Julian Perez Goes to the Movies: "John Carter" Review

Short review: a good old fashioned swashbuckler movie with a lot of humor, but one that's dragged down by giving testosterone hero John Carter a "sad" backstory. Stay for Woola's cuteness, Dejah Thoris kicking butt, John Carter leaping, the flight scenes in 3-D, and the surprisingly warm father-daughter subplot. As far as a Burroughs adaptation goes it's very good but not perfect, but it's got everything your inner eleven year old wants: the coolest dog in the world, a four armed best buddy, and winning the hand of a gorgeous princess with swordfighting.

After a whole century without an adaptation...am I the only one bugged by how they chose to pronounce things? I always pronounced Issus as Aye-sus (same as Isis), and Dejah Thoris as DEE-juh Thor-Us.

Long review:

The movie's take on Dejah Thoris, the original work's greatest dragging liability, is a success. She had to be changed somehow and what they did worked.

Not only is the leggy, muscular, exotic, bronzed Lynn Collins a twelve year old boy's dream girl, she's also a scientist and a warrior, heroic and intelligent. She's a princess, but her princess persona is a put on she can slip on and off to cover her personal anxieties. Unlike other newly upgraded martial heroines, the story actually commits to her being a great fighter, and she plays a role in the end of the story and doesn't lose her martial skills when they're inconvenient to the plot (unlike Maid Marian in Prince of Thieves), and she actually wins fights (unlike Kate Beckinsale's fake action girl in Van Helsing).

She actually uses her great intelligence in several scenes to figure out Thern technology and translate inscriptions. She's less a movie girlfriend and more a Spock-like smart sidekick.

She's also a scientist and…well, ask yourself this. When was the last time in comics or pop culture you saw a FEMALE inventor or supergenius?

Making Dejah Thoris a supergenius is actually a pretty good substitution in the story. Previously, Dejah Thoris was captured all the time because she was the world's most beautiful woman and often did things that were self-destructive or moronically out of character, like suddenly insist she was going to marry Sab Than out of nowhere. If Dejah Thoris was a scientist on the verge of a great discovery, it makes sense villains trying to stifle that discovery would try to have her killed or captured.


By the way, when I first heard Dejah was going to be a scientist in the movie version, I was totally shocked because she was so useless. But actually, Dejah being a scientist is a pretty legit interpretation of what she was actually doing. Take this selection from Chapter X of "A Princess of Mars."

“What is your name?” asked Lorquas Ptomel, addressing the prisoner. 

“Dejah Thoris, daughter of Mors Kajak of Helium.” 

“And the nature of your expedition?” he continued. 

“It was a purely scientific research party sent out by my father’s father, the Jeddak of Helium, to rechart the air currents, and to take atmospheric density tests,” replied the fair prisoner, in a low, well-modulated voice. 

“We were unprepared for battle,” she continued, “as we were on a peaceful mission, as our banners and the colors of our craft denoted. The work we were doing was as much in your interests as in ours, for you know full well that were it not for our labors and the fruits of our scientific operations there would not be enough air or water on Mars to support a single human life. For ages we have maintained the air and water supply at practically the same point without an appreciable loss, and we have done this in the face of the brutal and ignorant interference of your green men."

The idea she might be a scientist is a perfectly legitimate interpretation of these events, although most people figure Dejah was just there as a royal administrator.

Taylor Kitsch, surprisingly, did a good job as John Carter. He brought to the character a kind of Eastwood-esque serious manliness, and a very Southern chivalry that's the core of the character. He politely refers to everyone as either "sir" or "ma'am." Even the bad guys.

The scenes where John Carter jumps around like a rubber ball under low Martian gravity were really effective and infectiously exhilarating and fun.

One of the things I always thought was unique about John Carter of Mars is, John Carter goes native and adapts to Barsoom really fast, and because Mars is so darn cool, prefers to stay there rather than go back to boring old earth. I never understood why Dorothy Gale wanted to go back to drab, black and white Kansas when she was a universally beloved heroine in the much cooler fantasy world of Oz. To its credit, the movie gets this totally right: when John Carter is forced to leave Mars and the girl he loved we feel the wrenching pain as he returns to Earth a million miles away, never knowing if he'll ever return. The painful removal from Mars, something that later became the emotional core of the Adam Strange series, was perfectly captured here.

Unfortunately, Kitsch's solid performance is undercut somewhat by the fact the script  "fixes" a problem: John Carter doesn't have an arc as a character. This "problem" is solved in the most hackneyed way possible: instead of making John Carter the testosterone-personified, energetic he-man hero we know he was, he's saddled with a "sad hero" backstory. Would I shock you if I told you there were lots of flashbacks to a lost family?

