Greg Bear and John Carter

As I have been perusing the reviews for John Carter, one thing continues to stand out to me--a lot of the mainstream critics don't get it. They don't get how important a book this was--and thus how important the movie is to the genre. They don't get the time the movie is set in. They don't get how the characters are a function of that time.

It could easily be argued that the movie fails if it doesn't convince the viewer of these things. But it's difficult not to wonder if perhaps the critics are harboring some other biases. And given my general impression of how hypocritically speculative fiction is treated in the mainstream, I'm willing to indulge in that doubt a little bit. And now that I have read what Greg Bear has had to say, I'm willing to indulge it still further. You should check out what he has to say: http://www.gregbear.com/other/johncarter.cfm.

Locus and John Carter

Locus magazine has put two very good reviews of John Carter on their Web site. The first, by Gary Westfahl, says a lot of things that I have said in my own writings, but more elegantly (http://www.locusmag.com/Reviews/2012/03/barsoom-revisited-or-forewarned-four-armed-a-review-of-john-carter/). I found this paragraph to be particularly striking, where Westfahl describes the plot change to make the Therns provide Carter's method of transportation to Mars:

This change is particularly ruinous to the film because the power of Burroughs's original story, after all, lay in the fact that it represented the ultimate in wish fulfillment: you look up at another planet, you transport yourself to that planet, you find that you can beat the crap out of everyone and everything around you, and you marry a beautiful princess and become that planet's Warlord. This is the story that inspired many people to become interested in space travel, like Carl Sagan, who related how he as a child, after reading Burroughs, had similarly looked up at the stars and dreamed that he might be transported to another world. Significantly, he did not dream that he might somebody run into a powerful alien with a magical device that could take him to another world; it simply isn't the same. And this sort of story must end with the complete, transcendent triumph of the hero, something that the film's John Carter is denied: no matter how long he remains on Mars, the film suggests, he will always be gazing suspiciously at every person he encounters, fearful that he or she is a disguised Thern plotting his demise. Perhaps this was justified in story conferences as laying the necessary groundwork for a possible sequel, but one might respond that Burroughs himself, after nervously providing his early novels with cliffhanger endings, began giving his novels complete, satisfactory conclusions, confident that he could always devise some pretext for one more sequel without any obvious hooks; and certainly, Hollywood itself has never failed to find some way to keep a profitable franchise going, even contriving to produce three more sequels to a film, Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1969), that ended with the complete destruction of planet Earth. In sum, since Burroughs's novel already offered a sufficient number of dastardly opponents, there was no reason to add the Therns in the first place, and every reason to remove them in the final, chartreuse version of the script.

The second is a conversation between Howard Waldrop and Lawrence Person (http://www.locusmag.com/Reviews/2012/03/howard-waldrop-and-lawrence-person-review-john-carter/), both of whom mention some of the same points I've made but with the added benefit of Person claiming no emotional attachment to the source material. I've read a lot of reviews in the past few days, and it's a stroke of luck that perhaps the two best I have read thus far are on the same Web site.

The difference between the books and the movie: John Carter

Yesterday, I wrote what I hoped to be a fairly unbiased review of the new John Carter movie. If you are new to my blog, I should reveal that I am a lifelong fan of the Barsoom novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the source for John Carter. Today, I want to look at the movie again from what I am jokingly referring to as the fanboy perspective, from the point of view of someone intimately familiar with the original story, with an eye towards describing the differences in the two versions of the stories and trying to understand why those changes were made. There may be spoilers in what follows, but I don't imagine they will be so severe as to ruin either the movie-going experience or the joy of reading the novels.

I should note also that I am not going to talk about every difference between the books and the movie. I expect there to be differences—books can't be adapted verbatim, for reasons of time and storytelling. For instance, in the movie John Carter is given the name Dotar Sojat meaning "my right hand" by Tars Tarkas. In the books, Dotar and Sojat are the names of the first two warriors Carter kills and thus his Barsoomian name. There is not a lot of value explicating this; the writers used a name from the source, which often is enough to get a giddy sigh from the fans of the original work, and they are able to suitably adapt the name to add more meaning to the story they are trying to tell. In this case, we don't have to have pages of Carter and Tars Tarkas fighting together to see that they build up trust and friendship between them, the movie spares the viewer time by having Tars Tarkas announce his dependence on his new comrade, by naming him "my right hand."

