive illustrators.
Burroughs himself, seemingly, was not a 'visual', did not visualized what he was writing: otherwise he would have realized that John Carter fencing against a 12' high Green Martian would have to jump ridiculously (like Yoda when fighting Palatine: looks like a body crab tortured by haemorrhoids ).

In addition Burroughs was not a champion of self-consistency: several features of first descriptions disappear from later ones. Not read the books for long (clumsy, 'heavy' style: in the genre, Akers' series of Dray Prescott on Kregen under the suns of Scorpio is far more enjoyable to read) but from memory:
- the Red Martians initially wear feathered costume, Meso-American fashion,
- the green Martians are able to run an all four (well on four out of six, looking like 'gorilla centaurs': a gorilla torso over the shoulders of a gorilla),
- the range of the radium rifles is theoretically infinite, in practice limited only by the horizon:
and certainly many other examples I don't remember.

As for abiding to current fashion / political correctness or whatever… what is essential is to respect the texts when re-printing them (are the Sherlock Holmes stories censored in 'young' editions because he smokes and uses cocaine? Hopefully no, but….). Old texts often reflect a worldview deemed different from the (officially!) mainstream / consensual current one, e.g. are suspected of 'racism' (Poe, Verne if you search for it, Lovecraft, Jean Ray) with grotesque results, such as 'Tintin au Congo' labelled '18+' like porn because Hergé used the same dark brown for the skin of the Africans and the fur of the chimps

But while the texts have to be perfectly respected when re-printed, when a movie is derived from them it's another matter. The movie is supposed to be entertaining for the current audience, NOT an academic study of pre-WWI prejudices.
But there are limits: I'm far less shocked by the 'liberties' taken with Dumas' text in the recent '3 Musketeers 3D' with a ninja Milady de Winter and flying ships -cosmetic additions- than by the Disney version where the storyline and characters were totally changed (Richelieu associated with Buckingham, trying to assassinate Louis XIII and eventually knocked out and probably drown in a sewer by the King!!!!).

And I'm not sure I like their image of flying ships:

I agree. I've always pictured them as more like Jabba's sail barge in nature.

They need low sides and open decks, or the story has to change dramatically.

Yeah, hard to buckle much swash when there's an overhead in the way!

Related thread:
TMP link

What we will NOT see in the movie is the face of John Carter when a sensitive part of his anatomy meets Dejah Thoris' eggshell laying apparatus

Biology is routinely far more abused in Science Fiction (even so-called 'Hard Science' one) than physics, but barely more on Barsoom than in many, many other places.
If to 'explain' how two species having evolved on different planets can be so similar -sharing extreme peculiarities such as the crossing of the digestive and respiratory tracks, the lower jaw evolved from embryonic gills arches- similar enough at molecular level to breed true… you 'hypothesize' that 'someone' (Great Cthulhu, or Wells' jellyfish-like Martians) carried living specimens from Earth (where we have a full paleontological record) to 'elsewhere', in the case of Barsoom it remains that as an egg-laying mammal (nobody will deny Dejah Thoris a mammal nature), the closest parent of the Red Martians on Earth is the platypus

Trailer:
YouTube link
YouTube link
Seem to largely copy the 'Star War' aesthetics, with elements from 'Avatar'?

Not unrelated TMP threads:
TMP link
TMP link

Well, Avatar-relations are going to be expected, since the smurfcats are roughly the size of Tharks. Besides, the motion-capture technology is going to get heavily used as soon as someone realizes that it can be done (look at how much motion-control stuff happened since Star Wars).

'I would disagree with the suggestion that ERB's heroines are helpless screamers'

It's true, Dejah only takes the whole of books 2 & 3 to rescue because the bad guys are really mean & persistent. She's no pansy.

Why aren't the red martians red?

Not that I'm anal about the canon, I mean the books are schlock, I mean who reads them except anoraks like us gamers & the sci-fi nerds? ERB makes John Norman look like a literary genius & master crafter of plots… & that's faint praise

link

New trailer…

Hope they've covered the lesser gravity's effect on the boobies accurately.

Actually the boobies *themselves* are covered, so any gravity effect will be imperceptible

They won't necessarily stay covered, cert unconfirmed. (That said guess Disney want to sell Barsoom toys so guess it will be PG)

is it me? the flyer reminds me of a Ju188.

I'm guessing the Thark tusks are based on premise if they had them in mouthes articulate speech would be out…

guess Disney want to sell Barsoom toys so guess it will be PG

For sure!
Then one can still hope for unlicensed, but licentious,new minis from Tin Man and Bronze Age, would the movie be a blockbuster.

Funnily enough, would not it be for American allergy to feminine breasts(*), the 'total frontal nudity' of Red Martians required by Burroughs' texts could be far less… problematic than expected / suspected. Red Martians are egg-laying Mammals (Prototheria) and we know of such beings: our platypus and echidna. These are called 'Monotremes' (Greek for 'single hole' en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotreme) because of their cloaca. The 'intermediate' position of such would render it invisible in 'frontal nudity', and as for males their reproductive apparatus is retracted and hidden 'inside' when not in use (as for those other egg-laying higher vertebrates, birds and most of reptiles).
Meaning that totally nude Red Martians would appear as sexless as Barbie and Ken dolls – biology can be amusing, sometimes
This… less obtrusive morphology would explain why Red Martians don't share our… prejudices regarding this peculiar area.

Of course this would not prevent children from asking questions -children are by nature curious, less prejudiced than many adults, and know perfectly at least how *themselves* are built. Thus many little girls would ask: 'Mummy, why Dejah Thoris have no….. like me ?'. But the question would not be really embarrassing, the obvious answer being: 'But, darling, she is a MARTIAN!'.

-----
*: when Delacroix' La Liberté guidant le peuple link made a world tour, a reproduction of her bust was painted on the specially chartered plane. This 'half topless' Liberty had to be censored for the plane to be allowed to land in *two* countries: the USA and an Islamic country (don't remember if it was Saudi Arabia or some oil Emirate)