The idea John Carter was a bitter, cynical veteran who constantly insisted he shouldn't get involved and didn't want to go back to Earth chews up and wastes the movie's time, and doesn't play to Taylor Kitsch's strengths.

The movie's strongest and surprisingly emotional subplot is Tars Tarkas's father-daughter relationship with Sola, the only Martian female to know her real father and family. Tars Tarkas is protective of her, and love for her motivates everything he does. Since Sola knew love and family among otherwise loveless and unsentimental creatures like the Tharks, Sola stands out as a screwup who doesn't fit into society perfectly. This is the only time the otherwise drab "sad hero" backstory for John Carter is actually used to really good effect. Because he recognizes something of himself in the big Thark.

Woola of course, was downright perfect and steals every scene he's in…but that's obvious. You can tell the guy who did this movie also did Wall-E, because its best character is a silent little monster.

There was one moment in John Carter of Mars that got an ERB-fanboy charge of excitement out of me.

While in the wilderness, gentleman John Carter and his friends were chased by the hordes of Warhoon, a type of Green Martian more savage and ferocious than others of their kind. The creators of the movie totally nailed it. They looked the part: feral, cruel, covered in bones, scarred and fearsome. It was something I'd waited to see brought to life since I read the books as a Tarzan-loving kid. The presence of the hordes of Warhoon was an indulgence that, according to an interview, Andrew Stanton fought for, to the point he "traded off" an appearance by banths, saving the fierce, distinctive Martian lions for a sequel.

Strictly speaking, the presence of the hordes of Warhoon wasn't entirely necessary to the story, but it showed a fannish gusto to bring Barsoom to screen. I wish there had been more moments like that because there were so few. This was also why Green Lantern and Percy Jackson were such empty movies despite coming from such innovative source material: they saved everything interesting for the sequels, assuming they had all the time in the world.

The lesson here for future film-makers is, even when doing movies intended to be franchise starters, treat every movie like it was the last one. Because there's a heartbreaking chance it just might be.

It feels like a dick move to criticize a movie by mentioning all the things it didn't have, but was it impossible to show some people in the background playing Jetan? No reference to even the merest hints of the existence of the First Born, Kaldanes and the Okarians? No ulsios or soraks scuttling around in the background? A huge chunk of the movie was set around Zodanga. So, no background appearance by someone who is undisguisably Rapas the Ulsio, Zat Arras or Fal Sivas? Nobody swearing "by their first ancestor?" No shots of mastodon-like zitidars? (Thoats are the only beasts of burden used in the movie version of Barsoom.) No one person in the background in a diamond harness who might be a Gatholian? No dropped hints of a lost Ptarthian princess who would later be revealed as Thuvia in the next movie?

All this sounds fannish and nitpicky and I understand that. But I was under the impression from all the press materials I was going to get a movie by lifelong Barsoom fans bringing Barsoom to screen for the first time after literally an entire century of waiting, given gobs of money and freedom. I was expecting the Martian equivalent of the fan friendly, easter egg filled Marvel movies or Peter Jackson's accurate Lord of the Rings. I was led to believe, somewhat deceptively, I was going to get continuity porn instead of a sanitized Hollywood adaptation. If Stanton and Chabon and the rest really were the Barsoom aficionados they say they are, wouldn't they have known Helium's defining skyline and physical characteristic is it's defined by twin mile-high towers? If Barsoom is a world of eternal youth, why is it Dejah Thoris's grandfather Tardos Mors looked so visibly older than she did?

There was a scene in world-traveler John Carter's study filled with parts and objects from around the world…and they couldn't have crammed in a reference to Tarzan, La, Opar, or Caprona? At least the army situation room in Captain America has a map of Wakanda.

At least they used the Martian standards of measurements: xats, karads, and so on...and remembered Kaor, the Martian greeting, and that Earth and Venus were respectively called Jasoom and Cosoom.  That was something!

The 2009 Star Trek had references to the Klingons, Rura Penthe, Cardassians (…surprisingly, since the Cardies were unknown in the original series era), Sulu fencing, the Vulcan mind-meld, an in-joke about redshirts dying, heck, there was even a tribble if you look hard enough – all of which was done without hampering the momentum of the movie. The Lord of the Rings movies were both simultaneously accessible and beloved by the couch potato idiots of the world, and by Tolkien fans for their accuracy and fan-friendly details (anyone else notice Galadriel wearing the ring Nenya?). When the android Human Torch showed up in Captain America, it drew gasps from the audience I watched the movie with.