One detail in the books that make even their fans grimace is the method by which John Carter travels from Earth to Mars. Frankly said, the reader has no idea how it happens and neither does John Carter:

As I stood thus meditating, I turned my gaze from the landscape to the heavens where the myriad stars formed a gorgeous and fitting canopy for the wonders of the earthly scene. My attention was quickly riveted by a large red star close to the distant horizon. As I gazed upon it I felt a spell of overpowering fascination—it was Mars, the god of war, and for me, the fighting man, it had always held the power of irresistible enchantment. As I gazed at it on that far-gone night it seemed to call across the unthinkable void, to lure me to it, to draw me as the lodestone attracts a particle of iron.

My longing was beyond the power of opposition; I closed my eyes, stretched out my arms toward the god of my vocation and felt myself drawn with the suddenness of though through the trackless immensity of space. There was an instant of extreme cold and utter darkness. (A Princess of Mars)

…and John Carter opens his eyes on the planet Mars. But using this method in the movie would bring hoots of derision and monumental eye-rolling from critics—Carter got to Mars by wishing himself there? Instead, the screenwriters take other elements of the story and expand them to fill their need: the priest class of Barsoom has the ability to travel between the planets and Carter stumbles across one of their way stations in the Arizona desert and is accidentally transported to Mars. This method is more palatable to a mainstream audience and also opens the door to further plot development, allowing this priestly class, the Therns, to become the overarching villains of the story and provide a threat that could support a franchise of movies. Also, by couching the plot change in terms familiar to the audience familiar with the books, the screenwriters placate that same audience somewhat. Thus the story change maximizes the benefit to novice viewers and minimizes the pain for fans of the books, deriving the most advantage overall.

Of course, it could be argued that the movie could have remained true to Edgar Rice Burroughs's original vision, but that would have pushed the movie closer to an independent sort of movie, one suitable for art houses. Filmed that way, John Carter could have become a cult favorite on the art house circuit though the odds on that happening are pretty long and the profits pretty small, especially when compared to a potential movie franchise. Just by choosing to go the blockbuster route, the crew narrowed down the parameters of the kind of story they could tell.

Another fairly big change which worked pretty well for the movie was in the character of Dejah Thoris. Bearing in mind that the original novel, A Princess of Mars, was published in 1912 and was generally intended for an audience of boys and young men, Dejah Thoris as written is really not more than a plot point. She's beautiful and in need of rescuing, giving John Carter a reason for his subsequent actions. Burroughs makes it clear that she is smart and well-trained in swordplay, making her something more than just an ornament, a model of the strong woman that Carter needs by his side, but she isn't developed very far as a character in that first book. In the movie, however, Dejah Thoris is not only smart but something of an academic (Carter refers to her regularly as "professor") and still also a swordswoman, capable of not only defending herself but engaging in witty banter as she does so. Modern audiences would have been disturbed if Dejah Thoris was as flatly portrayed as she is written, and given that a potential franchise needs support across all demographics, a solid female role model can only help, especially in the young girl and teen girl segments. And frankly, it's pretty hard to read Dejah Thoris without wincing at the stereotypical portrayal of her from the time period. This updated version seems a much better match for John Carter, especially to audiences with experience with relationships, which the intended audience for the books surely never had. I freely admit to being totally messed up into my 20s about how men and women relate in part because my first impression of it came from the Burroughs books.

But on the other hand, the attempt to make John Carter himself more accessible to mainstream audiences doesn't work so well. In the books, Carter is a stoic warrior, a man of few words and little humor, but generally radiating charisma. He is the greatest swordsman of two worlds, unbeaten and unbeatable. But that sort of uber-competence doesn't work with movie-going audiences; for some reason, we want to see our heroes with flaws. The plot goes out of its way to demonstrate his ability as a fighter and his ability to strategize in its time in the Arizona desert, but then, somehow, Carter seems to forget most of it when he gets to Barsoom. The movie's John Carter is somewhat impatient and selfish, traits that belong nowhere near the character as he is written. The books' John Carter fights on Barsoom because he sees injustice and because he can make a difference, and while the movie's John Carter ultimately arrives at the same determination, it takes a lot of work to get him there. And while it may make his character more accessible, it also makes him weaker and distinctly less heroic.

One difference that was somewhat mixed in its success was the portrayal of Woola. The novels make it clear that Woola, a beast called a calot and the Barsoomian analog of a dog, is perhaps John Carter's most steadfast companion on Barsoom, the archetype of the doting watchdog. When John Carter shows appreciation, even affection, when Woola originally leaps to his defense, Woola commits himself to Carter's protection, never wanting to leave his side. The movie does a decent job of showing this, but then takes it perhaps a bit too far by making Woola a comic bit. First, Woola is ugly, described in Burroughs's writing as nothing so much as frog the size of a Shetland pony but with ten legs. The movie plays up the ugliness by letting us see often into Woola's hideous mouth, wherein is hidden his huge blue tongue. Being a faithful dog, the movie pulls out the stereotype that dogs apparently are incapable of life without drooling and slobbering over their owners, and it is made that much funnier by the dog using its huge blue tongue to show its affection for John Carter. And while calots are fast animals in the books, in the movie, Woola runs at ridiculous speed, leaving trails of dust behind it as though it were more Barsoomian roadrunner than dog. I understand why this relatively minor change was made—Woola offers some levity and appeal to a younger audience, and cynically, if it succeeds, then perhaps every child will want a stuffed Woola—but the actual carrying out of this change becomes grating to the adult audience. But the vision and conception of the beast feel dead on; the movie just pushes what passes for personality a trifle too far.

There is one fairly large change that I have no explanation for; I can neither figure it out from a writerly point of view nor from a marketing one. The main conflict of the movie is between the two city-states of Helium and Zodanga. For some reason, the plot of the movie requires that Zodanga be a mobile city, basically a city that walks on tremendous legs all over the planet. While it has a gee whiz factor and is impressive in the idea of it, the fact that Zodanga is a walking city has no bearing on the story of the movie at all, and very little time is spent there, so that there are no long scenes of the city to wow the audience. This one just feels like change for change's sake.

So, ultimately, I generally understand why the writers changed what they did to make the movie more accessible. I can accept them though in some cases I don't really like them very much. That's the trouble with the devoted (some might say "obsessed") fan; I really wanted to see the books that Burroughs wrote in cinema. But that movie would have even worse reception than what the one we have has received. And it is the very rare moviemaker who can ignore cost and income in pursuit of a vision.

John Carter

As I exited the theater after seeing John Carter, I was astonished to find it was a chill winter's day. My surprise was rooted in my just having seen the first tent-pole movie of the season, one more likely to be released in the summer season, with epic plotlines and thrilling special effects. John Carter generally fulfills every expectation of that type of movie, hewing close to its roots by not expecting its audience to think too much about what's happening onscreen, but sit back and let the story and effects roll over them.

The bones of the plot are relatively straightforward, John Carter finds himself accidentally transported to the planet Mars, called Barsoom by its natives. Despite being adopted by the people he finds and discovering a world war threatening the very survival of the planet, as well as an even more vast conspiracy, all Carter wants to do is return home. He has had his fill of war, surviving the Civil War and, we discover through flashbacks, losing his wife and daughter. His adventures carry him from the savage aboriginal Tharks, four-armed, tusked green giants to the civilized citizens of Helium and Zodanga. And eventually, his losses and the pain they bring him are scrubbed away by the people and events in his sojourn, such that by the end of the movie he is made whole.

To my delight, one of the strongest parts of the film is the casting of Lynn Collins as Dejah Thoris. Dejah Thoris in her hands is smart and thoughtful, capable of wielding a sword as well as scientific instruments. The commercials for the movie don't give her enough credit; she is astonishingly attractive with a faint exotic appeal, and not nearly as young as the commercials make her appear. She is a high point of the film, while her romantic opposite, Taylor Kitsch as John Carter just fails abysmally. The script calls for Carter to be conflicted in nearly all of his actions he finally decides to go all in for the good side. Unfortunately, it's the flashbacks that mostly reveal Carter's conflict rather than any acting on Kitsch's part. The other telling weakness in Kitsch's portrayal is a nearly complete lack of charisma; the Barsoomians that he deals with are overawed with his ability to jump and his strength, which is just as well since his personality is that of a sponge. Of course, this leads to the chemistry between Collins and Kitsch to also be somewhat lacking—it's not really clear what Dejah Thoris sees in Carter beyond a potential savior to her wartorn planet. This is, usually, not enough to spark a romance.