The notion that something is either for the hardcore fans OR for a general audience is a false, nonexistent dilemma, and a sign of a limited thinker. A characteristic of the successful adaptation is how "full" they feel.

Maybe I'm spoiled rotten by the Marvel movies and by Lord of the Rings and so I expected something unfair from this movie. After all, the norm for adaptations of beloved geek properties is for them to be visibly made by people that just don't care.

There were some changes to the material in adaptation from the book to the movie, but like all the changes in the recent Star Trek movie, they were ones I saw happening when the movie was announced: there were three evil Green Martian chieftains, and so economy insisted they be reduced to just one, played wonderfully by Thomas Hayden Church.

A lot of people said that the new early appearance and prominence of the Therns was rewriting Burroughs's Mars mythology. It all made perfect sense to me, though. We learn in Warlord of Mars that the Therns, as a result of their false religion, come and go as they please on Barsoom, and after the destruction of their culture, Matai Shang, Hekkador and Father of the Therns, hid in the city of Kaol where their cult still had power.

The idea of the Holy Therns as a behind the scenes power cynically exploiting people and present at the beginning of the John Carter story was totally in character with the Therns' modus operandi. On the other hand it's unlikely there is going to be a race of Black Pirates (or the First Born), because Barsoom doesn't need two races of false gods.

At the same time, the Therns are able to shapeshift and have advanced science, something I wish they didn't have. The whole point of the Therns is that despite their claims of godhood, they are just a bunch of liars running a hustle and dodge on the entire rest of Barsoom; giving them superpowers kind of negates that idea.

The Therns here are totally bald, just like in the books. I missed the humanizing touch of vanity they had where they wore elaborate blonde wigs to disguise their baldness.

Making the Therns major baddies gives the movie a strong central villain, something not in the original novel, and more closely ties the Edgar Rice Burroughs finds the journal frame story into the rest of it. I'd count that as a success.

Zodanga is now a "predator city" on legs able to move around. I have to give the writers credit for this. It's the most Burroughs-esque idea Burroughs never had a colorful, exotic and improbable locale. And it led to a great flying scene that was the most successful use of 3-D in the movie.

I wish all I could do is just talk about the John Carter of Mars movie, but unfortunately movies don't happen in a vacuum.

A lot of Paleolithic movie critics and entertainment reporters raised in the days before nerds took over the world deeply resent the sudden dominance of genre fiction in pop culture and hate writing about science fiction, comic books, pulp novels and video games. Even so, the sheer disproportionate, fanged viciousness directed toward "John Carter" is shocking.

Because they hate writing about nerd stuff, many entertainment reporters take a jeering, cowardly, jackal-like glee in tearing down a member of the herd that looks weak and limping. Nobody can be crueler than the cowardly, thwarted, and passive-aggressive.

This is why I don't listen to people who say science fiction or the superhero movie "is dead." They write that not because they think it's true, but because they desperately wish it was.

The effect of all the rooting for John Carter to fail and pronouncing it a dead on arrival bomb leaves me angry, hurt and heartsick. Imagine there's this book series you've loved for a lifetime. Imagine there's a movie version coming out, and before it's even released, it's proclaimed a derivative waste nobody will like, with source material forgotten by time nobody remembers or cares about anymore. Taking a risk on believing in something you love is seen as a laughably foolhardy misstep that the studio in question will be punished for doing.

How do you respond to the jeering masses who think of something you love and believe in, as an irresponsible disaster bigger than Ishtar and Dune put together, one that the people of the world will reject? All of which are independent of the quality of the movie itself. It makes me angry just thinking about the injustice of it.

As for the quality of the movie? Definitely worth seeing. After all, John Carter of Mars adaptations don't come along every year  - or every hundred years.

Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars Reviews: A Princess of Mars

With the movie coming out and interest in the Edgar Rice Burroughs Mars books at an all-time high, it's my hope to review all 15 of the Barsoom series. Lots of people call them the John Carter of Mars series, but that's a little misleading since unlike the Tarzan books, Burroughs's Barsoom novels were about an "ensemble cast," and John Carter is only the hero of a few.

A Princess of Mars

Though I enjoyed this one a lot, it's a good start point but it all just gets better from here. It's got everything: a man's friendship with giant monsters who are secretly capable of love and affection despite the fangy exterior. The most memorable character is Woola, a lizard the size of a grizzly with a mouth like a frog who turns out to be a loving, loyal and devoted as a brave dog despite the ugly looks. Mention the name "Woola" to an ERB fan and it's an icebreaker that instantly delights, like mentioning R2-D2 to a Star Wars fan.