The supporting characters are generally very strong. The skill of Willem Dafoe and Samantha Morton come through the CGI to make Tars Tarkas and Sola both approachable and likable. Ciaran Hinds is wonderful as the Mors Kajak, leader of the city-state of Helium, showing conflict when he is constantly asked to decide between saving his daughter Dejah Thoris and his city. Mark Strong is his capably menacing self as Matai Shang, and Dominic West plays his usual manic character, teetering on the edge of self-destruction in pursuit of grandiose goals.

I fear that the movie may be overly complex for the younger demographic it appears to be aiming for at times. The plot swings all over the spectrum, including a monumental framing device (the bulk of the movie really is a story within a story). The characters never get from one place on Barsoom, or in the plot, to another in a straight-line fashion. Well-handled, such complexity adds depth to the story, but in John Carter, it feels more like a reason to add special effects. Such transparent complexity is indicative of perhaps an overriding flaw, an inability to balance between adolescent and adult storytelling that characterize the most successful franchise movies. A true indicator of success at finding a balance between the two poles usually lies in the humor the movie uses, but John Carter seems to think that children are generally stupid and thus its humor becomes wearying to adults. For instance, due to translation difficulties, the Tharks with whom Carter originally finds himself think his name is Virginia and regularly call him that. It's worth a chuckle when it first happens, to see this manly man and true warrior being referred to by a name that he and the audience think of as extremely feminine. But the mistake continues for some time, and Carter is increasingly put upon by it, and the joke doesn't end until well after it is no longer funny to the viewer. Similarly, Carter adopts a Barsoomian animal (which is called a calot in the books but the movie actually never specifies) named Woola, the most salient attributes of which are ridiculous speed and an extremely large blue tongue. Woola fulfills the role of animal sidekick through the course of the movie, friend and companion, slobbering over Carter at awkward moments and evoking sympathy from the audience when he is unwillingly left behind. And of course, at some point, you know he is going to save Carter's life.

Such moments also make it feel that John Carter falls back on the clichés of the epic blockbuster franchise-making movie. Purists will point out that, in fact, the books on which John Carter is based are some of the originators of the tropes that have eventually become clichés in modern storytelling. Unfortunately, this means nothing to an audience that doesn't know the books—the audience that Disney is most likely shooting for. To be honest, most of these tentpole movies don't really break any new ground in their storytelling either, nor do most audiences going to them expect to brilliant storytelling, but John Carter has been marketed as something different.

All of this doesn't take away from the fact that the movie is a lot of fun and pretty to look at. The effects are indeed pretty interesting, and I was struck by the ruined city that the Tharks take as their home. The movie works better with vistas than detail—the overhead shots of the Thark arena are also breathtaking, as are the river Iss. The more modern cities of Helium and Zodanga are generically futuristic, austere in one case and steampunk in the other, so more lovely to see from a distance than up close. The fliers are fascinating as well, gorgeous machines operating on solar power with wings made of mirrors. And the CGI is quite good, so good that you don't really notice that it is CGI, which should always be the goal. The bestiary is cool to look at as are the Tharks (and the few shots we get of one of their rival tribes).

Of course John Carter ends up in the perfect place for sequels, as can also be expected of these tentpole movies. I wouldn't be offended by more Barsoom movies, but I would not expect long theater life for any of them so long as they stick to this formula. True to its roots, John Carter is fun and pleasant while it is in front of you but easy to forget once you've stopped viewing it. Worth viewing, especially on the big screen but not necessarily in 3D (I didn't see it in 3D and could see where the 3D effect might be used but nothing worth paying the extra money for).

10 minutes from John Carter

Disney has posted the first ten minutes from its upcoming release, John Carter. I won't watch it, trying to save myself for the movie experience. But you can watch it and let me know what you think.

ten minutes

One think I have noted as I searched for times to see the movie--this is a 3D movie. I don't remember seeing that in any of the trailers or commercials. I'm not sure how that makes me feel, since 3D very often is more of a distraction than a feature of the recent movies that have employed it. I'm still being cuatiously optimistic....

John Carter minus two weeks

"I've talked to more biochemists and more astronomers and technologists in various fields, who, when they were ten years old, fell in love with John Carter and Tarzan and decided to become something romantic. Burroughs put us on the moon." -- Ray Bradbury, Listen to the Echoes, 2010.

In my morning ghosting about the interwebs, I happened upon an article forecasting a disaster come March 9 and the release of the first tentpole movie of the year, John Carter. The Daily Beast (story here) first describes the doubts about the picture's success, then goes on to talk about its troubled history and clashing expectations. Followers of this blog know that I am trying to maintain optimism about the movie (first and second posts), but finding an article like this eviscerates the hopes that I have and strengthens my convictions that the production and marketing of the movie didn't have a unified vision of what they wanted to accomplish. I readily admit to not having much background in marketing, especially in Hollywood, but if the inside view that The Daily Beast describes is accurate, then it fulfills the worst of my ruminations about the decisions being made for the movie.

But also in my daily interwebs search, I found the quote by Ray Bradbury at the top of this article, describing something that I knew in my heart of hearts but didn't have the evidence to defend—John Carter and the Barsoom books are wildly popular…to a certain set of people. Maybe even two sets of people. The first are folks with connections to the sciences and thus perhaps already predisposed to enjoying science fiction, a genre to which the Barsoom books tangentially belong. Unfortunately, fans of science fiction don't necessarily make up a large proportion of the paid audiences of movies. For John Carter to be considered a success, it has to find a mainstream audience beyond those stereotypically referred to as geeks (even if geek is currently chic). Think of the biggest "science fiction" movie successes—Star Wars and Avatar. There are many similarities between those movies and the story behind John Carter, so the potential has always been there to make a strong movie. But you have to convince a mildly curious audience to care about the characters and their worlds, or else the movie is going to flop. And that kind of distinction requires a unified effort on the part of everyone involved with the movie.

The second audience that the Bradbury quote describes is ten year-olds, and it's a telling detail. I first read A Princess of Mars, the first Barsoom book, when I was seven or eight years old. I promptly fell in love with it and had to have all eleven books in the series. And because of my love for it, I often talk about it with people I meet who profess an interest in science fiction. Those conversations raise a fascinating pattern—people who approach the books between the ages of seven and twelve really love the book in the way that everyone loves the best memories of their childhood, but people who try to read the books as adults are put off by its childishness and simplicity. And perhaps even more striking is that the women I've talked to generally don't like the books much at all, at any age.

It's the very nature of the sub-genre of planetary romance to be relatively simplistic. In another post, I described the subgenre like so:

Planetary romance is a sub-genre of speculative fiction that deals with exotic planets and attempts at human interaction on them. The standard plot of planetary romance is that the traveler spends about half the story learning about life and survival on the exotic planet and then is faced with a crisis, usually having to do with his continued existence in the exotic locale—sometimes the protagonist must fight to remain at his new home and sometimes the hero must fight just to survive. For the reader, the strength of these stories is the detail that goes into the world-building, the creation of an alien biology that is both marvelous and consistent at the same time. Often, the exotic environment becomes a character in its own right.

The plots of these kinds of stories are almost interchangeable, but the best of them spend more time with world-building than with character development and interaction. Fans of Barsoom are fortunate that the series is eleven books long, giving John Carter space to become a more fully rounded character than is usual with his sort. But we can't confuse breadth of experience with filling out the character—Carter and his family have amazing adventures on Mars, but he remains essentially very flat.

I think the problem is that, at his root, the protagonist John Carter is nothing but a ten year-old boy in a man's body. He leaves Earth in a strange fashion only to arrive on Barsoom completely unclothed, naked and ignorant as a newborn babe. He succeeds madly there not because of intelligence or wit or charm, but because Barsoom's gravity makes him that much stronger and faster than the inhabitants. Every ten year-old boy dreams of physical superiority, and John Carter lives that dream. Nothing makes the point about Carter's puerile character better than his halting relationship with Dejah Thoris. His desperate desire to be near her but complete inability to say anything in her presence is a pinpoint description of when a boy first notices a girl he likes.

I'm pounding on these details because it emphasizes the issues that anyone making a movie out of the novels has to deal with: ten year-old boys and people who used to be ten year-old boys love the stories. And that kind of audience is not going to justify the huge amounts of money put into the movie. Star Wars and Avatar had a similar prebuilt audience, but their marketing was fairly straightforward compared to how John Carter tries to portray itself. The first attempt was to make it a romance picture—two people from different worlds (literally!) try to come together as they wage a desperate battle against….what? And here is another flaw in the marketing of the movie. Who the heck is John Carter fighting anyway? Sometimes they appear green with tusks, sometimes they look just like him. There is no real indication of the conflict, just that there's a whole lot of it. Us former ten year-old boys know what's going on, but if you don't know the books, the trailers are a puzzling combination of images more about the grandiosity of it all without paying much attention to that little thing called plot. And perhaps that was a serious consideration in the marketing plans—special effects do seem to sell better than good stories.