If MacGuyver is a hero because of his ability to improvise, John Carter is a hero because everything he does is something nobody's ever done before.

Barsoom must be a dream-world for entrepeneurs: in the book John Carter arrives naked and unarmed, becomes a chieftain of Apache-like Green Men, something no normal human's ever done before. He arrives in a Red Martian city and instantly is allowed to become a pilot without even a background check or any evidence he'd been behind a stick before, a fast track for aviators even John McCain would envy. At the end, he sacks an unsackable city (something never done before) with an army of Green Men (who like the red men as much as gangbangers like a honkey in the projects, so it's something never done before - see a trend here?).



A lot of ERB-fans like Lupoff rank this as one of the best of ERB's books, which I simply can't believe. It was a dynamic first-time novel by a first time writer (Burroughs would write Outlaw of Torn and Tarzan of the Apes later the next year) but Burroughs had obvious gifts as a storyteller but needed to get some practice and polish in. In particular, the first half of the book had a style so baroque, so overwritten that at first I wondered if it was parody...but it was just a first-time writer getting into the swing of things and finding their feet. The high point of the Mars series was yet to come with Gods of Mars.

The Green Men are pretty cool

The story of Princess of Mars is the story of how John Carter fell in with the Green Men of Mars, the first people he encountered, and how he lived with them and got their help to save a red-skinned princess he liked.



What's impressive to me is that Burroughs obviously started out using the Green Men as a metaphor for how he didn't like Communism, a science fiction moral lesson that could have been cloying and obvious, much like the "evil feminist" race from Pellucidar who were giant brutes with beards, or how in ERB's books all religions usually end up being some kind of scam.

But somewhere between idea and execution something extraordinary happened: ERB obviously started to like the Green Men, and they became extremely cool and likable. After all, how can you possibly hate a race that has no lawyers? And the proof is at the end, the hordes of Green Men help John Carter save the day.

At first Burroughs starts off talking about how the Green Men are the victims of having no loving parents, but the more we discover about the Green Men the cooler they are. They're brave, fierce fighters and have tremendous loyalty. If a Green Man or woman hates you, you know it because they pull their gun out on you...and there's something admirable about that, especially if you have zero patience for indirectness and passive-aggressiveness.

And the Green Men laugh when horrible things happen to other people, which is an extremely dark but extremely endearing character trait. John Carter tries to pretend it's some perverse alien characteristic, but the truth is, there is nothing more human than schadenfreude.

In the words of Mel Brooks: "tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when I fall down an open manhole cover and die."

And while the Green Men don't have many feelings of intimacy or family, that also means sociopaths, perverts and criminals are a lot rarer with them than with us. Tal Hajus, that evil fat toad ogre, for instance, is extraordinary because he's a rare atavism.



True, the Green Men have a Spartan culture where unfit children die, but all of the obvious flaws in their society made them feel like an imperfect but real world society - in short, they're worthy enemies that eventually Burroughs gives up condemning moralistically because they make for good bad guys and allies.

Burroughs was born with a horrible disability: he was a reactionary. However, unlike other reactionaries, Burroughs was likeable because he had a sense of humor and wit that made him catch himself before he fully gave in to puritan moralizing. He reminds me of Archie Bunker, who was so funny even liberals liked him, and who was like an old dog always learning new tricks.

The book had some moments that were unintentionally hilarious. My all time favorite was when John Carter kills a Green Martian by launching his flier at them full-speed and then decapitating them.

Tars Tarkas - the real hero of the book



Is it just me, or is Tars Tarkas the real hero of A Princess of Mars?

Think about the last act. It was Tars Tarkas, not John Carter, who kills the villainous Tal Hajus, and for the best reason of all: Hajus was responsible for the death of TT's wife and it's time for revenge. It was Tars Tarkas's gift for statesmanship, not anything John Carter did, which united the green hordes together and made the fall of the city of Zodanga possible at all. In short, Tars Tarkas played a bigger role in the rescue of Dejah Thoris than John Carter did.