My guarded optimism is waning; nonetheless, I am taking a vacation day to see the movie maybe even twice, trying to wear different personae as I view it. My problem is that I can't not see it; not only do I love the books, but in many ways, A Princess of Mars may be the most important book in my reading history, in that it was the first time I struck out on my own and found something beyond what my teachers told me to read. That simple little novel set off not only a lifelong love of speculative fiction but also of reading and books in general. In fact, when I see the movie, I'm told I'm going to have my own audience: Mrs. Speculator and a friend who intends to go with us have both said they are as interested in watching me watch the movie as they are the action on the screen itself. I'm just hoping I don't feel compelled to give them their money's worth….

The second trailer for John Carter

So take a look at this: http://disney.go.com/johncarter/.

A few months ago in this very blog (http://perrynomasia.blogspot.com/2011/08/ignominious-and-perhaps-constructive.html), I expressed some concerns about the first trailer. It seemed to me that the trailer was playing up the romance aspect of the Barsoom books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, but I did express hope that it was a marketing ploy, that perhaps the trailer was playing up the romance to attract an audience it might not find otherwise. But there were enough other stylistic choices that gave me pause about the whole thing, fearing another crushing cinematic retelling of a story that I love, like The Spirit or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

This new trailer on the other hand makes me very excited.

First, this trailer plays up the adventure aspects of the original novel, Princess of Mars. I've never had a conversation about the Barsoom books in which people talk about the romance aspects—what they remember is the battles and the unadulterated joy of being able to leap yards without trying, of fighting great white apes in a gladiator pit. And this trailer seems to indicate that these moments will be in the movie. We even get a quick glimpse of Woola, John Carter's faithful calot, which just made my fanboy hackles stand on end.

Second, there is more color and pomp in this trailer, a counterindication to the dolorous feel of the first trailer. No doubt this is due in part to the inspired music choice, again. The first movie centers on Peter Gabriel's remake of "My Body is a Cage", but this one has chosen a choral reinterpretation of Led Zeppelin's classic "Kashmir." Perhaps there is no more stately and moving rock anthem than U2's intro to "Where the Streets Have No Name" but the rhythm that drives "Kashmir" would have to be a close second. And then when the choir opens up, again the music selection just gave me goosebumps. It fits the images in the trailer extremely well.

I still have nits about some of the stylistic choices—the youth of the protagonists, Carter's long hair, the reluctance to give the native humanoid Martians copper skin—but I'm much more willing to accept them when this trailer shows how much more deeply the creators have embraced the story than I had originally believed. The two trailers in combination give me a great deal of hope for the movie, such that now I have to worry that my expectations are getting too high. Nonetheless, 9 March 2012 is circled in bright red in my mental calendar. Heck, I might even splurge and go IMAX on this one.

An Ignominious and Perhaps Constructive Return

So I accidentally took a couple of months off from updating this blog. I had lots of things to write about—seeing Captain America and not seeing Green Lantern for instance. I've still got a rough draft describing my discoveries after watching four seasons of Babylon 5 for the first time. I've read some absolutely brilliant stuff and some other that wasn't quite so great. And of course, there's the great changeover at DC, as a new universe is about to be born and I find myself at a dreadful crossroads as I consider giving up on comics altogether or, if I keep getting them, going to an electronic format. In fact, two weeks from today, DC's new universe starts and, for now, I'll be participating in it.

At the highest level, I needed a break in order to recharge the writing cells. I found myself reading sequels of books and struggling to find something interesting to say about them. But even worse, I found that I was reading in order to write about what I was reading rather than for the pure joy of reading. I never made it to a tenure-track position at an institute of higher learning, so I can only imagine that this feeling as I was reading—this ongoing critical conversation in my mind that was sucking the joy out of what I was reading—might have been what those teachers go through. And over a month and a half, I actually read a great deal and saw some fun movies, but I just absorbed them and was readerly more than critical. And it was good. I think I learned some things in this time, and I hope that as I pick up the writing mantle again, I can try to maintain a separation between those two states, or at least tone down the critic until the reader has had his say.

And so I return with what has become known as a "WTF? moment."