In literature, it's trendy now to make books that are basically retelling an entire story from the perspective of a minor character or even the villain. Grendel, Wicked, and The Wind Done Gone. Somehow I think Tars Tarkas would lend himself to this treatment better than most. It would be possible to rewrite Princess of Mars so that it's basically Tars Tarkas's story and he only occasionally interacts with the side-character of John Carter. There was a lot going on when John Carter arrived (Tars Tarkas hiding his disgust with Green Martian societ with a perfect poker face while he climbed the ladder hoping for revenge), a lot going on we didn't see (how did Tars get the hordes together, anyway?), and presumably a lot going on afterward (as we saw in Gods of Mars, where Tars Tarkas experienced as yet undocumented adventures trying to find his friend).

John Carter of Mars




As someone that's primarily a Tarzan-fan, I always looked on John Carter as being a less interesting guy compared to someone with such a unique personality and worldview as Tarzan. John Carter was an "11th-level Fighter," to use a D&D term.

Reading Princess of Mars again forced me to re-evaluate that statement. John Carter was introduced to us by a nephew as a fighting man, but a guy with good humor. He's a solid, honest gallant sort of guy, and not terribly intellectual; it's his son, Carthoris who's the mechanical genius. John Carter's also kind to animals, which marks him as a fundamentally decent person, but which also shows he's far from totally serious and straight-laced. He's a gentleman capable of gallantry and sentiment. He says he's not a true romantic, but I don't believe him...

The "incomparable" Dejah Thoris

Thus far, I've had nothing but good things to say about this book. Here's where that changes.

When I wanted to review Edgar Rice Burroughs books, I thought it might be interesting to give an award for the most annoying character in the book. I nixed that idea because I quickly realized it would be the main love interest every single time.

In the history of adventure fiction, was there any female as shrill and awful as that living, breathing McGuffin, Dejah Thoris? John Carter wants her because she is the first woman John Carter sees on Mars that isn't a giant monster.

We're told over and over she's superbeautiful (her only virtue) but honestly? After being surrounded by tusked grotesques all the time any near-human woman would look pretty darn good.

Actually, I take that back. I would actually choose a Green Woman like Sola over Dejah Thoris. I am being serious, here. Sure, Sola is a giant monster, but looks aren't everything. For one thing, Sola actually has positive personal character traits: her motherliness, personal protectiveness and loyalty, a great contrast to Dejah Thoris's haughty snottiness. She was cruel to John Carter for no real reason other than he was an earthly stranger that didn't get her vibes.

Dejah Thoris goes from unsympathetic and needlessly cruel to downright crazy-person bipolar in one final conflict in Zodanga, a scene that is frankly unbelievable, where Dejah wins the coveted "Lois Lane Award" for arbitrary out of character behavior done in order to squeeze conflict out of a story. She refuses to marry John Carter because she promised herself earlier - not even a marriage, just a promise - to some horrible jerk.

What gets me is, there's no need for Dejah Thoris to do the "if you had come just an hour before, when I promised myself to Than Kosis" bit. No need! While Dejah was absent, the navy of Zodanga took advantage and all-but conquered Helium. If Zodanga, wanted, it could have totally crushed Dejah's home country. Dejah Thoris would have looked actually heroic and self-sacrificing if she said she would marry a man she didn't love in order to save her entire people.

That's not what Dejah does, though. She pettily insists she would have gone away with John Carter even if that would have destroyed her entire race, if he just accepted her vow of love and marriage, a ritual he didn't even recognize as he was an earthman stranger to Mars - an ugly "gotcha" game. Rather, the reason she went with Than Kosis is because a little earlier (and bear in mind there had been no actual marriage) she said she would.

It's frequently a part of the belief system of moral midgets that giving one's word and keeping it no matter what awful things you're forced to do, no matter what horrors result, is the height of personal integrity. There was a really great indictment of how Oath-giving can be evil and destructive in the Fritz Lang silent movie Kriemhild's Revenge, where the Nibelungen were forced to close-ranks and protect the murderer of Siegfried from his justifiably angry widow's deserved revenge. The Nibelungs died pointlessly for no reason at all in a burning building, protecting a murderer and killer from Kriemhild's just revenge, simply because Siegfried's killer was one of them and they promised to circle the wagons. Kriemhild's Revenge is a tragedy about how keeping an oath no matter what can be tragic and self-destructive and anything but heroic.

Dejah Thoris is a beautiful woman, but that's about it. Like Jane, she's a pre-feminist liability to these books. In every single media version of Dejah Thoris, she becomes a sword wielding Valkyrie. Many people suspect that's due to feminism and political correctness, but I don't think so...many other pre-feminist characters have remained noncombatants, like Jane Porter, Dale Arden and Lois Lane. Rather, I suspect the reason Dejah becomes a warrior woman is because if she became courageous, she'd have a single positive character trait.