If I haven't made it clear elsewhere, I am a huge fan of the writings of Edgar Rice Burroughs. I own pretty much every book the man ever wrote outside of the Tarzan series, and the first science fiction novel I read was A Princess of Mars. I return to it every few years, and it rekindles the joy that I felt upon my first discovery of it. Those books have become a kind of touchstone for me as I use them to evaluate the readings and thoughts of fellow readers of science fiction and fantasy (I'm reminded of what became cliché in military movies, but instead of asking the potential spy who won last year's World Series, I ask them their opinion of Edgar Rice Burroughs). You can imagine that I was therefore tremendously excited by the idea of a movie based on these books, and even more so with the later reports that it would be directed by Andrew Stanton, whose movies include Wall-E and Finding Nemo and the screenplay was coming from Pulitzer Prize-winning Michael Chabon. I felt certain that these big-time names would have the cachet to keep the movie true to its roots and not try to modernize it or go too far away from the source material…you know, like David Lynch's Dune or the dreaded Starship Troopers.

The first bit of worry came when they changed the working name from A Princess of Mars to John Carter. Such a move doesn't make a lot of sense to me from a marketing perspective: they took an iconic name that would resonate with fans of the books and would give some idea of what was going on to people who did not know the story and changed it to a name that has very little meaning at all. A movie entitled John Carter could be about pretty much anything at all. The next bits of worry came from the casting—the actors playing the lead roles, those of Dejah Thoris and John Carter, seemed way too young in my mind. But I had seen no pictures and I had faith in the director and writers. I just had to be patient—they were going to prove me right in my faith. And then the first teaser trailer came out--http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rf55GTEZ_E.

And now my worries have become very big concerns. Granted, there are some great things about the trailer in regard to its relation to the source material. The movie is apparently going to use the framing device used in the book, that the narrator is the nephew of John Carter and is told of his death at the beginning of the story, which acts as a launching point to telling Carter's story. The time period appears to be about right, and letting the terrestrial part of the story take place in the West is good too. And honestly, using Peter Gabriel's remake of Arcade Fire's "My Body is a Cage" is just brilliant: it perfectly describes Carter's state at the end of A Princess of Mars when it says "My body is a cage that keeps me from being with the one I love."

But the trailer seems intent on making this a romantic movie, something along the lines of star-crossed lovers who can never truly be together, a la the Twilight movies. I understand that this is just the trailer, and it may be couching the movie in those terms in order to entice a wider audience, but the original novel is actually a romping adventure story with romance as a sideplot. The color palette for Mars just feels wrong, too. Barsoom is a dying civilization but it is a glorious one, filled with rich colors and architecture and jewels despite its moribund state. Certainly events take place in the desert, but in the trailer everything is just covered in dust and not very opulent at all.

And then there are the actors; they really are far too young. For instance, the description of John Carter from the novel:

He was a splendid specimen of manhood, standing a good two inches over six feet, broad of shoulder and narrow of hip, with the carriage of the trained fighting man. His 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.

This is the description of Dejah Thoris, his beloved:

And the sight which met my eyes was that of a slender, girlish figure, similar in every detail to the earthly women of my past life. She did not see me at first, but just as she was disappearing through the portal of the building which was to be her prison she turned, and her eyes met mine. Her face was oval and beautiful in the extreme, her every feature was finely chiseled and exquisite, her eyes large and lustrous and her head surmounted by a mass of coal black, waving hair, caught loosely into a strange yet becoming coiffure. Her skin was of a light reddish copper color, against which the crimson glow of her cheeks and the ruby of her beautifully molded lips shone with a strangely enhancing effect.

John Carter is completely off (I'd always imagined Brendan Fraser or a younger Josh Brolin in this role) and while the actress portraying Dejah Thoris is "girlish" (in the later books, she loses this girlishness and is very womanly indeed), the crew made a creative choice and changed her copper skin to a henna tattoo. I've long struggled to find someone who could play Dejah Thoris—who do you get to depict the most beautiful woman of two worlds?—but I recently saw a noir movie from the 50s starring Gene Tierney. I applied some google fu and found this picture.

That is Dejah Thoris.

It certainly appears I am not the target audience for this movie. On the one hand, I know too much about the books and am not happy with the artistic decision I see being made. On the other, I may just be too old in general. And ironically, if I actually knew nothing of the books, this trailer would be that much more appealing to me. So now I wait for another trailer, hoping to show that this was just an angle for marketing, that the movie will be so much more than this trailer makes it appear to be. In a summer when Captain America is released and proves to be tremendously faithful to its outdated source material to good effect, I find I wish the same for John Carter.